From the United States come some reports about Google Maps and its user interface, especially the one that is activated on Android Auto or when we use the smartphone in landscape mode. The new interface makes the map much more readable and will make many drivers happy.
The interesting thing is that these are really minimal changes that, however, have a major impact on the use of Google Maps as a navigator. The changes, in fact, are so mild that little or nothing changes if we use Maps from a smartphone in a vertical position. Moreover, with the new interface the situation is even better on large screens and this confirms the increasing integration between the Google Maps app and Android Auto: now the UI of the two apps, the one for smartphones and the one for Android Auto, are almost identical.
New Google Maps interface: what changes
The little big news in the Google Maps interface is all in the menu on which we can act after launching the navigator by tapping on "Start". The previous version of this menu took up a lot of space when we opened it with a swipe, for example to share our position in real time or add a traffic report. The new version of the menu, on the other hand, is much more discreet: it takes up much less space and only on one side of the screen (if the screen is oriented horizontally, otherwise it changes very little) and the rest of the map remains clearly visible. It is clear that the advantage of this new interface grows further as the screen inches increase.
No need to update the application
From the news coming from the USA at the moment, to activate this new interface of Google Maps is not necessary to update the application. It would seem, in fact, that the changes made by Google are all server-side, so they will be enabled gradually for everyone. So we just have to wait some time and, sooner or later, the new interface of Google Maps will arrive on our smartphones in Italy.