Google’s Street View is an easy way to get a 360° look at almost any given street on the planet, perfect for getting a sense of your next travel destination or simply exploring the world from the comfort of home. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in case that they do ship. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Anybody with an Android 1.6 or higher device can download 5.0 right now for free, but the 3D and offline features are 2.0+ only.Google is preparing to shut down the dedicated Street View app on Android, keeping the feature in Google Maps.Ībout APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. The other thing these low-bandwidth vector maps enables is offline caching of maps, specifically your most frequently visited locations, and entire trips that have been routed in Navigation, including potential reroutes. It's not quite as flashy as Google Earth, but it looks a whole lot more useful.

The vectors also enable something else a whole lot sexier: a two finger swipe can 'tilt' the map and now you've got a 3D view of the landscape.

Most importantly, Google is now using vector graphics for its maps, which are scalable and much lighter weight than the traditional stitched together images used in most Google Maps incarnations. Google Maps 5.0 for Android might seem similarly earth shattering, but it marks a significant change to the basic technology of Google Maps. Google's never been afraid to 'blow it out' with Google Maps, most famously with its inclusion of Navigation, which knocked the legs out from under a lot of the GPS device and navigation app market.

Download google map view