The new iOS update for Google Maps will let drive all night.
Google Maps spices up nightlife with this iOS update. For real, the San Francisco tech giant has now brought in a feature for its popular navigation app that is sure to encourage all those taxi drivers to go out on the streets at night looking for clients.
Truly, this new feature is bound to make nightlife more enjoyable, either for you, driving your friends home as the designated driver, or for the cab driver you just happened to call for provided you’ve had a bit too much to drink.
Have you ever been in the dark and squirmed your eyes at the screen of your phone if the device did not adapt its luminosity to the darkness? Well, imagine drivers in traffic doing that. Then the lights are off, your eyes gradually adapt to the lighting (or lack thereof) and so you start to see well even if you’re in complete darkness. This is of course, unless someone decides to shine a flashlight right in your eyes.
That is exactly what Google thinks happens to drivers who look at the map when they are driving. So that’s why they have introduced the new Night Mode. And it’s simple and effective. Once it gets dark outside it automatically changes its colors so that it is easy to see and does not obstruct your vision.
While the standard version boasted a white and bright map, with high contrasts between streets and your car, the Night Mode has a dark blue-grey map, with dark grey streets, and a highly contrasting blue direction indicator. They have gone for the obvious choice, many are saying, since there are few colors that contrast so well with black without causing discomfort.
And it’s not going to get confused and slow your device: it uses a combination of the phone’s light sensor (the thing that makes your screen adapt when it’s too sunny or too dark) and of the actual time in the area where you are from. So, if it’s too dark and it’s actually day (say you put your phone in your pocket) – the Night Mode will not turn on, and the off when you get it out. Obviously the same goes the other way around – if it’s light outside and it’s night (let’s assume it), your screen will not go dark.
Still, people and app reviewers have been critical of this update, saying that it has come much too late as it has been available for two whole years on Android, and that the Night Mode only works when turn-by-turn is on, which may not be to everyone’s liking.