MiL has asked if her Android phone uses data when she uses Google Maps for directions. I suppose it must use some to download the maps but how much will it use on a typical journey?

Yes, it does use data. You can download the maps before you go, but not sure on the area this will allow you to save. You do this in Google Maps by searching for somewhere, zooming out to the size you want then scrolling down and there’s an option to make maps available offline.

It doesn’t use much data though. Not sure how much, but I’ve got an unlimited data package so don’t really pay much attention to it.

What Stumpy said.

What’s a “typical journey”?

I use an app called 3G Watchdog to keep an eye on data usage, but there’s many others. There are offline satnav apps too, if it’s something she’s likely to be using a lot. NavFree is well regarded, personally I like CoPilot for in-car use but that’s not free.

I use an app called 3G Watchdog to keep an eye on data usage, but there’s many others

It’s also built in on the newer phones/versions
I get app specific usage on the Samsung.

I think it might let you download whole areas of the world in some verions or incarnations..? Seem to remember hearing something about this.

Anyway on Nokia devices including the modern Windows Phone ones you can pre-download and use the whole lot offline.

I pre downloaded maps (I definitely downloaded maps covering the whole journey I took) and it still burnt through 20MB in 2 hours with traffic switched on – not sure if that was just traffic updates, which it seems a lot for, or it was downloading new bits of map, despite supposedly having cached it (I had to cache more than one bit). I’m sure to those with unlimited data 20MB is trivial, but not when that’s more than your average daily allowance.

That’s based on the built in reporting on my 2yo phone running 4.0.4, so hardly state of the art.

You used to be able to zoom to the area you want then type in “OK Maps” into the search box and it downloaded the view.