Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, First Look
First Look: Google Earth for iPhone
Google has ported Google Earth to the iPhone or iPod touch, and it's such an impressive app that it deserves an Apple ad of its own.
The interface for Google Earth will be familiar instantly to anyone who has used an iPhone for more than a couple of hours. Upon launching the app, you see a photo of the Earth from space. To zoom in, you can either double-tap or use the "reverse-pinch" gesture on the screen. Swiping a finger left, right, up, or down moves the display in the chosen direction, and a two-finger rotation turns the display clockwise or counter-clockwise. There are icons on the display (see screenshot at right) for search, using your current location, changing settings, and realigning the display to North.
Things get more interesting when you tilt your iPhone; the display goes from a flat, satellite-eye view to a 3D-like image. If you're near mountainous terrain, you get a true sense of the topographical features of the land. On many screens you'll see Wikipedia icons, which link you to related Wikipedia articles. Read the rest of this post for more details and a gallery of screenshots.
Tapping on the location icon in the lower left corner of the display turns on geolocation, and I was amazed at how accurate this was -- it was basically floating the big blue pin right over my home office! I had to avoid the temptation to look out the window and see if the pin was there.
The imagery consists of the same satellite and aerial photography that you'll find on the Mac or PC version, so if your area has low-res imagery, don't expect to see something better on the iPhone. You can add a Panoramio layer to view geo-located photos, or search for locations using a built-in search function.
One thing I noticed with this 1.0 release is that it tended to crash quite frequently, most often when I was looking at a zoomed-in image of something near a 3D surface and then tried to tilt or pan the image. Restarting the 16GB iPhone 3G didn't seem to help matters at all. Until Google fixes this issue, try to avoid the coolness factor of tilting your iPhone for that 3D viewpoint.
As with most things Googlish, Google Earth is free. The app is localized in sixteen languages, and is available from the App Store (click opens iTunes). If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, be sure to download Google Earth just for the sheer fun of it, then let us know what you like or dislike about the app.
Gallery: Google Earth for iPhone
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
BLACK Barack said 7:50PM on 10-27-2008
please post WHERE in the app store something can be found. Navigation? It is too tedius to go thru every single one.
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dandaman said 5:15PM on 10-27-2008
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=281790044&mt=8
dandaman said 5:16PM on 10-27-2008
I thought you meant the WHEAR app - and was wondering why. Then I read your comment. There's a link at the end of the article.
Chris Aubeck said 5:14AM on 10-28-2008
Of course we know you're joking because no-one would be so dumb as to forget there's search box at the app store. You had us there for a moment!
Brian said 12:10PM on 10-27-2008
Crash, Crash, Crash, I tried using this app 3 times and...
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Jash Sayani said 2:17PM on 10-27-2008
Same here... I am on Firmware 2.1 and when I used the Locater, the app crashed, and even on locating my place manually, it crashed. Then I kept the app open for some time and it crashed on its own after a few seconds....
This happned over both WiFi and EDGE....
Rob said 3:52PM on 10-27-2008
Resetting the phone seems to cure the crashing.
dandaman said 5:02PM on 10-27-2008
Yeah, this morning my iPhone apps were crashing all over the place - from fancy games like Moto Chaser to simpler apps like iProcrastinate and To Do's, even Mail, Calendar, and believe it or not Notes. I reset it and it worked fine, even Google Maps (though not Moto Chaser)
Bob said 12:17PM on 10-27-2008
What's the difference between this and Google Maps? Sorry for my ignorance.
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Jerry said 12:42PM on 10-27-2008
the main thing is 3D view of the terrain
Tony said 8:13PM on 10-27-2008
Theoretically, terrain, but this appears nonfunctional at the moment - it shows the entire area around me as perfectly flat (I live on top of a hill!). Tried a few other cities with the same result.
You also lose the street labels so it's not so good for navigation. It's cool to spin the globe around when it starts, though.
Steve C said 12:20PM on 10-27-2008
Tried the find me me Icon. I was already hovering over my home city of Austin Texas. Should be easy!
Nope, it zoomed all the way out and then in on someplace in Tokyo Japan.
Maybe they should take Mail OUT of beta and put this one back in.
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Carl said 1:03PM on 10-27-2008
Um... what neighborhood of Austin exactly? I took my wireless router to Tokyo Japan for my year abroad. When I got there it kept "locating" me to Austin, but it has since registered it's mac address to tokyo... take a screen of where it says you are in tokyo, might be where my apartment was (been back in the states for 2 months now).
Ashwin said 3:29PM on 10-27-2008
The reason Google Earth isn't beta is because it originated outside of Google as Keyhole, and thus would not follow the same naming conventions.
Jeshii said 12:22PM on 10-27-2008
Yeah, it crashes for me too...
I'm finding the tilt a little distracting since I'm apparently a gimp who does that a lot of avoid glare or something.
However, I like the connect without network function.
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Mystic said 1:44PM on 10-27-2008
You can turn the tilt off.
Kevin Ansfield said 12:24PM on 10-27-2008
Nice app, even if you only ever use it as a tech demo! One thing confused me though... if you rotate your phone to get the 3d-tilt feature, how the hell do you turn it off??
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Danny Goodman said 12:35PM on 10-27-2008
To turn off the tilting feature, tap the (i)info button (lower right) and switch off Auto Tilt in the preferences.
Buran said 12:30PM on 10-27-2008
That's strange. This app's display looks just like my phone's springboard. I don't see a planet here.
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cbenitez said 12:40PM on 10-27-2008
How did this apps pass the apple's censoring. It have the same funtionality that the maps.app ?
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