the last great nav app goes evil

I periodically look up navigation apps on my phone mainly for entertainment, because it's funny to read the complaints. I read the gripes people have, and think yep, you should've bought a Garmin, be it 5" Drive 53, 6" DriveSmart 66, 7" DriveSmart 76 or 8" DriveSmart 86.

I'm a staunch Garmin user, but even so, I have a backup nav app on my phone. That app was no longer being shown to me in the Google Play Store. This was weird, because that means my phone is "too old" to run that app, so I go over to a web browser and look up the app.

And whoa, did this app drop a train on everybody that used it.

The app I was using for backup navigation was Magic Earth. This app is OpenStreetMap based and was totally free. Yes, was. Without any warning whatsoever, the new version released now has a paywall on it. Instead of getting everything in the app for free, a subscription is "required" to "unlock" all the features. And from what I read in the reviews, you don't get everything back that was in the previous version even if you do pay.

WOW.

The interesting thing is since my phone was "too old" to run the new version, I still had the previous free version that worked perfectly fine. But I'm certain Magic Earth will stop delivering free maps for old versions if they haven't already, so I just deleted it off my phone. See ya.

Over the years, I've watched nav app after nav app do this and it never ends well. It starts off as free, stays that way for a few years, and then whammo, pay up.

But the nightmare doesn't end there. The subscription structure doesn't stay consistent at all. First it starts off as yearly, then biannual, then quarterly, then monthly. Any nav app that charges anything always does this, and many times I've see user reviews to the tune of people paying for a 1-year subscription, the subscription structure suddenly changing, 1-year option disappears, user gets locked out, is NOT REFUNDED, and told to pay again, pay monthly, or go away. And there's not a damned thing the user can do about it.

The push to go monthly is because the most money is made that way. The subscription starts off at $20/yr, which is $1.67/mo. Then it changes to "only $15" every 6 months, which is $2.50/mo. Then it changes to "only $10" every 3 months, which is $3.33/mo. Then it finally tops out at "only $4" a month or more than that, depending on how greedy the company is. Every single subscription structure change is specifically done to charge more every month by design. Rope people in, raise the price, rinse and repeat.

Things don't end there, as there's one more thing that makes a modern nav app truly evil. I don't know if Magic Earth is doing what I'm about to say since I can't run the app anymore to see for myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if they are. The true evil happens from "securely storing" all saved favorites, past locations and/or tracks and routes in the cloud. Anything saved in the app is locked behind a paid account, effectively holding the data hostage. Oh, you want to continue to have access to your data, do you? Pay up, sucker. And if the company one day decides to quit and the app stops working, everything saved is lost. And no refunds.

Also, if the company quits, which could and probably would happen, will they sell off all the personal data for every user? If they do, a "terms of service update" will occur right before they jump ship to make you "permit" them to do it. They know nobody ever reads that. Or at least not read it until it's too late. Thanks so much for being a customer, bye!

The ruination of phone navigation continues

Magic Earth spells out what will happen with all navigation on the phone. Anybody who uses the phone for navigation now will inevitably suffer the same nightmare. And it's not a possibility, it's a certainty, regardless of app used. They're all going to go full evil.

I am so glad I never switched over to phone navigation. What a mess.

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Published 2025 Dec 8