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This past June during our trip through Germany I used my cell phone as my GPS. Naturally, when I got home I was hit with significant roaming charges from my carrier Verizon. We learned to use the cell phone only when back in the hotel or BNB when under someone else's wifi coverage. This May/June we are heading back to France and expect to be driving for about 7-8 days. I can rent a GPS through the car rental agency for about $100 for those 8 days or I can update my old GPS to Europe maps for about $50 from Tom-Tom. I would prefer to use my cell phone, but how one get around the roaming charges for GPS usage. Are there specific tricks that I should know about. .

Thanks very much

A few possibilities:

Verizon has a plan called TravelPass that you can add to your phone. It costs $10/day for each day that you use the phone outside the U.S. If you don't use the phone (or only use Wi-Fi) on a given day, no charge for that day. Any data that you use is counted the same as if you were in the U.S.

Google Maps allows you to download the map data for a region into your phone. Once you've done that, you can navigate within that region with no cellular connection.

And maybe it's worth the 50 bucks to get the European maps on your TomTom. I have a Garmin GPS with European maps, and I still bring it along when traveling there, just in case.

Dan

Ken,

It takes a little bit of planning, but it should cost you nothing. GPS is free.

As DanS said above Google Maps will allow you to download the maps and you are off in running.

For example: when we are on Rhine cruise the ship had WiFi. So when we pulled into a town and on the ship I would download the maps and locate where we I was at that moment. The rest of the day my phone was in airplane mode and I google maps could always tell me where I was and where I was headed.

I will ask my travel friends what app they used. There is an offline GPS app they used.

Will get back with you.

We just got back from Germany last Friday. We were there through the holidays and visited France, Switzerland, and Italy by car. What I did was go to the vodafone store in the stuttgart train station and got a local phone company (Lebara) sim card. There were options from 25-35 euros for 30 days of service. With a sim card you get the advantage of being able to communicate as well as navigate. I then used the waze app for navigation. I have found that waze is better than google maps. We used it last spring in Costa Rica as well, and it has worked flawlessly. Your phone has to be a GSM phone for this to work, and possibly unlocked.

If you only want to draw onto your map, i think you should use HERE map, which you can use it offline and mark every spots you want on the map

What if you pre download the maps?

We are with Tmobile and no international roaming in most countries, but I still pre download maps on Google Maps for speed of loading. I find the accuracy is amazing, way more accurate than the old Garmin unit. Airplane mode would then solve the roaming issue.

Pre download the maps and you are pretty sorted!