Imagine if you could get turn-by-turn navigation for walking just as you can when driving, but with the directions overlayed on the real world objects in front of you. That's what Google first announced at its Google IO developer conference in May 2019, and now that cool new feature is being made available as a beta on a much wider range of devices.
'Live View' is a feature in Google Maps that uses augmented reality (AR) to show you which way to walk using arrows and directions placed in the real world, and it's rolling out to Android phones that support ARCore and iPhones that support ARKit.
Those phones include the Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a and the Pixel 3a XL; the Huawei P20, P20 Pro, P30 and P30 Pro; the Samsung Galaxy S10e, Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, Galaxy S10 5G, Note 8 and Note 9 and many more handsets.
See Live View in action below.
Other updates to Google Maps include:
Use Google Maps to see all of your flight and hotel reservations in one place. You can even access these details if you’re offline, so no need to worry if you’re traveling internationally without data roaming.
With Google Maps, you can quickly find restaurants tailored to your tastes with Your Match, see how long the wait is, and make a reservation without ever leaving the app. With the popular dishes feature, you can also find out what other diners recommend.
Finally, if you’ve chosen to turn your Location History setting on, you can now use the updated version of Timeline to easily remember places you visited. You'll also able to see all of the places you went to in a country or a city, and search by categories – including restaurants, shops, attractions, hotels and airports. You can also export the places you loved to a list, make notes about the places in the list, and then share that list with friends and family.
Google says you can expect to see flight and hotel reservations, Live View (in countries where Street View is available), and the new Timeline on your phones in the coming weeks.
