Waze GPS & traffic - Social, fun! Version: 3.1 Review | iPhone and iPad Navigation App

*** Now fully redesigned with complete natural text-to-speech capabilities (Initially US & Canada only)***

When you download Waze, you not only get a free traffic & navigation app, but also become part of the local driving community in your area, joining forces with other drivers nearby to outsmart traffic, save time, and improve everyone's daily commute!

When you download Waze, you get:

* Live community-contributed traffic information and road reports + notification when approaching police traps, speed cams, heavy traffic or hazards on the road
* Free traffic by-passing navigation featuring voice-guided, turn-by-turn guidance
* A 100% live map + real-time road monitoring & automatic re-routing as conditions on the road change
* Hands free operation - Use voice commands to share road events or have Waze direct you to home or work. (Initially available for US & Canada only)
* Share your location or destination via text or email, or update others on new ETA when running late. Your friends can click on the link in the message and launch Waze directly to that destination.
* Ability to create or join local driving groups, plus the option to link up with other drivers for carpooling
* Foursquare, Twitter & Facebook integrations, plus fun, geo-gaming elements

So, how does it work?

After typing in your destination address, just drive with the app open on your phone to passively contribute traffic and other road data, but you can also take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a 'heads-up' about what's to come.

That's about it - Waze is all about contributing to the common good out there on the road, so do your part and get involved in your local driving community today!

Note: Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life

For more information, check out our guided tour: http://www.Waze.com/guided_tour

Waze GPS & traffic - Social, fun! Screenshots

Waze GPS & traffic - Social, fun! Review

Crowd-sourced navigation and traffic app adds an element of game-playing

by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld.com

Were you ever trying to find your way to an address you’d never visited before and thought to yourself, “If only this frustrating experience had been gamified!” Your wish has been granted. Waze, a free (and quite capable) iOS navigation app, relies on its users to populate its maps and provide automatic and manual traffic reporting—all with an overlay of game playing.

Waze navigation shows you the path to your destination, along with streets no one has driven (and by driving will earn you points), as well as problems en route reported by other drivers.

Waze tries to motivate drivers to fill in blank areas by offering incentives in the form of Pac-Man-like icons you can gobble up to increase your “score.” In October, for instance, I drove several blocks out of my way, sometimes to the end of dead-end roads, just to eat up pumpkins—one of many seasonal themes Waze rotates through to keep interest active. Anonymous details about the current speed and location of all users are uploaded to the Interent in order to provide data on current traffic conditions. You can also engage in a social network in which you optionally expose your current location. And when stopped, you can file on-the-spot reports about speed traps, accidents, or closed roads.

Despite all of that, Waze is only an adequate navigation app. It has a simple interface for entering destinations that’s probably too simple: You can’t just select a contact, but have to type in part of a name. When it finds a destination, you can’t confirm it on a map, nor does it provide a map overview or a way to list turn-by-turn directions from start to finish. You also can’t know in advance whether a given part of your route is well fleshed out, although all main routes are covered.

Drive and Score: While the points don’t matter, you can see how you’ve accumulated more of them.

I found that Waze crashed more often than any other GPS app I’ve tested—and I’ve tested most of them. But reviews on the App Store, which will generally tear into shreds any app that crashes frequently, don’t seem to mention it. Maybe Waze just doesn’t like me?

Waze is free, so there’s no risk in trying it out to see if it meets your particular driving needs. Take note, though: your mileage will vary.

[Glenn Fleishman, a senior contributor to Macworld, has no idea where he’s going and no idea where he’s been, but he’s reviewed dozens of GPS apps in the last two years. He believes he lives in Seattle, but will have to check on that.]

[Updated 12/1 at 9:45 a.m. to add a screen shot of Waze 3.0.]

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Critic Reviews of Waze GPS & traffic - Social, fun! iPhone App

Waze
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User Reviews of Waze GPS & traffic - Social, fun! iPhone App

10 Macworld User Reviews

34752 iTunes User Reviews View »

Our user review snapshot

Fun 84.0%
Attractive 86.0%
Met expectations 82.0%

Our user reviews IN DETAIL:

Waze Wins!

Reviewed by artdoc

I just returned from a 1500 round trip with four GPS apps on my iPad and a one-month cell plan. I was a passenger and so I could literally watch the screen instead of just get a quick glance from time to time. I was able to pop open each GPS app to compare how they were trying to route the trip. Waze explained that it was a data-intensive app and recommended an unlimited data plan! I had no idea how my one-gig plan would hold up, but I only needed to get four days of use. When we left the Bay Area and headed south for 300 miles of straight road, I turned off the cell connection. How surprised was I when Waze not only kept tracking our progress (it is a GPS, after all, so that wasn't the surprise), but kept up with voice nav comments! After a 100 miles, I turned the connection back on and left it on. The way that Waze displays the map, changing from day to night mode automatically as the sun sets, showing road names in a legible type size (Google maps suck in this regard!), and automatically zooming in on tricky interchanges for clarity, then backing out when that has passed,...Waze simply worked beautifully. And constant mapping for a total of 27 hours used just under 400 megs of my one-gig plan. I thought that was great. I only discovered by accident that pressing on the screen at a point you might want to head for will "drop a pin" and allow you to navigate to that spot. Now I would like to set a route based on a series of pins to let me choose my own freeway options through Los Angeles, for example. I used several other apps but found them so seriously lacking that I gave up. MotionX really sucked, others required downloading maps, not a great idea with a slow cell connection! Skobbler's GPS Nav 2 was a close second as a really nice app, but it routed me on a 50 mile extra destination on my way home and wouldn't see a clearly better shorter route, and Waze not only did use the shorter route but offered two added options. A long report, but that's how impressed I am with Waze. Note: My complaints about the other apps is mostly based on (relative) difficulty of using them IF you are a solo drive who wants to watch the road. Skobbler's GPS Nav 2 and Waze are both are pretty easy to make a tap or two, and of course the maps are constantly updated as you drive. An iPad screen is a joy to have in the car.

Not perfect yet, but the best considering the features and the price (free).

Reviewed by cm477

As a daily WAZE user for the past few months in Los Angeles, I was looking forward to this review. I was surprised that Glenn focused his review on the game aspect (does anyone really care?), and less on best features of this app. I guess traffic is not an issue in Seattle and he has time to play games. First of all, WAZE is free, and gives voice turn-by-turn directions. I don't know of other apps that do that for free. Second, WAZE provides alternative routes with estimated times based on traffic. This is essential when you trying to cross a traffic-congested city like LA, and I have found it pretty accurate. Third, the crowd-sourcing is essential to get info not immediately available on other navigation apps, such a accidents, objects on the roadway, sudden heavy traffic, and police. WAZE is not perfect, and could use some more features: overview of the current route with traffic displayed, controls for music, waypoints, 1000-mile limit, etc. It does occasionally make mistakes, but the developers have a built-in method for input (though I wish they would take recordings for on the spot corrections). I regularly use many of the more "reasonably priced" navigation and traffic apps (Maps/Google, MotionX GPS Drive, Copilot Live USA, Skobbler, INRIX, Beat the Traffic), and WAZE is the one I rely on most of the time.

Latest version was reviewed

Reviewed by Glenn_Fleishman

I'm sorry for the confusion about which version was reviewed. I started using Waze 2.x months ago, and switched to 3.0 (now 3.0.1) when it was released. All the issues noted above are still present in my testing of 3.0.1. However, the original screen capture in the review was from 2.x, as it was taken in October when a special pumpkin theme was in place. The interface is indeed different and cleaner now (although that wasn't a criticism in the review), so we've swapped in a new screen shot.

WAY more then just "adequate"!

Reviewed by zarmanto

I have to disagree with one particular comment in Glenn's review of Waze; Waze is by no means merely "adequate"... in fact, it is *exactly* what I was looking for in a GPS app, after I bought my iPhone and discovered the disappointingly narrow feature set of the onboard Google Maps app. I've been using Waze for several months now, and my reliable old Garmin GPS hasn't seen the outside of the glove box in all that time. I'll admit that Waze may not be perfect in every way; I've also experienced several crashes... but upon the next launch the app very gracefully informs me that it crashed, and asks me if it can report the crash data to the company. Frankly, I'm okay with that, given that I'm not paying one cent for it, and yet for that low-low price, it gives me full turn-by-turn directions and voice announcements of each turn as I drive. And honestly, most of the time I could really take or leave the gaming aspect of the app, for my own use... but I am fully cognizant that I absolutely reap benefits from it, as the appeal that the game aspects have to other Waze users continues to enhance the accuracy of their mapping data. The folks who came up with Waze really *get* crowd-sourcing, and I'm very happy with the results of their work.

Best GPS app on iphone

Reviewed by DanielFeldman

I find the app to be a great option for my every day commuting. It has bailed me out of traffic several times, warned me of speed traps and given me near perfect directions. Shame this review seems to have missed the genius of this app which is about working together to beat traffic not only about getting from point A to point B which it does pretty well anyways

Just OK

Reviewed by Themespotter

I've been using this app for the past month or so, and while it's tough to complain too much, being that it's free, it really doesn't work that well. There have been several instances where it told me completely wrong directions (ie, telling me to turn left in places where there are no roads), and saying I was at my destination, when the destination was not there. It also takes too long to enter addresses, can only accept addresses within a few hour drive, and frequently can not find addresses (that are valid addresses). I was hoping to find a usable free turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone, but unfortunately Waze isn't good enough to be replied upon. Dustin Themespotter.com

One of the Best

Reviewed by bbrjs

Waze is certainly one of the best GPS apps available, and free to boot. Maybe if the editor had used a current version of the app, or reviewed it recently, his opinion would be different. The interface changed at least a month ago. Pumpkins on the map? When did you actually review this? Try again, Glenn, because it is difficult to take your review seriously.

Excelent App

Reviewed by AntonioMorales

Is amazing how the app interact with social networks and is dedicated for the daily driving..

Macworld missed the boat in their April 2010 GPS App review!

Reviewed by fabravo

I was disappointed in Glenn Fleishman's review of GPS Apps in the April 2010 edition of Macworld (Apps with Maps). I've used Waze for some time and it is at least as great as the 12 paid iPhone GPS Apps Macworld reviewed. Waze is free and very accurate. If it doesn't know something, it learns from the power of the community. Maybe it's too cute for Macworld editors, but for my money, it's a lot better than the other Apps. You can read more about Waze on my blog: http://blog.fabgraphics.com/?p=94