Imagine your teen has just been handed the keys to the family car to go out for the evening, as a parent, you just can’t help being a little nervous about it. MapQuest is here to help. Before they leave the house, grab your son’s or daughter’s Android phone and create a single tap shortcut called ‘Home’ with MapQuest so that no matter where they are, all they have to do is select ‘Home’ and it will navigate them back to your house using voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions without having to look at their phone while driving. They might still run out of gas, but they won’t get lost.
This is available now as part of MapQuest for Android Version 1.3.0, which offers a trio of useful features that will help save time and keep you tethered to important places while out-and-about.
Add Favorites
One of our intrepid mobile engineers recently lamented having to re-find and re-enter locations that he visits frequently, yet not so frequently that directions are unnecessary. In his case, his kids play sports, and the games are held at a variety of participating schools. Over a weekend, he built the ability to identify and save the names and locations to favorite places from the place detail page. Naturally, the icon he chose to identify this feature was a heart icon. Any location can be added as a ‘Favorite’ and the list is easily accessed via the menu key on your android device.
Voice Activation
Not satisfied with merely selecting the locations from a list, he further added the ability to navigate to a favorite place by voice command. Getting to one of the schools was now as easy as tapping the mic button in the search box and saying, ‘navigate’ then the name of the ‘favorite’ destination.
So now, after you add ‘home’ to your teenager’s phone, all he has to do is tell his phone “Navigate home!”
Shortcuts
You can also create a shortcut to a favorite destination that you saved with a long press on your devices’ Homescreen. One-click access, it really doesn’t get any easier than that ;)
With the new MapQuest Android App, your favorites are a voice command or a single click away. Not bad for a weekend’s work. Try the latest version of the MapQuest android app and let us know what you think.
