Remember the first time you saw Google Earth and had that jaw-dropping, sky diving feeling you had as you zoomed into your address from space? Most people gasped in amazement, some went “whoa!”, while others simply realized that their roofs needed repair. Now imagine that exact same feeling from an iPhone app. That’s right, Google Earth has officially arrived on the iPhone and iPod touch.
We all knew the Google Earth iPhone app was coming, but it we just didn’t know when, or how much of the desktop functionality would be included in the iPhone version. Yesterday, Google released the first version of Google Earth for iPhone, which surprisingly has many of the core features of the desktop client, with a few extras thrown in for good measure.
Not surprisingly, the app suffers from some performance bugs, most likely caused by memory constraints of the iPhone. This app appears to be pushing the limits of what can be done with an iPhone app. Truth be told, though, the Google Earth iPhone app is nothing short of amazing, when it’s not crashing., that is. Judging from Google Earth’s whopping 4.5 (out of five) user rating in the App Store, maybe the sheer wonderment of this app outweighs the bugs. This app certainly raises the bar for user experience on the iPhone and is a must-have application for all iPhones and iPod touches, bugs be damned.
Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch contains the same aerial and global satellite imagery found in the desktop version. This includes high resolution images for over half of the world’s populated areas and over a third of the Earth’s total land mass. That in itself is pretty amazing, but add in other features like tilt view, geo-located photos and Wikipedia articles, along with a price of free, and you have one iPhone app from a company that has already in some sense, taken over the world.
This app features all the 3D rendering eye candy that we all love about the desktop version. It utilizes the touch screen interface by allowing you to swipe your finger to fly around the globe, tap and double-tap to zoom in and out. It’s simple, fun, and intuitive, maybe even more intuitive than the desktop version which requires a mouse. The tilt view feature is awesome, but it can get in the way if you want to maintain your view angle while you move your iPhone around. Fortunately, you can disable this feature if you wish.
Google has also included local search in this app. This allows you to search for cities and places, and even businesses, around the globe. Of all the features not included in this app, the one we miss most is directions. However, directions already exists in the iPhone’s Maps.app, so maybe that’s why Google excluded it from Google Earth and instead provided a hook from Google Earth to the Maps.app. This happens when you see a business address in Google Earth. Tapping it will launch the Maps.app with all the information found in the map, including directions.
Loading can be slow at times, but that’s most likely an issue of the wireless network latency than an actual bug. iPhone users will find the best performance on 3G, and iPod touch users should always be on Wi-fi when using this app. In short, if you can put up with occasional crashes and glitches, Google Earth will blow you away with what it can do on the iPhone and iPod touch.
Google Earth for iPhone is available in 20 countries from the App Store and in all 16 languages currently supported by the iPhone.
Google Earth for iPhone - Free [app store]
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