Not bad, but many issues.....

I purchased Earthmate recently when they ran a 50% off special. Even when I realized it would cost an additional fee after a year I figured it would be worth it. So far the jury is out on whether it will be.

The app has promise, but is significantly lacking in many areas. I purchased the iPhone version and found a variety of problems/issues/grievances. These include:

1. Lack of contour info- Contours are rarely, if ever, labeled. On the screen you can see the contour lines, but have no idea what they represent, except very occasionally when a label is on the screen. On top of that, there is no indication as to what the contour interval is. The contour intervals change based on how much you are zoomed in/out, but nowhere does it say what the interval is. This is a basic thing that should be included on any map and omitting it is a fundamental flaw.

2. Accuracy- At times the map is very good. But at other times it is lousy. I wondered if perhaps it was a GPS thing, but I think the GPS location is good and the downloaded map is poor. For example, Highway 1 going out of Anchorage to Seward, Alaska is just awful. The highway on the downloaded basemap shows the road going up and down from sea level to over 500 feet, when in fact it stays right above sea level by the Turnagain Arm. At times the road is on the wrong side of a lake, or even on the wrong side of the railroad that runs the same route. I found many issues on my recent trip to Alaska, which was my first time to try using it.

3. It isnt a substitute for a hard copy DeLorme Atlas- I purchased the app before the trip to Alaska thinking it would substitute for my big DeLorme Atlas so I left the atlas at home. Big mistake. Now looking at the atlas after returning I see that many, many things are labeled in the atlas that never made it into the app, regardless of which basemap I used or how much I was zoomed in. Glacier names. mountain names, etc. This was a huge disappointment when using the app.

4. Lack of help on what basemaps are what- I looked in the app and on the DeLorme web site for help on what basemaps are what, but no info is provided. There are options of basemaps to download including "Topo North America" and "Digital Atlas of the Earth", but nowhere does it tell you what each of these is. One might assume that Topo North America is just topography, but this appears to be incorrect. This is basic stuff that DeLorme just is missing the boat on. Maybe they think everyone is well versed in DeLorme-speak and inherently knows what all of these are, but that just isnt the case. A simple help menu explaining what is what would be very helpful. And a basemap that is EXACTLY what is in the hard copy DeLorme Atlas would be really nice too.

All in all I liked this app, and see its potential, but just wanted to make folks aware there are a lot of issues. It was fun to use when flying across the country and being able to ID towns and such. But it needs some work. I am writing in this detail in the hopes that DeLorme actually reads these reviews and perhaps might think about comments on issues and address them. I am not sure if this is realistic, but I see no other way to say "Nice idea, not a bad start, but there are a lot of things to fix here." And this is all after using it just one time. I suspect the more I use it the more issues Ill find. And I will continue to use it, I just wont be leaving my hard copy atlases at home any time soon. And an app like this should allow me to do that.

acadonnelly about Earthmate, v2.3.4