Nokia Here Maps Beta expired: Here's how to fix it

Un-expire Here Beta

Nokia Here Maps isn't officially released yet, but the leaked beta test version is already the best free offline navigation app for Android.

Why? Check this review here.

Unfortunately the leaked beta test version had a time bomb in it. Starting the 1st of October, it pops up a very annoying message: "this version has expired."

But you can un-expire it!

Method 1

Tell your phone or tablet to go offline (no WiFi, no mobile data), fire up the settings, and set the date back to September 29, 2014.

Now open the application manager and wipe the data of Here Beta.

This un-expires Here Beta. You can go back online (necessary for public transport navigation, among other things). As long as the date is set back, Here Beta keeps running OK.

Method 2

If you're reading this, your Android is probably rooted. Instead of changing the date of your phone or tablet system-wide, you can change it for Here Beta only.

Get the Xposed installer, grab the Per App Hacking module, tap the "Time Machine" entry, and set the date and time for Here Beta to 2014-09-29 12:00 to fool it into non-expiry.

Method 3

Grab nambavuong's modded version with the expiration code yanked out. No root required, no need to mess with the date settings.

Get it all here

• Here Beta (need to set back date to make it work)
• Here Beta (modded, doesn't expire) on Google Drive and MediaFire

• Xposed Installer
• Xposed forum on xda
• Per App Hacking module for Xposed

Free offline navigation: Nokia Maps is Here

Nokia Maps is Here

Does anyone still remember Symbian? One of its great features was Nokia Maps, a great free offline navigation app that Android never managed to copy. It's also the reason this blog exists, because it all started as a collection of links to offline Nokia Maps files for those without Nokia Map Loader.

Android didn't have a good free offline navigation app yet. Sure, there are expensive navigation apps like Navigon, Google Maps that only lets you store tiny little offline map snippets that won't hold a city, and apps like OsmAnd that run on the often inadequate maps from OpenStreetMap.

Enter Nokia Maps, renamed to Ovi Maps, renamed again to Nokia Here. Oh wait, now it's just called Here, sans Nokia. But for now it's called Here Beta.

Here is not officially available yet. Planned release: end of the year. Real release: right here, right now. Because the beta test version is out here there for everyone and it's already better than the competition.

What's in Here?

The maps are really good, but some countries are missing from the list of downloadable maps. No Mongolia, no Sierra Leone, no Haiti, to name a few. Tibet and Palestine are missing from the list of countries because Nokia believes they're part of China and Israel. On the bright side, Here lists Taiwan as a separate country. On the politically correct but rather stupid side: Vatican City and San Marino are separate downloads instead of enclaves within Italy.

You'll want a phone or tablet with an external memory card to do all of Route 66 or navigate your band's entire european tour. A 32 GB memory card will fit the entire planet, but you're gonna have to store your music elsewhere if you really want to carry the whole world with you. A more efficient map compression format would be welcome.

Here Beta lets you drive, walk, and ride the subway. It doesn't have a bike mode and it doesn't show bike lanes, so your bike still needs Google Maps. The public transport info in Here is outdated: extended lines are still short, zapped lines are still running, and rerouted lines still run along their old tracks.

Offline maps or not, even if you set the app to offline mode and switch off all data collection options Here still phones home to spy on you. If you're roaming abroad, make sure to tell your firewall not to let Here use any roaming data, or your next phone bill will bring a nasty surprise. Taming Here with an app like XPrivacy is a good idea too.

On the bright side, setting up a route to navigate is really easy. Here lets you choose many alternative routes if you don't like its first choice. The app insists on using its own voices instead of your Android's built-in TTS voices, but voice navigation works pretty well and covers many languages.

Get it Here

Here is not in the Google Play Store yet, but the beta test version is ready for grabs if you want to take it for a test drive. You need to make a Here account (yes, they want your email or Facebook) before you can download any maps.

• Nokia Here on MediaFire
Update: This version now pops up a message "this version has expired." Here's how to un-expire it.

Why my Google Maps is old

Google Maps from way back then

Google updates its Maps app every once in a while, adding new features, upgrading existing functionality, and squashing the occasional bug.

But I haven't updated my copy of Google Maps for Android for over a year. Not on my phone, not on my tablet. Here's why:

Maps without paying for data roaming

A great feature of an ancient Google Maps update was the ability to store maps on your memory card for offline use. Mapping out a route still requires a live internet connection, but route planning only uses a tiny fraction of the data that the maps themselves gobble up.

That's not much of an issue on WiFi or an unlimited data plan, but what if you're roaming in a country where data costs a fortune and free WiFi is non-existant in most places?

If you're just using the app as a city map the answer is easy: download the map when you're on WiFi or before you leave your country, then use it for free as you walk the streets

If you're driving in a country with expensive data and no free WiFi on the highways (that's just about every country on the planet if you cross the border), you can download the route over WiFi in your hotel, or grudgingly pay the international bytes for grabbing the route, and then hit the road without paying anything extra.

But all of this only works if you store the maps you need onboard.

Google gives, Google takes

Three years ago Google Maps for Android finally offered the possibility to download maps for offline use. At first, it was limited to tiny little blocks of 15x15 miles, but since you could download ten of them you could easily fit an entire metropolis on your phone.

And then things got better. Two years ago the download limit increased to about 80 MB (enough for really big cities). Instead of ten maps you could only download six, but the increased size per map meant that you could fit small countries on your phone's memory card.

Too bad that a later update cut things back down again. Sometime last year the maximum download size reduced to the point where large cities wouldn't fit on a map.

London and Paris are too big

Try to download a map of all of London within the M25 with a recent version of Google Maps and you'll face with the message: "Area too large. Zoom in." That sucks big time if you want to move between Central London and your friends place out in the suburbs.

Compare that to the old Google Maps which would hold the Greater London Area including the airports, all the way from Luton and Stansted to Heathrow, City, and Gatwick.

Paris? Same problem. Recent editions of Google Maps won't store Charles de Gaulle airport and Versailles on the same map, whereas the old version holds all of Paris and its distant suburbs all away to the far-out Beauvais airport, deceptively labeled "Paris" by unscrupulous discount airlines like Ryanair.

Good old Google Maps stores Brussels and Antwerp and the highway that connects them in a single download, new Google Maps won't.

And in The Netherlands a single old Google Maps download gets you the four biggest cities of the Randstad conurbation. Use your quota of six stored maps and you can put the entire country on your Android gadget. The new Maps app doesn't get anywhere near that.

Check the screenshots in the picture for the difference between old and new. It makes a world of difference, or at least a city or two.

Newer is not always better

Sure, I could store much larger parts of the world in apps that use OpenStreetMap (e.g. OsmAnd or MapFactor), but those maps often fail to deliver outside the major cities in Europe and America, especially on the navigation part.

So that's why I keep a copy of good old Google Maps v6.14 on my Androids, and not the current version (v8.20.0 as of August 4, 2014). The features in the update just can't compete with the extra onboard storage of my vintage Google Maps.

• Big maps: Google Maps 6.14.x on xda (scroll through the pages, there are many different versions)
• Small maps: latest Google Maps in the Google Play Store

Live football and match highlights on Android: dodge the scams and see the goals

5PA1N

The Dutch kicked Spain in the cojones, Costa Rica surpised everyone, and the English wish they were never born. The 2014 World Cup couldn't have had a better start.

And there's more to come. Lots more.

But what if you're trapped at work, stuck on the beach, locked in a train, or anywhere else with no tv in sight?

Then you pull out your phone or tablet and watch the games on your Android, of course!

The minefield of the Play Store

The Google Play Store is full of apps to watch live football streams. Missed the game? Plenty of apps to watch the highlights too, so if you didn't see Ghana tame the Germans you have a second chance.

There's a tiny little problem.

Most football streaming apps and highlight viewers bomb your screen with popup ads that won't go away. Tap the tiny little "close" button and they dump even more annoying spam on your display. And when you finally killed the last ad, the video won't play.

So you download another app, only to find out that's it's the same worthless app with a different name, a different icon, and a different developer account from the same scammer.

But what about the Play Store ratings? Forget about them! You can be sure that 99,9% are from the app developers themselves. And most of the one star ratings come from the makers of competing apps.

Many football streaming apps are not worth their electrons, some work to some extent, and a few of them are really good.


Football+

This app has live streams and match highlights. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. If big teams are involved, there's usually a stream or two. Or more. Small teams from small leagues often have to do without. Unfortunately you'll only find out when you click the match. Football+ doesn't have an option to filter streamless games out of the list.

• Football+ (Google Play Store)

Football live stream (R.I.P.)

This app from aufaitgroup.com/download/fls.apk used to be my favorite. It worked really well, and had a no-nonsense clean interface. Too bad its servers stopped responding a long time ago. I really want this app to score again.

Football Soccer Highlights and FootyGoal

These two apps have no live matches, but they are are a good source of game highlights after the match.
FootyGoal is listed in the Play Store as Football Highlights World Cup, but it appears as FootyGoal in your app drawer.
FootyGoal and Football Clip Highlights show the same clips from the same source. FootyGoal has a better user interface, but Football Clip Highlights starts its clips directly in full screen mode.

• Football Soccer Highlights (Google Play Store)
• FootyGoal (Google Play Store)

Football Highlight

I just removed this app from my phones and tablets. Its match list hasn't been updated in months, and the old videos don't even load anymore. The app disappeared from the Play Store too. Bye bye.

• Gone.

Shadow TV

This general internet tv app has lots of channels from all over the world. Plenty of sports channels too, and some of them show live football. You have to try 'em too see what's on, because that's the only way to find out which of the many channels have a game on. Or look 'em up in an online tv guide.

• Shadow TV (Google Play Store)

Soccer Live Streaming

Anyone who calls football "soccer" should be hanged, diced, and fed to the crocodiles. With that out of the way, on to the app itself.
Soccer Live Streaming lists lots of live matches ranging from the big leagues to the lower divisions of countries that nobody ever heard of. Just because a match is listed doesn't mean it has a live stream. You won't know until after you try to open it, because the list itself won't tell you. The bigger the teams, the more chance that there's a stream available.

• Soccer Live Streaming (Google Play Store)

SopCast

This bittorrent-like peer-to-peer streaming video app is filled to the brim with high quality live tv streams. There's plenty of live football in SopCast. The app has its own built-in list of channels, but this only shows a tiny fraction of what's available. Too bad SopCast has some spam streams too. Some big league streams are nothing but a static image pointing to a spammy website. To find all the matches live on SopCast you have to search sites like voetbal.site666.info.

• SopCast (Original version. It's not in the Play Store, so you need to sideload it.)

SopCast Android

Did I just write that SopCast is not in the Google Play Store? It is in there, sort of. Someone called mrGhost2014 took the official version of SopCast apart, added his own ad screen, and shoved it into the Play Store. It's no different from the real SopCast, except for the extra ads.
Stay away from this ripoff. Sideload the real thing and report mrGhost2014 to Google to get this clone pulled out.

• SopCast Android (Google Play Store ripoff clone. Sideload the real thing instead!)


Streams

This app, listed in the Google Play Store as Live Streams, has a clean user interface and live streams that work, although many of them look very pixelated on a tablet. Streams doesn't just play football, it has other sports too. Too bad it doesn't handle transitions from landscape to portrait mode very well. If you tilt your screen it says "source streams not found." Fortunately you can get them back by returning to the game list and opening the streams again.

• Streams (Google Play Store)

Watch Football Live

This app is packed with tv streams, including football. Sometimes the back button won't work, and then the only way to stop a stream is to kill the app.

• Watch Football Live

Watch Football Live Stream

This is just a frontend for a website with streams in Flash format. Sometimes the streams work, often they don't. Either way, most streams are full of incredibly annoying popup ads that refuse to go away. If you dare to click the "close" button you're punished with even more ads.

• Kicked from the Play Store. Nobody will miss you.

#1 CL Live

This app appears as "Football Stream World Cup Live" in the Google Play Store, and as #1 CL Live on your home screen. It used to be in the Play Store as #1 Football Live, but that version is gone. I'm sure it will be pulled from the Play Store again in the near future, and then it will come back with yet another name. Even with an ad blocker running this app throws ads all over your screen. It shows streams in Flash and other formats, but you only get to see them after you've chased all the ads away and then some more. To be honest, this is a horrible app. The only reason I didn't throw this (cr)app out yet is that it sometimes plays streams that all my other streaming apps won't play.
Warning: this app has push notifications. Enter the settings screen and switch them off! While you're at it, open your autorun manager and kill all its autostart triggers too. And don't forget to fire up your permissions manager and chain down everything but internet access.

• #1 CL Live (Google Play Store)


Play it safe

Be careful with apps like these. They're in it for the money and their business ethics are often questionable. Make sure to use an electronic condom on them. I wouldn't run any of the apps above without an ad blocker like AdAway. Use a good permissions manager like Xprivacy to take away all the Android permissions that they can do without. They need internet access, and some apps need permission to launch your video player, but that's all you have to give them.

Apps like these come and go. They're often pulled from the Play Store, and then they return with a different name. Shady developers copy them to slap their own ads on. Football streaming is a bit like music downloading back in the days of Kazaa. Don't forget to switch your brain on when you play with these apps.