Google Maps, and in particular its Widget, will soon benefit from a brand new version. Thanks to it, you will be able to display the traffic situation in real time on the smartphone’s home screen, without having to open the application itself.
Google Maps keeps getting richer almost day by day. Last week, the air quality index was added to the service’s functionalities. Even more recently, it is the possibility of knowing the cost of a journey by taking tolls into consideration which has been integrated.
This time it’s the possibility of consult the environment traffic directly from the home screen of the smartphone which is added to the many options of Google Maps. The Application Widget will take advantage of a real-time display of the surroundings and show the user areas where traffic is flowing, slowing down, or interrupted.
The Google Maps Widget displays real-time surrounding traffic
Until now, if it is possible to take advantage of a Google Maps Widget on the home screen of your Android smartphone, the features of the latter are quite limited. For example, you can create a route Widget, one dedicated to car mode, and one dedicated to position sharing. But it must be admitted that a real-time display of traffic, without launching the application, would also be appreciable.
And this is precisely what the new version of the Google Maps Widget will offer, as shown in the capture below. Thanks to it, when you leave home, school or the office, you can immediately see the traffic situation. And it is even possible to zoom in on a specific area, again without having to launch the application.
The Mountain View giant is currently focusing on Widgets, since no less than 35 Google applications will soon be available in this form. The company has just published the list of its 5 favorite features for Android Widgets. Among them, being able to instantly archive emails via the Gmail Widget or the ability to scroll through the to-do list.
This new functionality regarding the Google Maps Widget will be released “in the next weeks“, without Google giving further details.
Source : Google
