iPhone Google offline maps – Hong Kong 香港 and Tokyo 東京
I used GMDL (Google Maps Download) and created a Hong Kong map and a Tokyo City map (around the Yamanote-line 山手線), you can download them on rapidshare:
Hong Kong – 香港
http://rapidshare.com/files/209543569/iPhone_GDML_Google_Offline_Hong_Kong_maps.rar
Tokyo City – 東京都
http://rapidshare.com/files/211314833/iPhone_GMDL_Japan_Tokyo_offline_map.rar
[The old file had some missing tiles (file name had "Yamanote" in it, I've since fixed the problem by repairing existing map directory, please download this new version.]
Simply extract and copy them onto your iPhone’s /var/mobile/Media/Maps/ folder. (Of course, you’ll need a jail broken iPhone and installed OfflineMaps from Cydia.
Once the folders are in place, open OfflineMaps and you should see this:
So here, the path of these 2 folders are: /var/mobile/Media/Maps/HK_HongKong and /var/mobile/Media/Maps/JP_TokyoCity
Touch on HK_HongKong and you’ll see this:
Touch Link and you’ll see this:
Your’re basically done! Now hit the Home button and open the iPhone Maps program!
The Hong Kong map will come up, even though you’re not on Wifi (See? No Wifi signal on top.)
If you zoom out, you’ll see the limit 
Only Hong Kong available in the HK_HongKong map.
Zoom all the way in… this is Lv 1 – building names and MTR exits are shown!
Also! You will be able to see your current location if you are within the range of at least 3 cell phone signal receiver! (Normally, if you don’t have a data plan, you can’t see the map and so you can’t see your location. But now, with Offline maps, we can see that cell tower triangulate positioning is actually available to us all!
One time after I changed the folder names, Maps couldn’t display the offline maps anymore! I looked into it and found out why – the symlink was still pointing to the old folder. See, this is how offline maps work, when you use iPhone Maps normally with Wifi, it stores caches of map tiles inside:
/private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/
What Offline Maps does is it stores the “permanent cache” files created with GMDL in a separate folder:
/private/var/mobile/Media/Maps/
When you touch on “Link”, it creates a symlink from the
/private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/
folder to the offline permanent cache, so in JP_TokyoCity’s case –
/private/var/mobile/Media/Maps/JP_TokyoCity/
, so if you go to
/private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/
and type
ls -l
, you should see something like this:
MapTiles.sqlitedb -> /var/mobile/Media/Maps/JP_TokyoCity/MapTiles.sqlitedb
. Basically, if your maps doesn’t work, try deleting that link with
rm *
and then redo the process from the beginning.
A detailed tutorial in which I learned from is here. Only sightly outdated for iPhone firmware 2.2 – if you’re downloading your own maps, the new GMDL can convert the maps directly to v2.2, so you don’t need to do the last step of “Mapv4v5Converter”.
A screenshot of the tutorial below:
Fernando, 
profinite and 2 others are discussing. 
Ben 7:15 am on March 17, 2009 Permalink |
And here is a tutorial for Google Maps made in paper
(just for fun)
Pretty sure you’ll like it.
Patrick 12:04 am on April 6, 2009 Permalink |
hi
i am having a problem with offline maps and i was wondering if you could help me. i used iphonebrowser to move the extracted files into the location you specified, but i realised there wasnt a MAPS folder, so i had to manually create a new folder. then when i moved the files over, and i started up OfflineMaps, it just kept crashing and reboots the Iphone. Any ideas or suggestions? thanks!
cloneofsnake 12:14 am on April 8, 2009 Permalink |
hmm… not sure why it would keep crashing, but 2 things:
It’s
Maps, notMAPS.Perhaps it’s the new folder not having the right permission? Try running this in Terminal –
sudo chmod -R 755 /private/var/mobile/Media/MapsFernando 12:16 pm on April 27, 2009 Permalink |
Any update?
profinite 10:42 am on May 3, 2009 Permalink |
cloneofsnake
Thank you so much for the JP_TokyoCity map. Installation was a breeze.
It is going to help me a lot when I am in Tokyo from May 11, 2009.
I appreciate the great work you have done for all of us!
– profinite
cloneofsnake 11:28 am on May 3, 2009 Permalink |
you’re welcome, my friend just went to Tokyo, I’ll get his report on actual usage when he comes back.
Fernando 12:15 am on May 24, 2009 Permalink
Your telling me that this is working for you in software 2.2.1????
cloneofsnake 11:28 am on May 24, 2009 Permalink
huh? Where did u hear that?
My friend’s report from Tokyo – No good, couldn’t use GPS to locate himself.
I was a little surprised… I thought that since iPhone 3G has GPS built-in, even if you’re not using any cell signal, you can still get GPS location. Not true?