Scout is a daily personal navigator designed for people on the go. Whether you're running errands around town, exploring the city or just looking for the smartest way to power through your daily commute, Scout gives you personalized and important information to help.
Features of Scout include:
- Free voice-guided GPS navigation
- Live traffic with rerouting and the ability to report traffic information within the app (crowd-sourced)
- Search ahead while navigating for food, coffee, the cheapest gas, and popular chains
- Event listings
- Nearby parking lot listings when you arrive at your destination
- Share ETA with friends and family
- Offline maps
- Available worldwide
On iPhone and Android, Scout now uses crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap (OSM) for all map data. OSM, sometimes called the “Wikipedia of Maps,” is free and 100% crowd sourced. OSM offers users a more accurate and up-to-date map than what is available via commercial maps because it is edited by more than 1.6 million editors around the world (with the number of editors doubling every year).
The OSM crowd-sourced model enables edits to be published every minute and the Scout team can incorporate these edits as quickly as within a week (as opposed to the months it may take to update with commercial map providers). In addition to reporting traffic or accidents, now anyone using Scout can send mapping feedback directly from the app to Scout OSM editors who will let the person know once the data has been reviewed and updated.
To date, OSM has been used by various brands as a display map and is becoming more popular every day. However, Scout is the first major navigation app to use OSM map data for turn-by-turn navigation. Many companies have tried but failed. For the team at Telenav, this required three years of development, propriety algorithms and many years of deep navigation experience to create the premium experience that is now available for free to users. And for these users, this means that they no longer have to be frustrated with outdated maps or the turnaround time to get their feedback integrated in their app.