After a long waiting period, TomTom has finally made its way to the Play Store, though with some mind-boggling limitations. TomTom for Android brings offline navigation with free lifetime maps, IQ Routes and TomTom HD traffic to Android devices, though it omits the Foursquare integration recently added to iOS.
Also missing from the TomTom for Android application is support for newer Android devices; only devices running Android 2.2+ with 800 x 480 or 854 x 480 resolutions will be able to run TomTom for Android. In a statement to The Verge, the company has committed to “supporting higher resolutions on an ongoing basis,” though no timeframe for a release that supports such resolutions has been announced.
Pricing for the TomTom for Android applications comes in at around $10 cheaper than the iOS counterparts for a brief period of time, with the U.S./Canada and Western European variants each coming in at $49.99 as an introductory offer. Though $49.99 may be a bit steep on a platform that includes a free navigation application, TomTom includes true offline navigation via a 2.3GB (U.S./Canada) map download so you can navigate even when you don’t have a data connection. Google recently added the option to download maps for offline navigation on Android as well, though there are some limitations on map size and area.
If you’re interested in TomTom for Android, the company’s entire library of applications is available on the Play Store. TomTom notes that several knock-off versions of the TomTom app have been published to Google Play recently, so be sure to only download applications from developer “TomTom International BV.”