• GigaOm, Tuesday, December 7, 2010 11 AM

Hoping to improve user experience both on- and off-line, Google is about to relaunch it Google Maps for Mobile product. The new Google Maps will include offline map support for users who are out of cell phone range, which, according to GigaOm is "a blessing for subway riders and cell phone subscribers in sketchy coverage areas."

Google Maps will also do more rendering on the phone itself - as apposed to in "the cloud" -- which is expected to dramatically improve the zooming, presentation and reorienting of maps on devices. More broadly, "The improvements suggest Google understands that even while it promotes a very cloud-reliant world, in mobile especially it's helpful to push some of the processing and data to the phone to help round out the experience and make up for times when connectivity isn't reliable." Going forward, rather than relying on Google's servers, the service will more regularly push out simplified maps to users' phones based on the locations they visit most often.

Read the whole story at GigaOm »