Most commonly requested features are,

1. Offline maps

2. Adapted to Mobile screen

3. Turn by Turn Navigation

4. Easy to use UI/UX

5. GTK based for good fit with phosh

6. Work in low spec devices like pinephone

7. Actively developed by a community

8. Should not require API keys or other accounts to use the app

9. Easy to install/already packaged

10. No android dependency

11. Ability to download smaller geographic areas (like a state if the country is very big)

Please add if I missed any features

• allow to load and record gps tracks

• public transport routing

Within public transport routing: I'm not sure what to describe this as but different apps seem to show different leves of routing. For example, GNOME Maps has a "public transport" option but I can never actually find routes there. Organic Maps shows metro lines in Bangalore but not bus routes, whereas OSMAnd shows metro and bus routes as I would expect.

I'm guessing this is to do with what fields or standards the maps are using, so whatever that is we should find out and include it in this list. (Until then I'm thinking of this as "should be able to display both bus and metro routes in Bangalore")

More about public transport support in maps

Here's what I found after doing some more research. I don't mean to dominate this thread with public transport discussion but I thought it would be better to document this somewhere 😅

Most projects seem to be using GTFS data for public transport routing. OsmAnd is the only app I have seen directly using public transport data from OpenStreetMap.

• Organic Maps seems to be getting its public transport data from GTFS files. One issue tracking the implementation is here. (I think there was a page saying the support is experimental, but I can't find that now.)

• GNOME Maps gets it from various sources like MOTIS and Transitous, both which are also (partly or fully) backed by GTFS (the full list of plugins is here).

• Pure Maps has an open issue; so far they are thinking of using a similar model to GNOME Maps.

GTFS is a format for publishing public transport schedules (as well as real-time information). Normally this is published by the transport agencies themselves. This is useful in places like Europe where public transport data is commonly published because we get the full dataset at once, from an official source.

However in other places using OSM data might give better results, since it's under control. In India, there are several cities running GTFS projects, but they are limited to major/capital cities and access to the data is often restricted (Kochi Metro, which was the only one in that page listed as "open", is now asking for an email ID to download the GTFS files; others like Bangalore's BMTC don't even have official links, only some data hosted in third-party repos).

Finally, as a quick-fix there is also a script called osm2gtfs to convert OSM data to the GTFS format.

In summary: public transport can be either internal (taken from the OSM data itself) or external (from a GTFS file provided by someone).

I'm not sure if we want to distinguish this in the poll or keep it as a combined option—maybe combined is better since we are talking about end-user functionality and not technical implementation. Personally, I'd prefer taking it from the map itself, since that means better mapped areas also benefit from better routing—but someone from Europe may think otherwise 😉