Google Maps 5.8 Update Available to Download from the Android Market

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Google has a new Google Maps update available for Android users, version 5.8, which is going to bring you a bunch of new improvements to Places and Latitude. The update requires Android 2.1 or later, and it is available in the Android Market in various regions.

What does Google Maps 5.8 bring to the table? In short we’re looking at the following new features that should make your navigation even more pleasant:

• Upload photos for a Place
• My Places as a simple way to manage the Places you’ve starred and recently viewed
• Descriptive terms for Places in search results
• Add a new Place on-the-go when checking in

With Google Maps 5.8 you’ll be able to upload your own pictures of the places you visit and some of them “may even become the profile picture for that page.” But all the pictures still belong to you and they’ll be placed in a “Photos for Google Maps” folder in your Picasa account. In other words, you can delete them later if you so desire.

This new update will also bring you descriptive terms to My Places, a feature you may already be using on your desktop version of Google Maps, and one that’s surely going to be welcomed as descriptive terms will offer more information about the businesses you may be looking for while you’re navigating the city. In case you encounter new companies that don’t have a Place page yet, you can set one up for them and then check into it, although it won’t be considered their official Place page. The new Place you have created will be available to you and other Latitude users but Google Maps and Google Places will not display it as a search result.

Other features and changes include the renaming of “Download map area” option to “Pre-cache map area” and the addition of “Bigger text to Labs features. Now that you know everything there is to know about Google Maps 5.8, let us know how it works out for you and whether there’s anything Google Maps should be aware of.