At least here in the USA, address locations are not public data in most of the country. City maps are generally copyrighted and cannot be used in OpenStreetMap. Google has paid for access to proprietary address data. Osmand isn't a source of data, it is not at fault here. OSM contributors need to add addresses manually by walking down the street and using an OSM mobile app like StreetComplete to fill in the gaps.
So I'm no power user, but I've been using OsmAnd instead of Google Maps as a simple map app for about a year. If I just need Street names, fine. If I need to search for any business address, it sucks. I still need Google Maps on my device.
You say "contributors need to add addresses..." but this is so unintuitive that it's simply not going to happen in over 99% of cases. I say this as someone who really believes in the cause and who therefore makes up the 1% that would be willing to spend the time improving the data. (I still buy digital music and manually add my own mood/instrument tags, if you want a 'for instance')
So why don't I? Case in point: I wanted directions to a restaurant that opened near me about 2 years ago. Couldn't find it. So I walked there, ordered my food and while waiting for it to be served, manually navigated to the map position and found the previous restaurant was still listed. As far as I could see, there was no way for me to edit the map entry within OsmAnd. As an interested party, willing to invest some initial setup and learning time, and ongoing edit time of a minute or two, I completely failed. There's nothing in the UI to even hint at how to edit the address. A 'regular user' isn't even going to bother trying.
At this rate, the world will change much faster than the OSM data.
FWIW, I looked into it and apparently the "online search" functionality gets way more hits when searching for house numbers. That search must use nominatim or pelias as the backend. You can find it by hitting the search button, going to the categories tab, then scrolling to the bottom of that tab.
It really depends on the jurisdiction. Lots of cities and counties have open data, and lots of states too. There's also a national database that looks pretty interesting:
The UI improved but it's still a maze of options and menus. I use it to plan my cycling routes but I gave up on the navigation features. Creating a route from markers is a nightmare of complexity. Then there is the problem that with a bicycle I can ride on pretty much every surface and it's impossible for the poor thing to guess an itinerary I would like. Not it's fault.
What I do is discovering roads and paths with OsmAnd, checking them with the satellite view of Google Maps and sometimes also with Street View, then
placing markers in OsmAnd and following them when I'm on the new areas I still don't know.
If OSM had satellite pictures I could do without Google Maps for that. I would still use it to check the opening hours of shops.
Well, you can add online tiles to OSMAnd as an overlay, it supports multiple providers (even custom ones, so you could use the high quality IGN Ortho for France, for instance). I actually quite like the route's output.
> Creating a route from markers is a nightmare of complexity.
Is it really so complex? Globe icon or menu -> switch to cycling profile -> itinerary icon -> adjust start position and destination, markers are suggested when tapping on either. You can add more intermediate markers by tapping the "+" between source and dest.
You can press any part of the map -> directions -> add as {subsequent, first intermediate, last intermediate} destination. You can also tap existing markers to do so.
In my opinion, it doesn't get much easier than this? I was so confused at google maps' interface when I was handed a phone to plan a route three days ago, it felt like it was burried down more menus, reorganizing destinations was a pain, while it's just edit -> drag and drop in OSMAnd.
For biking, also try brouter: http://brouter.de/ I know it can be used with OSMAnd, but I never spent enough time to figure it out. The web version is quite good already.
Yes, and it's only on F-Droid. Apparently there's OsmAnd and OsmAnd+, and the one with the tilde is basically the + version with no dependencies on google services. At least according to german wikipedia, which had a convenient little table
maybe they renamed it, I was just reciting wikipedia, it might be outdated. In any case, OsmAnd+ is the paid version that OsmAnd~ is supposed to be equivalent to, so I imagine they just decided to rename it to make things less confusing
e: I can see it on the f-droid site, but i can't find it in the f-droid app either:
