Notes from Cyril Mottier’s talk about Polaris on the 1st day of DroidCon UK 2012.

Polaris is a mapping library for Android. It was created because with the current Google Maps API it is painful to even do simple stuff.

Some features of Polaris include:

Gesture support

• Simple tap (opens a call out)
• Double tap (zoom in or zoom to the maximum zoom level for the location)
• Long press

(Map) Annotations with a “variable anchor” (the arrow/pointer of the annotation is dynamically placed based on the location’s position on screen).

Demo: Polaris Sample @ Google Play Store.
Source code: Polaris @ Github.

NOTE: Polaris may become obsolete as Google is working on a new Maps API for Android.