Google Maps get live traffic updates and an Indian accent

Google Maps in India just got two major updates. The first is turn-by-turn voice-guided driving directions via Google Maps Navigation (for beta). The second is live traffic information for several major cities. Google made the announcement on their official India blog . The blogpost says, Your phone will announce upcoming directions to you as you move along your route — and it will even use a friendly and familiar Indian accent if you’ve selected the Indian English locale on in your phone settings. The Indian accent bit sounds like an over-stretch but there’s no doubt that this update was required. Users will now get access to a hands-free voice-guided GPS navigation on their Android mobile devices. Users will have to download Google Maps and activate  the Navigation feature on their Android app for the voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation.  The Navigation feature is still in beta form. To activate it on your Android device, go to Google maps, and click on the map drop-down tab at the top left corner. You will see a tab called Navigation click on it. Google will prompt you that this is a beta feature. Click on accept to activate. [caption id=“attachment_444582” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Google Maps new features. Screengrab[/caption] Google’s traffic data will be shown in a simple and readable color scheme — red for significant congestion, yellow for minor slow-downs, and green for free-flowing traffic. You can thus quickly glance at your chosen route to figure out traffic condition. Users can check current traffic conditions by enabling the “Traffic” layer on maps.google.co.in (for desktop browsers) or in Google Maps for mobile (on their smartphones). The traffic information will be available for Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.