If you don't have the maps for your current location downloaded and you do not have an internet connection, the gps reciever will still tell Maemo Mapper your location. (All the GPS reciever does is calculate position.) Without having maps downloaded, you can view positional data such as latitude, longitude, elevation and velocity, but your location will show as a moving dot on a black background.

If you do have an active internet connection while using Maemo Mapper you can set it to automatically download the maps of your current view or route at the zoom levels of your choice. This is great when using Meamo Mapper as an atlas, but be sure to disable autodownload when using GPS without an active internet connection.

The standard practice would be to download maps of areas you are likely to be traveling through before heading out with the reciever.


You may want to search google or wikipedia for information on how GPS works.