During my recent trip abroad, Google Maps yet again was refusing to say street names, so it would say “take the interchange on the right” instead of “take exit 55 towards Footown”. It had happened before, but this time the reason was different. Google maps would randomly “forget” about street names, and then remember them again, sometimes in the middle of the same trip. Like, it would start with “turn left”, “turn right”, and then suddenly switch to “to left to the ABC street”, without me changing anything in the phone.

I am still not sure what it was: the quality of the network, some other environmental parameter, or just a random bug. No amount of fiddling with the text-to-speech settings would make a difference. I took the phone back to the US, and the problem went away just as mysteriously as it appeared.

Needless to say, I googled the issue to death, but did not find a solution. It would be nice if Google Maps somehow indicated that it switches to the “no names” mode and why it is so, but alas.