For average Calcuttans, Google Maps offers satellite imagery and road maps. But the app has been providing some cool features for the past year or so.

Metro lists some of the latest features showcased by Sanket Gupta, programme manager of Google Maps, at an event in the city on Thursday.

App cabs

There is a dedicated tab with information on cab services.

For now, Google has collaborated with Uber and Ola. Once a person keys in his/her location and destination, four icons appear on the screen, showing the expected travel time by car, bus, foot and cab.

Clicking the cab icon will throw up fare estimates for Uber and Ola and expected arrival time of cabs if the person has the two apps installed on his/her phone.

Multiple stops

If a person wants to visit a nightclub on Park Street but has to pick up friends from Behala and Hazra, Google Maps can help.

He/she has to start the app, enter the destination, tap the corner menu and click "add stop". He/she can add any number of stops and then tap "finished". The same feature will come in handy when a person is headed to a place and realises he/she is short on fuel. The app will throw up details on nearest pumps, gift centres, cafes and restaurants.

Offline maps

This feature arms a person with all facilities - turn-by-turn directions, search for specific directions and get relevant information about a place - without Net connectivity, provided he/she has the map of the destination downloaded on the phone.

The downloaded maps can be saved on an external SD card and used at a place where there is no Net connectivity.

Real-time traffic

Google Maps will provide a person with real-time traffic updates and time comparisons based on routes.

This feature is available in 34 cities, including in Calcutta. A person has to just turn on the "traffic" option in the settings menu to see various routes in different colours, indicating the traffic speed on those routes.

Green indicates no delays, orange moderate traffic and red heavy traffic. To get traffic updates and alerts, a person has to search for a destination and start navigating.

Public transport

This feature provides details on bus, Metro and train routes. A person has to key in the destination and click on the public transport icon to find the available options.