We are renting a car in Provence for 4 days to explore the regions. We will also be renting a Mifi for the duration of our France trip. Will I be able to use the GPS on my Samsung Droid with the Mifi to navigate or do I actually need a data connection?

This depends on the Mifi and your phone capability.

Can you test this setup at home with your phone mobile data off?

But the question is why this setup? Is it because your Samsung Droid is a CDMA only device with LTE band not used in France?

Don't you have a hassle of having to power two devices in the car with this setup?

Why not just buy cheap paper maps locally?

On a Samsung Android phone you should be able to download maps at home and just use GPS while away, no need for an internet connection at all.

There are lots of navigation apps available. Try Here, which is free, and allows you to download maps to your phone for offline use.

Yes, my phone is CDMA only unfortunately....

I was planning on using Google maps, which is what I use at home for navigation. What app were you suggesting heti?

You shouldn't need the Mifi at all if you download the maps in advance. GPS uses a satellite, not data services, and all the Mifi provides is a wifi data connection.

Google Maps allows you to download maps in advance using wifi, either at home or at your hotel. However, it won't give you turn-by-turn vocal instructions without the data connections. It will show you the route you need to take, as well as your current location, so you really need a navigator to assist you with the directions. I use Google Maps in Europe as a GPS system, but since I live here, I have good data services within Europe with my Italian cell phone plan.

I would never rely entirely on GPS instructions, though. We always plan out the route on a paper map, and resort to it whenever the GPS directions seem to be sending us on a mule track or something of the sort.

thanks bvlenci! very helpful

As far as I know, your CDMA phone is useless in Europe.

There are a few things one needs to check if it is "usable" as a GPS navigator and not just "functional".

If you don't have network tower data access, you cannot use A-GPS. The location capture using satellite GPS alone can be maddening slow on a cell phone -- or too slow to be practically useless. You can test just how slow it is by setting your phone to airplane mode and see how long it takes to lock your position using satellite signals alone.

Also the downloaded map takes a lot of storage. For example, if you use HERE map, the Provence map is currently 222MB. You can store maps on an external SD card.