TMaps DC is a static transit map of the Washington D.C. area on the Palm Pre smartphone. It does not use GPS, and there is no way to see your current location on the maps. On the plus side, the maps are always available even when you’re in a tunnel with no signal. The app includes the DC Metro and Bus service as well as the Pentagon area Bus service. TMaps DC (there are more cities to come) also includes the Baltimore and Maryland suburbs bus, metro, and rail service. The maps load quickly and there’s no delay in rendering even under full magnification. You can swipe across the map to move around. 

A single tap on the map is used to zoom in. Unfortunately you can’t adjust the zoom level beyond no-zoom and full-zoom. Without the GPS centering you at the right location, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of swiping and dragging on the map. Tourists using this will have a very difficult time, since they won’t even have a reference to anchor with. The maps themselves are high-quality high-contrast detailed maps of all the transit routes and line information. Major landmarks on the maps are visible which do mitigate the lack of zoom and reference problem a little bit. Integration with the GPS, plus a News feed regarding traffic and transit delays would go far in making this app more than just a static image of a map. As Google moves aggressively to include transit information in their Google Maps service, they will not be concerned about any potential competition from this app.