I love comaps, but it’s very much a fork of organic maps and relies on Open street maps. Like it’s sick, I use it as my only map app, but it certainly is continuing work many others helped with, which is the sick thing about open source

People are making an extra effort to make others aware that CoMaps exist and you don't need Organic Maps.

It may be due to Apple users looking for alternatives to Apple Maps now that it has ads.

The address search definitely needs improvement, but its offline route finding is much better than Google's, at least for bikes.

Since it relies on Openstreetmaps if an address isn't added it can't find it. You'll likely always be able to find the street, but you may need to add the specific number yourself. Then once it's entered it's available for everyone.

Yeah, it is a general problem with OpenStreetMaps-based things I think. You can use something like this to help copy a location into Comaps (or any other OSM app):

https://f-droid.org/packages/page.ooooo.geoshare/

Works relatively well but is not really convenient.

Interesting, I have not had perfect results with it (certainly a lot of places are not on OSM yet or up to date), but I've generally had a good time with this app. Bookmarked locations work perfectly for me, better than google maps, and the lists/folders are really nice for organizing bookmarks. I have never gotten stuck in the menus at all (android here). However I very much agree that the UX could use a serious design overhaul (but its way nicer/quicker and more intuitive to use than OsmAnd!).

You should try Organic Maps which is original app forked by CoMaps. Organic Maps has better UI, shows public transport routes, shows alternative routes and a lot more. Give it a chance.

How does an offline app get traffic data

Traffic information? Did you not read the article?

This was a response to an earthquake. Not only no traffic, but no infrastructure whatsoever, including live data.

Physical maps are great, but they do get outdated the more time passes, not sure how relevant that would have been in this scenario but.

CoMaps does support Android Auto, but only if you download it from the Play Store.

Probably hard to do.

One of the benefits of the big data hoarding companies is they have the resources and DGAF energy to harvest data from every phone using their system in order to get very accurate real time data on traffic conditions.

It takes a lot more effort to do this in a way that respects user privacy, and a lot of infrastructure to provide those updates in real time. A lot to ask from small dev teams working on free apps.