I have tried and compared Waze, blackberry maps, and google maps. This is what I found:
Waze:
Waze loves back routes, it also has no sense of danger. It will happily take you to a blind corner and tell you to cross 2 lanes of moving traffic. I know of people who literally got into accidents that where caused by Waze. I loved it once, but don't so much anymore due to the above. It kept taking me places and telling me to take turns I was simply not comfortable with. Taxi's can force there way in some of the gaps it says should exist but for me in my little car I doubt it. It would be much improved if you could have an option that says exclude dangerous turns, only turn at robots if you cross traffic, etc. Its best benefit is the user reported traffic incidents. That saved me many a time. Overall it was useful to use for a time as it taught me some great back routes I never would have known but I don't currently have it installed and don't miss it. Its routes are also variable and harder to learn as it changes often and takes many turns avoiding main roads. I found I always needed waze when I used it and became almost over-reliant on it. It also occasionally needed a guinea pig to go see if a road was clear or not and often I was that guinea pig. I learned to read the signs of that with experience and ignore it when it made sense but still often got caught out being the first guy to find the traffic jam. All the other waze users benefited from me being sent down road X by waze. It completely failed to work between cities (maps seem out of date in open country) and breaks down in gridlock Sandton scenarios. It once kept updating route and took me in a big 50min circle. Changes its mind too often where if an area is shut down the best option is to find a moving direction, go that direction, and once you have the gridlock 2 km behind you turn on the GPS again.
Blackberry maps:
It's traffic data is never really up to date so estimates are invariably under. Also it has an innate preference for backroads waze style but is just worst in every way to Waze. Stay away. Only time I use it is if my other phone's batter is dead. My blackberry's battery reliability is amazing so I use it as a backup.
Google maps:
Kind of a best of both worlds. It clearly has a preference for main routes rather than back roads and hence I find its much easier to remember a route I traveled with google maps reducing dependence or continual reliance on it. Just in the last few weeks it has gone a bit waze like on some routes and started going nuts on tiny back roads and dangerous turns but that has been the exception. I miss the social reporting aspects of waze and feel google should add it if they plan on keeping both products alive. By far the best GPS for open road driving.
So in summary,
For getting from A to B where traffic is not a big consideration Google maps
For traffic situations its a toss up between Waze and google maps for me. Try both, see what works for you.
Open road: Google maps hands down.
