Free and Open Source Software

That's definitely not normal. The rendering can be a bit slow, but everything else shold be usable. Unless you have a low-range phone. If that is the case, I can recommend Organic Maps, which are much less resource-intensive.

Yes. I have had many bugs with it, I recently changed to organic maps and have no complaints

Not a solution, just a suggestion: in my experience, Organic Maps is the far superior Open Street Maps navigation application on Android.

Been using Osmand as my only source for navigation for years and years, it's not perfect but far better for me than what you're experiencing ...

It has worked fine for me on various phones. My only complaint is the address search is a bit goofy

I have Osmand+ and it works fine. One very easy way to improve the performance is to download the maps you need ahead of time.

Start by downloading your metro area and I can guarantee that positioning and navigation will be instantaneous. Unless your phone is to blame. FYI I am using a Google Nexus 7a. Very happy with Osmand+.

It's not great. They finally added OpenGL acceleration but now the PoI icons are twice as big as normal so they are cluttering the map a lot.

And without that the app is pretty slow. I do love the way it is so configurable though. I have no issues with location.

OsmAnd is one of the oldest open source Android apps. It has a ton of features, but also the codebase is very stale.

If you don't need such big featureset you may try Organic Maps.

I've used osmand+ for 6 years nearly every time I drive. Its definitely usable and only craps out once in a while. The biggest pain is just lack if address resolution, but that is expected with osm generally. As long as there aren't walls between you and the satellites, at most I've waited a minute or two for position lock. Google Maps will use GPS and nearby WiFi to locate you, so its faster. Been playing around with Organic Maps lately and it has been nice, but I miss the advanced features and visual info elements osmand+ offers.

Afaik there are two location permission levels in android, one that only allows GPS which is often really slow and inaccurare and one that uses cell and wifi as well which is quick and accurate. Maybe OsmAND is not allowes to use the accurate location on your phone?

I'm on lineage microG and I've got the opposite experience! Some apps really struggle with getting my location while OsmAND always works like a charm. I also use organic maps for quick routing, because the map rendering is MUCH faster and it consumes less battery power.

I used it in a motorbike trip last year and had some trouble but not in the way you describe. I used offline maps, finding my location was a matter of seconds. It would however sometimes not register some "waypoints" and try to lead me back to a point I already passed until I restarted navigation. Annoying when you have a route with several intermediate destinations.

I use organic maps for everyday navigation, never had such issues with that one.

That's not normal. On my phone the location is exact to a meter and it takes 2 seconds.

Not normal for me

Woah. I've never had that experience.

What phone are you using?

Nope. But it can be demanding when using online maps. Try to have your most used area downloaded in your phone.

What you're describing sounds like an issue with either A-GPS (a mechanism by which sat navs can receive initial data over a cellphone connection, without which the initial location search can last up to 10 minutes, but afterwards it will be as smooth as always) or approximate location (a mechanism in which Google uses a huge database of cell tower and Wi-Fi data to quickly get your approximate position).

I would suggest checking the permissions on the OSMAnd app -- maybe it's lacking something that Google Maps has?

I use Organic Maps these days but just fired Osmand up to test and it was near instantaneous and located me when it opened. Samsung S22u

I havent done anything to setting etc that I am aware, it has been on my phones for a long time (and came across from my previous Samsung Note 9) so I may have done something back in the day.

Its not great in the United States because our roads frequently wind you up in rural zones that no local maintainers are obsessively maintaining