distanceBetween() returns inaccurate result?

Question

I use distanceBetween() of Location class to calculate the distance between two points as follows:

private float getDistanceInMiles(GeoPoint p1,         


        

Answer 1

To get a distance from a Google Maps I have used Google Directions API and JSON parser to retrieve the distance value:

private double getDistanceInfo(double lat1, double lng1, String destinationAddress) {
            StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
            Double dist = 0.0;
            try {

            destinationAddress = destinationAddress.replaceAll(" ","%20");    
            String url = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=" + lat1 + "," + lng1 + "&destination=" + destinationAddress + "&mode=driving&sensor=false";

            HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);

            HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
            HttpResponse response;
            stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();


                response = client.execute(httppost);
                HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
                InputStream stream = entity.getContent();
                int b;
                while ((b = stream.read()) != -1) {
                    stringBuilder.append((char) b);
                }
            } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
            } catch (IOException e) {
            }

            JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();
            try {

                jsonObject = new JSONObject(stringBuilder.toString());

                JSONArray array = jsonObject.getJSONArray("routes");

                JSONObject routes = array.getJSONObject(0);

                JSONArray legs = routes.getJSONArray("legs");

                JSONObject steps = legs.getJSONObject(0);

                JSONObject distance = steps.getJSONObject("distance");

                Log.i("Distance", distance.toString());
                dist = Double.parseDouble(distance.getString("text").replaceAll("[^\\.0123456789]","") );

            } catch (JSONException e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

            return dist;
        }

Answer 2

Google Navigation generally reports driving or walking distance along the set of steps in the directions list, not straight-line distance, which is what distanceBetween() reports.