I agree. In practice, you want to keep as much vertical space as possible.

I was also thinking about 2 different modes with the respect of on map controls:

* full mode where all controls are visible
* minimal mode, with only the required ones on screen.

For example, in minimal mode,
* the north arrow would be shown only if the map is rotated,
* scale is shown only while its changed (maybe keep it while driving),
* center not shown,
* mph/yd not shown (this could be removed for navigation anyway - speed is shown separately).
* copyright - not sure, we probably have to keep it somewhere

To toggle between modes, you would just hit a map on a place without POIs, with the minimal being default thats triggered after a short pause on start.

Hence centering around possibly missing elements is not needed.

@pichlo: I would love to keep remaining distance and time. The latter one is the only way to keep sanity of the driver while bringing kids to the scout camp.