Notices

@Fellfrosch and @mosen - looks great, let's go for the red dot.

That dot can be positioned as in @Fellfrosch proposal. We have 10% padding of the icon width between icon rectangle angle and the button border. I will be able to position that as an extra overlay in the button.

With the scale, maybe the dot will have to be moved - not sure whether it will overlap with the text. That I'll have to see in the code.

Red, as a color, should be in sufficient contrast with white and black backgrounds used for buttons.

As for compass, do we actually need it? Its the one that is going to be shine all the way while you drive along your route (compass is shown always when map is not pointing towards north). Maybe I will just dim it over some grace time, so the red will be less disturbing. But this we can see when we try in practice.

I preferred so far a plain arrow, cannot really reason why - just preference. But, I am not gonna argue if senior designers prefer the other one.

You can't really call me a senior designer.
In the end PureMaps is your baby, so if you like the pure needle more (or even a rotating dick or whatever) that's your decision!
I'm happy enough giving some hints, what's my taste. And that's not necessarily a good taste.

Hulk would approve the right one.
Me, the defender of the green, haaa, kidding.
But to me green is the color for active/go. Red is off/stop? It is different if only red is available, sure.
Also it might be the tone i selected but green is more obvious?

EDIT, added blue and orange only because i mentioned and tried.

@mosen, would you mind to test with night maps as well? and since there are gradients in the dots, I will need svg's for them

note that we can also have 2 colors - one for light and one for dark maps. most if not all have it that anyway .

never gonna give you up, never gonna let you doown.
(@XOleg, do not post those video again. pleeease.)

EDIT svgs attached but they are kind of useless regarding format. How should the dot be placed?

I suggest to take blue off the table for bad ability of human eye to distinguish blue - its met for background color (sky, sea) instead of information carrying channel.

As for the rest, hard to say. They all look nice.

As for the format, should have bounding box as small as possible with the dot in the middle. I will position it using QML, way more flexible and simple.

mosen made out of the dot a light. And therefore for me it works with all colors. Seeing it as lights, makes me think about my statement red is activity. Now I see the green lights for running. So I would vote for green.

Thank @mosen well done!

Google Maps (both app and web) and Here are out of competition, because they presumably are primarily data collecting tools, while navigating / displaying maps is their secondary function.
AFAICS Maps.me (https://maps.me/) falls in the same category, but an outdated Free Software version "MAPS.ME" (com.mapswithme.maps.libre) and a maintained fork "Maps" (com.github.axet.maps) are available at F-Droid.
So I took a look at "Maps".

Yes, its UI is simple and clean (too simple for me, but "parents compatible" in contrast to OSMand), but PureMaps definitely looks nicer and seems to be on par in functionalities, except for the "driving / public transport / cycling / walking" map modes. For these and some other functions "Maps" provides a couple of really good and some cool ideas for their UI design.

WRT comparing PureMaps with OSMand:
I fully agree that OSMand's vast and highly configurable feature set (in terms of functionality and visual appearance) is too complicated for beginners. And while I enjoy many of those features, I really depend on far less and dislike configuring a new OSMand installation (~ 20 minutes, and always missing something) a lot each time.

Thus trying to mimic OSMand or "Maps" is not a sensible goal per se, but certain functions and UI design elements of these apps are IMO worth to be evaluated, if something similar might be implemented in PureMaps.

I did not perform a proper check ever, it was just an impression I had using PureMaps (and predecessors) and OSMand every now and then in the last 1,5 years. You already provided reasons, why this may have changed.

@rinigus, perfect. That is easy.
Here are the dots in same size/pixel definition relation.
All icons are defined 64px. The dots are 24px size when fitted within the icons. So now the attached svgs of green, red and orange are 24px centered content and should be placeable in same manner as all other icons (i guess).