WP 8.1 Bing Map Catastrophic failure - windows-phone-8.1

Question

Same issue as Adding MapControl in xaml results in a "Catastropic failure" , the bing map control cannot be collapsed without causing a catastrophic exception. Worse, just put a map inside a collapsed container and it will crash too. It means that every parent, grandparent, and so on MUST be collapsed using code behind. breaking mvvm pattern for no reason just to display and hide a map.
Is there someone who found a workaround ? It's crazy that MS didn't fix their own control for such a long time even when they know it doesn't behave as intended..
Any help is appreciated !

Answer 1

This is the first time I've heard of this issue. It's worth noting that the map control in WP8.1 wasn't created by Microsoft, but Nokia. In Windows 10 Microsoft took the Nokia control and combined with the features of the Windows 8 map control and made it much more stable.
Update:
I've taken a look at this issue. It's not easy to figure out what is causing the error as the map control is written in native C++ and the error that is thrown has inaccessible properties that show up as "?". That said, I did manage to figure out a workaround. Collapsing a control is not much different than giving a control a width and height of 0. With this in mind here is a code sample of how to show/hide the map using width/height instead of visibility.
<Page
x:Class="WP81App.MainPage"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:local="using:WP81App"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
mc:Ignorable="d"
xmlns:Maps="using:Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Maps"
Background="{ThemeResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">
<Grid>
<Maps:MapControl Name="MyMap" Height="0" Width="0" />
<Button Content="Show Map" Click="ShowMapBtn_Clicked" HorizontalAlignment="Center"/>
</Grid>
</Page>
Button handler:
private void ShowMapBtn_Clicked(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var mapContainer = MyMap.Parent as FrameworkElement;
MyMap.Width = mapContainer.ActualWidth;
MyMap.Height = mapContainer.ActualHeight;
//Hide the button
(sender as Button).Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
}