On my Nexus 7 without an internet connection attempt to access "Setup" -> "Charts" I get the error shown in the following screenshot:

That's pretty much exactly what I'd expect if trying to access the charts list without an internet connection. Were you expecting something different? Sorry if I'm missing something.

I would expect it to say something more meaningful than "Error: NameResolutionFailure" 

I know what you mean, but that is the error. I will check to see if there's a more helpful message we could wrap it in.
This is nothing to do with the beta, by the way, it will always have been like this.

If I try to load setup or a route from the cloud without a data connection I get a 'friendly' popup saying "This functionality cannot be used as an internet connection is not available..." This is more what I would expect to see.