SkyView review: Follow That App of the Week

What are the planets doing in my front room?

Take a journey into space with our Follow That App of the Week for April 30th 2011, SkyView.

Love
If you’re looking for app eye candy to show off your phone to your friends, then this app is pure gold and you’ll learn a considerable amount in the bargain. It’s a wonderful augmented reality app that uses your camera to allow you to point at the sky or even beneath your feet to see the position of planets, stars and even satellites. It’s quite a bizarre experience to see one of the planets beneath your kitchen floor as the app uses the relative position whether there’s a big planet, aka Earth, in the way.

It’s easy to use and informative with the ability to click on a star for more information.

Don’t love
Much as we love it, there are several issues. First, you often have to recalibrate the phone’s compass. Secondly, the alignment is not always accurate, for instance I’m pretty sure which light in the sky our sun is, but the phone tells me different even in the daytime when I can see it. And finally, the great British weather gets in the way. With hazy skies and generally poor visibility over London, it’s very difficult to identify which tiny spec of light is the one on the phone given the thousands of stars it has available.

Overall
For amateur enthusiasts and pub show-offs alike, it’s well worth the tier 1 59p. There’s even a free lite version to try it out first.

Want more?

Fanboy store review: “this is an out of this world app. get it…”

Meh store review: “…Brought this app today and tried it out. Pointed my iPhone at the Sun which it displayed as Jupiter. Much better apps in the store which are more accurate…”

Get it: here.