Star Chart mini review

Ralph's son told him about the Star Chart app for his Android smartphone. At 10¢ (at some online store), what's the harm! After Ralph transferred it to the SD card in his Samsung GT-I5510M, I gave it a quick shake down.

The product is by Escapist Games. It appears to be available for iPhone, Android, and Windows.

We discovered immediately that it used the GPS, compass, and accelerometers. Nice. Aim it in a particular direction, even down through the floor, and it shows what is in the sky in that direction. Some smoothing would be nice though. When I set the smartphone on the table, the image jumped and jittered. That was distracting.

Somewhat realistic sky appearance, with the Milky Way rendered.

The typical gestures worked as expected, including pinching and stretching.

When we zoomed in on Jupiter, it showed a realistic display. But, sadly, no moons!

Tapping on an object displayed a pop-up with some details. The little icons on the left side of the pop-up were a little unclear however. Is this an issue with this version or implementation? Screen snaps that I see on the web look different...

Red light mode worked well.

The Search function was strange. I was able to enter some text but I could not seem to complete the search, I could not submit it.

So, overall, pretty basic and a little buggy.