Quote:
Originally Posted by mithrandir
The compass will be affected by any magnetic material within a few metres - like steel telescope tubes or mounts.
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I think a small amount of steel typically needs to be within 100 mm or less before it causes much of an issue on most smartphones. (Don't forget - most people are quite happy to use their smartphone for navigation, and that's with the phone sitting inside a tonne and a half of steel!)
Mine works just fine on both of my telescopes - the tripods have aluminium legs, and both of the OTAs have aluminium tubes. There is a bit of steel in the mounts, but not enough to cause a significant problem when my phone is mounted on the OTA, and I can get a polar alignment to better than 1 degree accuracy in less than a minute using this technique. YMMV
Don't forget that there's than an Android App called SkEye which allows you to use your smartphone as a Push-To controller, and lots of people report good results with it (including me!)