Interesting Android star charting app.

[Giorgio]

Last Sunday David (sorry I can't remember your IIS alias right now), my new Toowoomba astronomy buddy, showed me a nice star charting app on his iPhone, which is really well done (again can't remember the app name).

However, it triggered my curiosity about this kind of apps but for Android based devices.

My wife just got a Samsung Galaxy S and I installed on it a couple of astronomy apps (one was Google Sky and not surprises if I can't remember the other one...).

As I'm sure most forum members here has tried Google Sky I'm not going to tell about it, beside mentioning for those who hasn 't, its possibly only interesting feature, being it displaying the main stars names and some data, you would point it at, in real time.
After doing some little research on the Android Market web page I picked "Astro tools" and I was pleased with it, which I think is the Android version of the iPhone app David showed to me.

I played with it on my wife Galaxy mobile and I really liked and I believe everybody here would share my same enthusiasm for it.
However, one limit, not of the app, but of the hardware, raises up given the relatively 'small' size of both the Galaxy and the iPhone mobiles.

This app screams for real estate and the iPad jump immediately in mind as the natural media for it. Unfortunately I can't afford an iPad and consequently my appetite was directed to those 'iPad' clones running the Android OS.
So, consumed by a childish 'have to have' fever, I spent quite a bit of time online to individuate a suitable Android based tablet PC.
I so decided for this "ePad", on eBay, which I should receive tomorrow.

While I'm aware I may lead my self for bitter surprises, I look forward to discover if I made a wise choice by picking this model.
I will report about the experience here as soon as possible.

Wish me good luck
Giorgio

PS this app is available for free leaving to your satisfaction with it the decision to donate a contribute to its developer, which I believe he deserves.

[Giorgio]

Well is not the worst scenario case, but this tablet is not up to my expectations.

Main problem is I couldn't install any astronomy related android apps. In particular I was interested in "Astro Tools", which works very well on the Galaxy S phone (that belong to my wife, hence can't rely on due to hmm territorial issues...). Not even 'Google Sky' is compatible with it, which is not very promising at all.

The only positive astronomy related point is I can use the PDF version of the very good "The Observer's Sky Atlas With 50 Star Charts Covering the Entire Sky", albeit it is not exactly a snap at loading its pages (this tablet has 256MBs ram, but there is another model with 512, which I recon is a must). Moreover, as you might expect, it doesn't support support "night vision" features, but I think I've figure out a way to get it by wrapping the tablet in those kind of trasparent plastic envelope, obviously a red one, used for paper documents.

So what it may be good for? Well I think this 'pro and cons' list, which I in part borrowed from a comment posted on amazon relative to almost my tablet model (my one has Android 2.2 and that on amazon run on the 2.1 version, but hardware, in my understanding, is the same), I deleted some items from this list and added others more pertinent to my experience with this tablet:

Cons:
- Multi-touch
- GPS built in (don't want to carry a receiver around)
- Super sensitive touch response
- 3G via SIM card
- A standard usb charger
- A bluetooth option
- Wide compatibility with Android apps.
- quite heavy for such device.

Pros:
- To check email
- To test / play with apps
- A cheap Internet Tablet for using it wherever you want (obviously connected wireless or cable)
- To plug in mouse/keyboard
- To play silly games
- To read ebooks (only epub, PDF, and txt formats) wherever you want
- To read (only) MS Office docs (I haven't tried this) wherever you want

In conclusion, I decided to put this tablet for sale on ebay and I'm confident to recover most of what I paid for it. And before buy another Android tablet waiting these technologies being more mature for my astronomy needs.

I hope this report may be of help.
Giorgio