We all know about Google Sky Map, a popular app that many consider their “go-to” f avorite for showing off their devices to the Android-deficient. Everybody gets a kick out of outer space, and we all love gadgets that get us a bit closer to the void; for that reason, we were excited to sit down and take a good look at a new app — Deluxe Moon by Lifeware Solutions. Is it worth the $1.99 investment? Read on to find out.

Deluxe Moon serves one purpose alone: to keep you as informed as possible about the Moon. In this capacity, it certainly delivers. While not as ultimately as detailed or rich with information as, say, a Wikipedia entry, the app provides at a glance all of the basic tid-bits an amateur astronomer might want to know about our celestial neighbor. Does it live up to its promises? At a cost of $1.99 and with no free version available, it’s important to know ahead of time.

Overview

As soon as you launch the app you are presented with the main screen, focused on a large graphic of the Moon in its present state based on your location. The app’s permissions as stated when you download it say that it has access to both your network location and GPS location — however, you can not disable GPS location under the settings, which leads me to believe that the app defaults to GPS location so long as it’s available. This will drain the battery, so better keep those Moon-gazing sessions brief, folks.

The main screen shows you the current Moon at a glance.

Surrounding the moon is a bevy of factoids, all up-to-date and location-aware. You’ll be shown your current longitude and latitude, along with the current phase of the moon in the upper corners, while the moon is surrounded by the time, current Zodiac sign, and the percent of illuminated surface. At the bottom, you’ll find the current age of the moon, the time since the last rising and setting of the moon, and when to expect the present night’s moonrise, zenith, and moonset.

You can swipe along the moon with your finger to skip forward or back in time. The moon animates smoothly with a nice shadow, and when you stop swiping, a bar along the bottom will illuminate according to whether you went forward or back. Pressing the moon resets it to the current date and time. You can also control the date by tapping the arrows in the upper corners.

Swiping along the moon advances or reverses the date and time.

Unfortunately, for those of us who enjoy finding all sorts of hidden goodies in an app, this one bares all right from the get-go. There is little more info you can get.

Under the hood, we are given options to control different aspects of the location, time, and date settings. You can set Deluxe Moon to determine your location either automatically — using the phone’s GPS — by country, or by coordinates. The country list appears devoid of the United States, which I assume means it is the default. The time and timezone can be set individually to adhere to the system clock, or you can set a custom value for each.

You can define custom settings for the time and GMT offset.

The last option in the list allows you to set whether or not to use the tropical or sidereal zodiac; both use the same signs, but are different practices in which the signs are associated with different dates. For example, at the time of this writing the tropical zodiac is Virgo, while the sidereal sign is Leo. The tropical zodiac is the standard in western countries.

UI Impressions

Overall, I really like Deluxe Moon’s interface. it is stylish, and sufficiently futuristic-looking to fulfill my Tricorder-esque needs. My one gripe is that the UI appears to have been ported directly from the earlier Windows Mobile version of the app, complete with oversized Options and Exit buttons — perhaps superfluous when all Android devices possess a hardware menu button in which to store options. There even appears to be empty space beneath the app’s soft buttons on my Droid. This is all extra screen real estate that could have been devoted to an even bigger presentation of the Moon. The blue text in the options menu is a nice touch, and will be easy to read outside in the dark.

Final Conclusion

I approve of Deluxe Moon. Lifeware Solutions have made a quality application here, presenting it in a tight, solid package free of bugs. It looks good, a seemingly rare quality among Android apps, and is a wonderful complement to Sky Map. If you are an astronomy enthusiast with an Android device, it is definitely worth the two dollar asking price.

Download Deluxe Moon from the Android Market by scanning the QR code below.