Since the time Sky Map was released by Google several years ago, there have been several astronomy-related apps that have come out of the market, and some with even more higher features. But if you’ve always had this digital planetarium on your smartphone for the past years, then you’ll be pleased to know that after almost five years, it finally has an update. And while you shouldn’t expect much from it, an update is still an update.
Sky Map was originally developed by Google but eventually they donated it and has become an open sourced program. If you’ve forgotten what it actually does, it uses your location and also the direction where your smartphone is pointed at to tell you what are the space elements around you, including stars, planets, constellations, etc. Well now someone seems to have resurrected the github and so the app has been updated, although not by much.
You’ll know how outdated it is by looking at the elements and seeing traces of Froyo and Gingerbread. The graphics are still pixelated and so it may not look great at all if you’re using a device with a QHD display. But what the update has done is fix some data errors, add twice as many stars, made the menu more accessible by putting it in the action bar, corrected the order of planets (Jupiter is now behind Venus), added Arabic translations, and of course some more bug fixes.
If you’ve forgotten that you still have Sky Map, head on over to its Google Play page and update it to the latest version. Here’s hoping we get a Material Design and much better update really soon.
New gyro support is a really nice enhancement.