In my opinion yes because your location is half of the equation. Which direction you are point your cellphone or tablet is another. In particular, I like to look for spacecraft in twilight. It fires up the imagination of my grandkids. With the magnetometer function, and you having gone through the calibration (dancing and rolling the phone through barrel rolls and favor eight flight paths) you compass is "calibrated" and now many apps will give you augmented reality or a sky map with the target shown flying through it. It is really cool and helpful.

Bob

N4HY

On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 12:22 PM Philip Jenkins <n4hf.philip@gmail.com> wrote:

It's time for me to upgrade phones, and I have a question...

I notice that the HamGPS app tells me my phone has an accelerometer, but no magnetometer; lack of the latter doesn't seem to have impacted the accuracy of the app though.

I use AMSATDroid, Heavens Above, and ISS Detector apps for tracking the birds, so my question is how necessary are these two sensors for getting accurate results from these 3 apps (and others)?

In other words, do I need to look for a phone which has both sensors, just one of these, or does it matter?

Thanks

Philip N4HF

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