• SkyVoyager: This app was free for one day to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landing, so I got it on that day. The app clearly focuses on a very (semi-)professional user base and even allows to tell an attaced computerized telescope where to point. The newest update added the ability to use the accelerometer and the compass too, as well as a landscape mode, which is very useful to work around a hardware limitation: when you point the iPhone upwards at a 45° angle, the compass becomes very confused an jumpy. This is not the case when using the iPhone sideways. When you are a serious astronomer and have one of the supported telesopes, this will surely be the app for you!
• Starmap: This was the first application I had bought, and the first time I heard about augmented reality already in the app store. It has a very nice interface (not too bright, but no dedicated night view either) and supports landscape mode as well. There are many features and lots of background information as well. I would recommend this for anyone who is interested in any of these applications. There is also a Pro version available for serious astronomers.
• Pocket Universe: This application seems to be targeted at geeks and Star Trek Fans: it sports a STTNG-LCARS interface. It also has some nice inforation in its database, but does not support landscape mode. Therefore, looking at things at 45° up can become frustrating. Until this is fixed, I can only recommend this app to real ST-TNG fans.
• Distant Suns: This app is on sale until Wednesday evening, to celebrate the Perseid Meteor Shower. There is also a free (lite) version available. This program is the only one of the mentioned which has a true night vision mode, where the colour scheme is changed from blue to red, to aid nightvision. Compass, accelerometer and landscape support. If it is still on sale, why not get it?

I hope I could help someone with the decision which app to get. If I did, leave a comment!

First and foremost, if you are used to the older 3G hardware, the speed and responsiveness will blow you away. There is no more lag, not even when playing some of the more graphics intensive games, the keyboard got rid of those annoying hangs and the new oleophobic touch screen stays much cleaner.

The second thing that blew me away was the user interface for the camera. Touch to focus works amazing.

The compass seems to work even better than the digital compass on my Garmin Oregon handheld GPS. The GPS reciever itself is as good or bad as in the previous model.
The iPhone OS itself is a solid improvement and optimization. Copy and paste seems to work great. I did not have many opportunities to test it, but it was handy for copying a strong password from 1password to Safari.

All in all a great device. I can only recommend it to everyone who does not absolutely need a physical keyboard (besides, the touch keyboard allows different layouts for muli-language users like myself).

I’ll post more in-depth comments later on. Most of this article was written on my iPhone via the Wordpress App, which does not seem to work correctly with the current Wordpress version – does anyone know about that or is that an error on my part?