What’s on the smartphone agenda for January?

Stellarium Mobile – Star Map

Ever looked up at the night sky and let the splendour of the universe grab you? Or even gazed at the dazzling display of stars and wondered which ones were what?
The Stellarium Mobile – Star Map is a wonderful planetarium app that shows exactly what you see when you look up at the stars. By just pointing their phones at the sky the app lets users identify stars, constellations, planets, comets, satellites (such as the ISS), and many other deep sky objects in real time and within a matter of a few seconds!
Stellarium Mobile has an easy to use and minimalist user interface, which makes it one of the best astronomical applications for both adults and children.
The app’s features include an accurate night sky simulation of stars and planets for any date, time and location; a collection of many stars, nebulas, galaxies, star clusters and other deep sky objects to look up and explore; and much more.

Pocket Casts

In case you’re a habitual podcast enthusiast, Pocket Casts is one of the best and most powerful podcast platforms available online.
Pocket Casts gives users a full-featured and easy-touse podcast player that provides them with next-level listening, search and discovery tools which directly impacts and elevates their listening experience.
The app’s interface is smooth, efficient and interactively changes colours to go along with the artwork attached to the podcast users are listening to. Additional customisable features include an automatic playback queue of users’ favourite shows; the ability to cut silences out from episodes; adjustable playback speed from 0.5 to 3; volume boost while decreasing background noise; easy toggle between audio to video episodes; skip between chapters that can be easily marked; skipping episode intros while also easily jumping through episodes with custom skip intervals; and many others.
The app also provides users curated podcast recommendations for easy discovery, making it simpler for them to find their next favourite podcast.