Comparison

MvImage View vs SkyLens Star

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

MvImage View

Features
Read full description

舜宇显微图像分析处理软件

About

SkyLens Star

Features
Read full description

Point your phone at the sky and SkyLens Star tells you what you are looking at. Names appear over your camera's live view — the Sun, the Moon and its current phase, five planets, about 45 of the brightest stars, and 8 constellation figures drawn in. Everything is computed from real astronomical algorithms for your exact coordinates and the exact moment you are standing there, not read off a canned star chart. WHY IT ACTUALLY LINES UP Every phone's compass gets pulled off course by steel in walls, desks, speakers and magnetic cases — often by 10 to 30 degrees. Most sky apps leave you to guess. SkyLens Star gives you a fix: point at the Moon or the Sun, tap Snap, and the app measures its own error against a body you can plainly see and corrects itself. There is a manual offset slider too, if you want to nudge it yourself. TAP ANYTHING Every labelled object opens a card with its altitude, azimuth, brightness, and a short plain-language description of what it actually is. The descriptions ship inside the app, so they read the same on a mountain with no signal. WORKS COMPLETELY OFFLINE No account. No sign-in. No network requests at all. Airplane mode makes no difference to how it behaves. NOTHING IS COLLECTED The camera feed is drawn on screen and never recorded, saved, or sent anywhere. Your location is used only to compute the sky above you, in memory, and never leaves your phone. There are no ads, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind. SEVEN LANGUAGES English, Simplified Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Switch from the gear icon inside the app — you do not have to change your phone's system language. A NOTE ON USE SkyLens Star is for casual observation and learning. It is not a navigation instrument. Never look directly at the Sun, with your eyes or through the camera. And watch your step — this app has you looking up.

Screenshots

MvImage View1 screens
SkyLens Star4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: MvImage View at 3 against SkyLens Star's 1. MvImage View also leads on iOS requirement (12.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

MvImage View ships an update every 9 days, SkyLens Star every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 4 level
MvImage View versus SkyLens Star: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMvImage ViewSkyLens Star
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 9 days — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS12.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size50 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSunny Group Co., Ltd.承宇 万

In-app purchases

None

MvImage View

No in-app purchases

None

SkyLens Star

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is MvImage View free?
MvImage View is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is SkyLens Star free?
SkyLens Star is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do MvImage View or SkyLens Star have ads?
Neither MvImage View nor SkyLens Star shows ads.
Which is updated more often, MvImage View or SkyLens Star?
MvImage View ships an update every 9 days, and SkyLens Star every 2 weeks. Most recently, MvImage View was updated on October 3, 2026 and SkyLens Star on October 22, 2026.

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