Top Hat vs PhoneIoT
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Top Hat
Enhance your learning experience with interactive resources, in-class participation tools, and dynamic digital textbooks. Engage with professors and peers, and test your knowledge with quizzes and polls to improve comprehension and retention.
- Follow lecture slides on your device
- In-class response system
- In-app discussions with peers and professors
- Dynamic, interactive digital textbooks
- Take polls and quizzes
- Access graded and non-graded homework
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Top Hat is the perfect companion app to our comprehensive assessment platform that helps you learn better before, during and after class. Top Hat makes learning fun and engaging (seriously!) and sets you up for success, helping you connect with your professors, your peers and the content you’re learning in and out of the classroom. Here’s what Top Hat offers you: Compelling resources, delivered on your smartphone or laptop: • Follow your prof’s lecture slides on your own device • Contribute in class with an easy-to-use response system that’s always with you • Participate with your profs and peers using in-app discussions Content tailored to your course: • Experience dynamic, interactive textbooks loaded up with images, videos, audio clips and more • Read your digital materials from anywhere and keep them forever Quizzes, tests and polls that improve learning comprehension: • Challenge yourself by taking polls and quizzes on your own devices • Improve your knowledge retention with interactive assessment elements • Check for gaps in your understanding with graded and non-graded homework and short quizzes Thanks for using Top Hat. As you experience the app, we’d love to get your feedback: support@tophat.com or follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook @TopHat
PhoneIoT
This app connects to a block-based programming environment, enabling remote access to your device's sensors and display. Students can create interactive projects, like using their device as a remote control for robots.
- Connects to NetsBlox educational programming environment
- Remotely access iOS device sensors
- Control device display from code
- Create engaging programming projects
- Enable device as robot remote control
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PhoneIoT allows you to connect to NetsBlox (https://editor.netsblox.org/?), a block-based educational programming environment, and remotely access your iOS device's sensors and display from code. Along with some of the other distributed computing services available through NetsBlox, this allows students to create highly engaging projects, such as turning your iOS device into an accelerometer-enabled remote control driving a virtual or physical robot rolling around on the ground (via the pre-existing RoboScape service on NetsBlox).
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: PhoneIoT at 100% against Top Hat's 14%. PhoneIoT also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.6) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). Top Hat's advantage is ratings volume (23K vs 4) and chart position (#107 vs unranked). 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
PhoneIoT holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Top Hat has 23K ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 14% of Top Hat's written reviews are positive against 100% of PhoneIoT's.
Top Hat ships an update fortnightly, PhoneIoT every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and July 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Top Hat | PhoneIoT |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (23K ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 14.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 23K — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #107 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 162 MB | 22 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Top Hat Monocle | Devin Jean |
Customer experience
Top Hat
PhoneIoT
Bugs and requests
Top Hat
Reported bugs
3 issues- Answers not registering correctly
- Slides not loading properly on mobile devices
- Inconsistent performance across platforms
Requested features
3 requests- Add page numbers and search functionality to ebooks
- Improve syncing between mobile and web versions
- Allow more flexible location settings for attendance
PhoneIoT
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Top Hat
No in-app purchases
PhoneIoT
No in-app purchases
