EarthPhase vs Cosmic Specks
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
EarthPhase
Explore a beautifully designed, interactive solar system with real-time celestial data. Track moon and Earth phases, view planet positions, and travel through time to discover cosmic events and facts.
- Interactive solar system map
- Real-time moon and Earth phases
- Home and lock screen widgets
- Time travel slider for past/future events
- Discover cosmic facts and mechanics
- Accurate planet positions and orbits
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EarthPhase is your personal, beautifully designed pocket solar system, with all features completely free. Built with a stunning matte, low-key aesthetic, it brings the exact state of the solar system directly to your device. Whether you are an astronomy enthusiast or simply love a clean, minimalist Home Screen, EarthPhase tracks the cosmos in real-time. WIDGET SUITE Never miss a cosmic event. EarthPhase offers a variety of widgets designed to blend seamlessly with your custom setups: Home Screen Trackers: Keep an eye on the current Moon and Earth phases with perfectly rendered, dynamic icons. Lock Screen Data: Add circular planet icons or detailed rectangular widgets that display the exact live illumination percentage of the Moon or Earth right below your clock. Live Solar System: Place a dynamic map of the inner and outer planets on your Home Screen, available in multiple sizes. INTERACTIVE SOLAR SYSTEM Dive into the app to explore a highly accurate, interactive schematic of our solar system. Tap any planet to zoom in on its specific orbit, view its position relative to the Sun, and explore its major moons. TIME TRAVEL SLIDER Wondering what the moon phase was on the day you were born? Or when the next supermoon will happen? Use the precision control panel to scrub backward and forward through time. The entire solar system and moon phase engine will smoothly animate to reflect the exact celestial state of any date and time you choose. DISCOVER THE COSMOS Expand your knowledge with a massive library of scientifically accurate, lesser-known facts. Learn about the bizarre orbital mechanics of Jupiter's outer moons, the metal snow on Venus, or the true scale of the Martian canyons.
Cosmic Specks
Explore the solar system with accurate scale and orbital mechanics. This app removes common simplifications to reveal the true vastness and complexity of space. Witness planetary rotations, eclipses, and comet paths with unprecedented detail.
- Accurate planetary scale
- True orbital inclinations
- Realistic axial rotations
- Detailed comet paths
- Time-based simulations
- Precise eclipse visualization
- Data-driven accuracy indicators
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Space is almost all empty. That turns out to be the beautiful part. Every picture of the solar system you've ever seen tells you small white lies. The planets are swollen so you can see them. The orbits are squashed flat and drawn as tidy circles. Everything is crowded together so it fits on the page. Cosmic Specks is the same solar system with the lies switched off, one at a time, so you can build an intuition for what was actually removed. IT OPENS WITH THE ARGUMENT. A ninety-second tour names the five lies and switches each one off, live: the sizes, the flatness, the circles, the stillness, the diagram eclipses. IT ISN'T FLAT. Turn on inclinations and the orbits fan out into the tilted planes they really occupy — Pluto's 17°, Mercury's 7°, the quiet disagreement the flat diagram hides. EVERYTHING SPINS. Each body turns on its own axis, at its own rate, at its own lean: Venus backwards, Uranus on its side, the Moon locked forever facing home. HALLEY'S COMET TAKES AN EPIC RUN. Seventy-six years, out past Neptune and back, on an orbit so long and lopsided it barely belongs on the same diagram. SWIM THROUGH TIME. Watch conjunctions close, planets loop backwards through retrograde, Saturn's rings turn edge-on and all but vanish, Venus cross the face of the Sun. JUMP TO A PRECISE ECLIPSE and see how tight the Moon's shadow really is — a couple of hundred kilometres of darkness, brushing over the Earth for a few minutes, landing on the real map where it really lands. On 2 August 2027 it crosses southern Spain and Egypt; jump there and watch. And when you want the honest picture of size: one tap drops everything to true scale, where the planets become the specks they are, and the emptiness is the whole photograph. HONEST BY CONSTRUCTION. Every solar-system app draws a picture; this one also shows you the picture's error. Bodies are enlarged so you can see them at all — and the exact factors are printed on screen the entire time you're looking (Sun ×24, bodies ≤×750). Positions are computed on your device from orbital elements, so the app also tells you when it stops being trustworthy: good near today, approximate centuries out, illustrative in the deep millennia. Even the maps admit their gaps: Miranda is half blank because humanity has only ever seen half of it. WHAT IT DOESN'T DO. No account. No ads. No subscription. No analytics — App Privacy is "Data Not Collected". Nothing leaves your phone. Free, with one optional purchase that opens 10,000 years in each direction.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: EarthPhase at free against Cosmic Specks's free with in-app purchases. On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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. EarthPhase sells 2 one-off in-app purchases and Cosmic Specks sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for EarthPhase against 5.0 for Cosmic Specks. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 2 respectively.
| Parameter | EarthPhase | Cosmic Specks |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | — | Daily |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 40 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nathan Coleman | Kaolin Fire |
Customer experience
EarthPhase
Cosmic Specks
In-app purchases
EarthPhase
- Tip$0.99
- Tip$4.99
Cosmic Specks
- 20,000 Years$2.99









