CE5 Contact

About CE5 Contact

I picked this up about 13 months ago when my old skywatching app became unusable after its last update. The concept is cool on paper — guided contact protocols, group coordination for CE5 sessions, journaling built right in. I’ve done maybe 40+ sessions with it, mostly from my backyard in rural Oregon and a few times out at Jordan Lake. The idea that you can use your phone to align with others trying to make contact is intriguing enough to keep me coming back, even when the app frustrates me.

Core Features

The meditation timer works fine — basic, gets the job done. The protocol guide walks you through the steps Dr. Greer talks about, which is useful if you’re new. The journal is where I spend most of my time inside the app; I log dates, times, weather conditions, and any anomalies I see. The Sky Hub integration is a double-edged sword. It lets you tag sightings and share them, but half the time the GPS location is off by a quarter mile, which defeats the purpose for serious documentation. The community forum is active but filled with the kind of posts that make you question if people are seeing drones or just stars. A Tuesday night last July I sat in my field for three hours, app open, got a notification about a group session starting in California — that part genuinely felt connected.

Real-World Use

I’ve had it crash during the pre-meditation warmup more times than I can count. On my Samsung Galaxy A54, the app sometimes lags hard when switching between the timer and the journal — I’ve lost an entry because the app froze and then closed. The guided meditation audio skips if your signal is weak, which is ironic because you’re supposed to be in a remote spot. When it works, it works okay. The session from August where we had six people on a group call through the app, all watching the same patch of sky, that was impressive. But that only happened once because coordinating group sessions requires everyone to have the same version and stable internet, which kills the whole “out in nature” vibe.

Pricing & Value

This is a paid app. Not cheap either — I paid around $10 for it. For that price, you’d expect polish. You don’t get polish. The interface looks like it was designed in 2016. But the tools are functional if you push through the clunkiness. Compared to free star map apps, this one at least gives you a structured protocol and community integration. Is it worth $10? Only if you’re dead serious about CE5 and willing to deal with the headaches. For a casual curious person, skip it.

Updates & Support

Support was a joke when I reached out. I emailed them in March about the freezing issue on my A54 — waited two weeks for a reply that basically said “try reinstalling.” I did, still froze. Followed up, another week, got a generic “we’ll look into it.” Never heard back. Looking at the update history, the dev pushes an update every few months but they’re usually tiny bug fixes that don’t address the big stuff. The app hasn’t had a meaningful feature update in the 13 months I’ve owned it. Feels abandoned.

Data & Privacy

You have to create an account to use the journal and forums. That means your name, email, and all your logged experiences are sitting on their servers. The privacy policy is vague about data retention and sharing. For an app dealing with personal experiences and location data, that bothers me. I wish they’d offer a local-only mode for the journal without requiring an account.