Three Apps to Do Real Science: FizziQ, Phyphox, Physics Toolbox
A high school physics educator's perspective on smartphone sensor apps for science education
As an educator working closely with physics teachers, I have become increasingly hooked on using smartphones and tablets in class to conduct experiments. At the beginning, it was mostly a personal interest: I was fascinated by the sheer number of sensors modern smartphones include, and by their precision. But progressively, I began to see their full potential for teaching physics and now I use them all the time with students.
Anyone who teaches knows that students are more easily motivated by anything out of the ordinary. Using science apps on smartphones is a great way to connect what I teach to something students use every day. And because these devices are suddenly used for a completely different purpose, as a scientific instrument, it unsettles them in a good way. I find this disruption extremely effective to spark curiosity, engagement, and experimentation.
Over the years, I have tested many different apps. In this first post of my substack, I want to share my personal experience with three of them—what they do well, where they have limitations, and how they fit into real classroom practice.
Before comparing them, though, one thing must be said clearly: all three are excellent portable scientific laboratories.
They are all:
Free to use
Accessible without any login or account (a key requirement in schools)
Available on most smartphones brands and operating system
Capable of displaying, recording, and exporting data from built-in sensors
These sensors include accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, camera (for color), photoelectric cell (for light), microphone (for sound analysis), GPS, pressure, and even connectivity to microcontroller to add external sensors. In practice, this means that a single smartphone can replace a large amount of traditional laboratory equipment.
Used well, these apps allow students to:
Measure real physical quantities
Work with authentic data
Design and test their own experiments
Connect abstract concepts to observable phenomena
This is why, despite their differences, FizziQ, Phyphox, and Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite all deserve attention. The question is not whether they are useful—but which one is best suited for your teaching situation.
Phyphox: the pioneer
Historically, Phyphox was the first of these apps to appear on the market. Developed at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, it was a true precursor: one of the very first applications to seriously turn a smartphone into a scientific measurement instrument.
This academic origin shows. Phyphox was clearly designed by scientists, for scientists, and it provides access to virtually all the sensors available in a smartphone. Acceleration, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure, sound, light, GPS—everything is there, and often exposed in a very raw and precise way.
From a measurement point of view, phyphox is extremely solid. The data are reliable, the sampling rates are high, and the app allows advanced configurations that are rarely found elsewhere. This makes it particularly well suited for advanced experiments, especially at university level or with highly motivated students.
Phyphox also includes a number of powerful built-in tools, such as:
Timers and stopwatches
Signal generators and synthesizers
Predefined experimental setups
On-device data processing
These features make it possible to design quite sophisticated experiments without any external equipment.
That said, this power comes with a trade-off. The interface clearly reflects its age and its academic origins. For students—and especially in medium and high school or —the user experience can feel dense, technical, and somewhat outdated. It is not always obvious where to start, and the learning curve can be steep in a classroom setting.
In my own teaching practice, I see Phyphox as an excellent scientific tool, but one that often requires strong guidance from the teacher. It shines when precision and control are the priority, but it is not always the easiest entry point for discovery-based learning.
Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite: simple and accessible
Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite takes a different approach from phyphox. It prioritizes simplicity and ease of use over scientific depth.
The interface is more modern and visually pleasant, with clear graphs and intuitive access to sensors. Students can start using it quickly, and exporting data as CSV files is straightforward, which is practical in class.
In practice, I find Physics Toolbox very useful to discover the wide range of sensors available in a smartphone. It is well suited for demonstrations and initial exploration. However, despite the possibility to export data, it is less convincing for performing rigorous measurements where precision and experimental control matter. It lacks some tools which are useful for the cursus like chronometers to measure the speed of sound, and some tools are not very intuitive like the Ruler AR.
Some features however are worth mentioning however, such as the 3D magnetic field visualization, which is more playful than truly useful, and the spectrogram, which is nice, but unfortunately some options are restricted to the paid version.
Overall, Physics Toolbox is a simple and reliable tool that lowers the barrier to experimentation, but it feels less professional and less rigorous than Phyphox, and I rarely use it for experiments requiring data.
FizziQ: designed for teaching and learning
What I was missing as an educator with the previous apps was not more sensors, or more precision—but a tool designed from the start for teaching. A tool that students could use immediately, while still offering real scientific depth.
This is where FizziQ takes a clearly different approach. Designed as a coherent whole rather than an accumulation of features, it emphasizes consistency across sensors and classroom use. Its partnership with the Fondation La main à la pâte, recognized internationally for its work in inquiry-based science education, reinforces this pedagogical focus.
With FizziQ, all measurements rely on a single, consistent interface. This has two major advantages. The first is practical: once students understand how to start a measurement, display a graph, or record data, they can do it for any sensor. This may sound trivial, but in the classroom it makes a huge difference.
There is also a pedagogical advantage. Because the interface stays the same, students are more likely to experiment with different sensors to study a given phenomenon. In my experience, this design encourages curiosity and is particularly well suited to inquiry-based science education.
The interface is nice and intuitive, and it works well when several students are sharing a device. Graphs are easy to interpret, data recording is straightforward, and exports can be reused directly for analysis. From this point of view, FizziQ feels much more modern than the other apps.
Finally, there are several features that we use regularly in class:
video analysis and chronophotography for kinematics
a sound library, ranging from Doppler effects to musical notes
an experiment notebook to record, analyze and share measurements
the ability to export data as PDF, CSV, or Python files
The notebook can also include tables, photos, and text with mathematical formulas, making it a real working space for students.
All in all, FizziQ is a complete environment for experimenting with smartphone sensors. Compared to phyphox, it is less about running a one-off experiment and more about making experimentation a regular and structured process for students. Compared to Physics Toolbox, it goes far beyond simple discovery by supporting measurements that can be used in meaningful scientific investigations.
In my teaching practice, FizziQ is the app I use most consistently with the students. I love the fact that they can send me a PDF at the end of the session with their results, a way to ensure they have really done the measures themselves !
Conclusion
After several years of using smartphones in physics classes, I no longer see them as gadgets but as a real part of my curriculum. What matters to me now is not how many sensors an app exposes, but whether it helps students actually do science: measure something real, make mistakes, discuss results, and try again.
Phyphox, Physics Toolbox, and FizziQ all have their place. I still use Phyphox when working with more advanced students. I sometimes open Physics Toolbox to quickly illustrate what a particular sensor does. And in regular classroom practice—where I need students to get to grips with the tool on their own, to document their measurements and share their work—FizziQ is the app I prefer to use.
What I hope is that I have convinced you not to use a specific app, but to try doing science with a smartphone. Used thoughtfully, these tools can turn an everyday object into a powerful bridge between theory and the real world.
If you have experience using smartphones for science education, feel free to reach out or share this article.