I'm of two minds regarding the value of mobile-devices-tuners. I'm often using Cleartune on my iPad -- Why?

For one, it's helpful if someone asks for a temperament that I've not tuned so often (like Skip Sempé did only three days ago for his recital in Göteborg). Then, it's obviously a great tool for re-stringing (not that I do that on a daily basis!). Finally, for consistent results in hectic large-ensemble-rehearsal-settings, it's just perfect. Instead of me wondering whether my instrument dropped because of the heat of the action, and waiting for the three trumpet players, Korg in hand, to require an adjustment of one-a-d-a-half-cent ("or we can just as well leave"), I prefer having execution, after-control and proof all in my own hand, and a tuning app provides just this service. 

One habit the fervent tuner-app-user should not lightly give up is to lay out the temperament in a logical order of intervals, and not (ever) just chromatically from tone to tone. Maintain whichever order your temperament would require when tuned by ear, and keep listening actively to the intervals. Also, switch off the blasted thing when you're tuning octaves, it goes much faster that way.

If anything, the app has been teaching me to listen even more carefully to my intervals than earlier, and to not believe everything I'm seeing on that screen. The machine often hears too much, and not everything is relevant. For example, a decline-of-overtones-shift would typically be expressed as a change of pitch on the dial; nice to have my iPad spell that out for me but ultimately not so very helpful.

fwiw Tilman

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