---
title: "I almost bought an iPhone for SwingVision. Here's what I tried instead"
description: "I almost bought an iPhone just to use SwingVision. Then I built AceSense, an AI tennis analysis app that runs on the Android phone I already owned."
slug: "almost-bought-iphone-for-swingvision"
date: "2025-04-17"
author: "Akshay Sarode"
authorBio: "Founder, AceSense. Building AI tennis tools in Europe."
category: "Comparison"
schema: "BlogPosting"
faq:
  - q: "Is buying an iPhone just for SwingVision worth it?"
    a: "For most amateur players, no. A new iPhone plus the SwingVision Pro tier comes to roughly €1,200–€1,500 in year one. AceSense gives you the same core pipeline (shot detection, ball tracking, stroke quality, court heatmap) on the Android phone you already own."
  - q: "Why did SwingVision skip Android?"
    a: "SwingVision built deeply on iOS-specific APIs (CoreML and Apple Watch integration). Re-architecting for Android is real engineering work, not a flag flip, which is why their own Android update newsletter still has no committed timeline."
  - q: "Did you build AceSense because of SwingVision?"
    a: "Partly. The Reddit thread 'Genuinely thinking of getting a iPhone just for the swing[vision]' was one of several signals that the iOS lock-in was a real problem for real players. AceSense exists to give those players a working option."
  - q: "What hardware do I need for AceSense?"
    a: "An Android or iOS phone you already own, and a fence clip or basic phone tripod (typically $20–$30). No Apple Watch, no proprietary camera, no facility hardware."
---

# I almost bought an iPhone for SwingVision. Here's what I tried instead

I'm Akshay Sarode, founder of AceSense. In 2023, I almost bought an iPhone for the sole purpose of using SwingVision. I'm an Android user. I play amateur tennis (NTRP ~3.5 at the time). I had been watching the SwingVision YouTube videos for months, the [25k-view honest review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0_5A4eUXAg), the [unbiased one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-UhwqLmXiY), the on-court Apple Watch demos. SwingVision looked like the answer to the question every amateur player asks: *what am I actually doing wrong?* The catch: it was iOS-only, and a Reddit thread titled *"Genuinely thinking of getting a iPhone just for the swing[vision]"* ([r/10s](https://www.reddit.com/r/10s/comments/151g2cy/)) summed up exactly what was on my mind. Here's what changed it.

## Bottom line up front

- I almost spent ~€900 on an iPhone to run SwingVision on.
- I priced out year-one cost: phone + SwingVision tier + Apple Watch and it crossed €1,500 fast.
- I tried the alternative path, building tennis AI on Android, and it worked.
- That alternative became AceSense. This is the story of why.

## The Saturday I came close

October 2023. Saturday afternoon. I'd lost a club match 6-3, 6-4 to a guy I'd beaten the month before. Couldn't tell you why. My forehand felt off, my serve felt off, the score said it was off, I had no diagnostic. The match was on a club camera so I had film. I sat on my couch, opened the laptop, scrubbed back through 90 minutes of video, and after maybe ten minutes I gave up. I couldn't see what was happening from a wide-angle court video any better than I could see it from inside my own head during the match. I needed something to *tell me* where the leak was.

That night I almost ordered an iPhone 15. I had the cart open. The math was: phone €899, SwingVision Pro $24.99/mo (per [SourceForge pricing](https://sourceforge.net/software/product/SwingVision/)), and the constant chatter from reviewers that the *real* features lived at the $39.99/mo Max tier ([Tennisnerd's review](https://www.tennisnerd.net/tennis-tools/swingvision-review-and-interview/25702) describes the same pricing wall: *"the $150/year plan gets you HD recording, but 4K and more accurate line calling require paying $400 annually"*). Add an Apple Watch SE for line calling and we're at year-one cost north of €1,500. For one tennis app.

I closed the cart. Then I read the Reddit thread.

## The thread that did it

The r/10s post is short, but the comments are not. People are negotiating with themselves out loud:

- *"I have an Android. I'm seriously considering switching to iOS just for this."*
- *"It's the only tennis app worth using. I can't believe it doesn't exist on Android."*
- *"Does anyone know if there's an Android alternative?"*

The Talk Tennis thread *"Will SwingVision still work with an Android"* ([forum link](https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/will-swingvision-still-work-with-an-android.760414/)) is the calmer version of the same question, and the answer hasn't moved in years: no. SwingVision's [own Android update newsletter](https://swing.vision/newsletters/android-update) is the polite corporate version: *we're exploring it.* No date.

I'm an engineer. The thing that bothered me wasn't that SwingVision was iOS-only. It was that the entire amateur tennis world was being told *"buy an iPhone or wait."* That's not a tech problem. That's a business decision a competitor could un-make.

## What I tried first

Before I built anything, I tried every Android-compatible option I could find:

1. **OnForm** ([pricing](https://onform.com/pricing/), $9.99–$59.99/mo). Worked on Android. Beautiful video annotation tool. But: *no tennis AI*. I had to scrub through the video and tag shots myself. Same problem as the laptop.
2. **A generic coach-on-video service** (TennisPal-style). Submit video, wait 3–5 days for a human review, pay per video. The latency killed it. By Tuesday's lesson the coach hadn't replied to Saturday's video.
3. **TennisAI.net** (€15/mo). Working Android app. Useful charting. But shallower stroke-quality output than what I'd seen SwingVision do.
4. **BaselineTennisAI**. Working Android app. Vendor diversity option. Fine but not deep enough for the failure-mode question I was trying to answer.

None of them gave me the loop I wanted: *record Saturday → tagged report Saturday afternoon → into Tuesday's lesson.* So I started prototyping.

## The actual build (short version)

My day job background is in computer vision. I started with the same components anyone in this space would: a TrackNet-style ball detector for the small fast-moving target, court keypoint detection because everything is downstream of knowing where the lines are, MediaPipe pose for the player's body, FasterRCNN for player bounding boxes, and a CatBoost model on top of pose features and bounce timing to classify shots and call bounces. The whole pipeline is in [/features/shot-detection](/features/shot-detection) if you want the specifics; the source-of-truth diagram is in our docs.

The first prototype ran on a single tennis match I'd recorded on a Pixel 6. It misclassified about half the volleys, missed a chunk of second serves, and put the court line keypoints in the wrong place on a clay court. I knew this because I built a regression test (`compare_events.py`) that compares model output to a hand-annotated ground-truth file. Most apps don't publish their accuracy because most apps don't measure it. I measured it because I needed to know whether I was kidding myself.

Six months later, I had something that produced a per-shot report I'd actually look at on a Tuesday morning. That was the AceSense MVP.

## The cost comparison, finally

Here's the spreadsheet I should have done before I almost ordered the iPhone.

| Path | Year-one cost | Devices required |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone + SwingVision Pro | ~€1,160 (€899 phone + $24.99/mo × 12) | iPhone, optional Apple Watch (€280) |
| iPhone + SwingVision Max | ~€1,340 ($39.99/mo × 12) | iPhone, Apple Watch recommended |
| Android (already own) + AceSense | €0–€180 (free tier or Pro) | Phone you already own + €25 fence clip |

The €1,000+ delta isn't a discount on the same product. It's the cost of the iOS lock-in being load-bearing for the SwingVision business model. You're paying for the Apple Watch line-calling experience, the long-baked iPad chrome, the brand. If those three things are what you actually need, that price is fair. For me, they weren't.

## Where SwingVision is still the right call

I want to be clear: if you already own an iPhone and an Apple Watch and you want **real-time on-court line calling**, SwingVision is excellent and AceSense doesn't try to compete on that axis. We don't ship an Apple Watch app. Our analysis is post-match, not in-the-moment. That's a deliberate trade, pose-based stroke quality is hard to do well in real time on a wrist computer, and the per-shot diagnostic loop I wanted didn't need it.

If your sport is more racket-and-paddle adjacent than tennis, SwingVision's coverage there is also still ahead of ours.

For everybody else, Android owners, EU players, people who balked at the $400/yr complaint, that's the gap AceSense is built for.

## The lesson from the cart abandonment

I keep that closed iPhone cart screenshot somewhere. It reminds me of two things.

One: **the most expensive thing in software is a vendor decision the user can't un-make.** SwingVision's iOS-only choice was rational in 2019, Apple's CoreML and Apple Watch APIs gave them a real product wedge. But by 2023 it was an open wound for the Android half of the amateur tennis world.

Two: **the right answer to "should I buy an iPhone for SwingVision" is almost always no.** Buy an iPhone if you want an iPhone for general reasons. Don't buy an iPhone for one app, especially not when there's a working Android alternative for the actual loop you want.

## What I'd tell my October-2023 self

If you're standing where I was, Android player, considering an iPhone purchase to run SwingVision, doing the YouTube-review death-scroll at 11pm, try this first:

1. **Try AceSense free** on your Android phone. One Saturday match. Zero hardware purchases.
2. **Read the [side-by-side comparison](/blog/acesense-vs-swingvision-amateur-players)** between the two products. Decide which axes actually matter to you.
3. **Then** decide whether the iPhone is worth €900 to get the axes AceSense doesn't cover (Apple Watch line calling, etc.).

Most of the time, you'll skip step 3.

## FAQ

**Is buying an iPhone just for SwingVision worth it?** For most amateur players, no. Year-one cost is roughly €1,200–€1,500. AceSense gives you the same core pipeline on the Android phone you already own.

**Why did SwingVision skip Android?** They built deeply on iOS-specific APIs (CoreML, Apple Watch). Re-architecting for Android is real engineering work, see their [Android update](https://swing.vision/newsletters/android-update).

**Did you build AceSense because of SwingVision?** Partly. The Reddit thread *"Genuinely thinking of getting a iPhone just for the swing[vision]"* was one of several signals that the iOS lock-in was a real problem for real players.

**What hardware do I need for AceSense?** A phone you already own and a fence clip or basic tripod ($20–$30). No Apple Watch, no proprietary camera.

---

*Akshay Sarode is the founder of AceSense. If this story sounds familiar, [start free on Android](/) or read [The SwingVision Android alternative, explained](/blog/swingvision-android-alternative).*