I had tried to use a tripod but the one I got has limited swivel and won't angle like I wanted it to, so I had to go the old fashion way- set my phone up against a non-reflective box on the ground and set shutter speed to 30 seconds and use voice command to snap the shot. Set a 10 second delay to allow for the phone to stabilize in case of any kind of shakes. Been running aperture of F1.8 ISO between 800-3200, auto white balance, and manual focus. But I'm finding it tough to replicate my first results, particularly with the milky way. Everything has been gradually worse since then.
But they say it is best to do it during a new moon , and those best shots were during a new moon. Now it's almost 60% illumination and I'm wondering if that may be throwing my images off.
In the meantime I have captured a few decent shots of stars with just nightmode and my bare hands at 1x and 3x zoom. Last night I noticed my phone wasn't applying the auto filter like it was, so I had to go in editing in the picture and apply the auto filter myself. Weird.
But yeah, since that first night it's been a challenge. One thing that would help would be to go somewhere with absolutely NO light pollution-- no city lights, no street lights or anything. But there is one street light on across the street right where I have to be aiming for the milky way, and I suspect that too is knocking my last few MW attempts off, and I've been getting washout from my own streetlight reflecting off my camera and into the shots. Its been a real struggle.
still cool to get some good shots before that though. Used a screenshot from the Stellarium app to show where Scorpius is positioned relative to my location.
but I might still be able to get a couple of decent star shots 
but I might still be able to get a couple of decent star shots
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