BeWeather – gorgeous Weather app with HD animations
by Toni McQuilken
Apr 5, 2012 9:19 AM –
Install
With BeWeather, you can see the current weather in stunning high definition weather animations! Contains many beautiful and customizable weather and clock widgets.
Price: Free, $2.99
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Predictions always seemed to be pretty accurate!
- A decent number of widget sizes and options to suit everyone!
- Customization options for the app itself are pretty good!
- The free version stands alone, with the pro adding additional options!
- The default background is a “live wallpaper” style, that changes based on the weather of your location!
Cons
- You can only view it in portrait mode.
- It downloads a lot of data once you install it.
Features:
BeWeather is a very solid weather app for Android. It doesn’t have a ton of bells and whistles, but instead focuses on what’s important – the weather. Weather data comes from Weather Underground, and I found that the station it used as the default for my location was pretty spot on, but if yours is off, it allows you to go in and view other stations nearby.
I found the forecasts to be pretty accurate, and I really liked that there was a good range of widget sizes and options to choose from. I very rarely open up a weather app itself, preferring to use a widget for a quick glance, so this is something I look for in a good app. I like that it’s not just static choices, either – in the larger widgets, you can choose what information to show, and how it is displayed. And that’s just in the free version. In the pro version, you get widgets that are completely customizable, with support for Beautiful Widgets and Fancy Widgets skins.
Speaking of the pro version, in addition to greater widget support and options, it also removes the ads from the app itself. You also get a greater range of weather maps, instead of the two that the free version gives you access to.
There were only two things that I didn’t like about the app. I tested this on a tablet, since that’s where I want to consume my weather every morning when I’m reading my news feeds and checking email. The app forces you to view it in portrait mode, and that was a bit annoying. It’s not a deal breaker by any stretch of the imagination, but most of what I do is in landscape mode, so it was a minor annoyance. The second thing I didn’t like is that while the app’s install file is pretty small, it downloads 25 MB or resources after installation. To be honest, I don’t see where it needs it. The weather data is done over the network to update, and the rest of the data is pretty standard. The only thing I can think of is that this is the live wallpaper-style background that shows you the current conditions, as well as the weather maps. Now, since I like both those features, again, it’s not a deal breaker, but I’m just curious if that’s where all that data is going.
Check out how we compared this weather app to another one of our favorites, 1Weather… see which app takes the showdown!
-
-
BeWeather Widgets
-
-
BeWeather Main
-
-
BeWeather Stations
-
-
BeWeather Maps
-
-
BeWeather Add Location
-
-
BeWeather Settings
Usefulness:
If you like to know what the weather is, this is a very useful app. Like others of the type, you can have multiple locations saved, and even multiple widgets showing those different locations if you so desire. So it makes keeping track of the weather that matter to you very simple.
Ease of Use:
The app is incredibly easy to use. You go into the menu, hit ‘add location’ and then either tell it to track your location and show you the weather, or you can input a specific city or zip code to track. It’s that simple. A tap at the bottom of the screen will bring up the forecast, and the main screen shows you current conditions.
Frequently Used:
If you’re like me, you like to check the weather every morning to know what to expect for the day. So you’ll use this app daily, if not more.
Interface:
As I mentioned above, the interface is very clean. It focuses on providing the information you want, and making it easy to get. The only, very minor, complaint I might have is that the weather maps require going through a secondary screen to get to, but it’s not a huge hardship.