Weatherwise – zenfully creative new Weather App for Android
by Paul Wilks
Apr 30, 2012 10:24 AM –
Install
Weatherwise is a beautifully charming weather app. Featuring forecasts, themes, great design, cool animations and a couple of awesome widgets. Weatherwise might well be something that rips you away from your current favourite weather app. It’s also free…
Price: Free, plus in-app purchases of additional themes
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Beautiful themes!
- Nicely design!
- 5-day and hourly forecasts!
- Multi-location!
- Lots of useful weather information!
Cons
- Design is distinctive which is great, but might not suit everyone’s tastes.
- Navigation could be improved.
- Hourly isn’t actually hourly.
Features:
Another week, another fantastic weather app baying for our attention. It doesn’t seem more than a few minutes since we reviewed 1Weather and BeWeather… then played them off against each other. Well now they have a competitor that might well rival them both.
Weatherwise blends really cool animations and design with a flurry of useful information including: temperature, wind-speed and direction, precipitation, visibility, humidity and chance of rain. While some people like ‘pretty‘ it’s great to see a lot of information included. You can check the forecast up to the next five days, and you can check hourly over the next day. I say ‘hourly‘ simply because the app calls it that, however it’s actually a forecast for the next day over three hour intervals. You can also select up to five different locations to monitor the weather elsewhere.
The most striking feature about Weatherwise, however, is the design. The main app page is a near-full page animation of the weather right now. The app comes with a default ‘Zen Tree’ theme but you can preview and buy others for $0.99 each. There are five others in total so definitely worth checking out… I especially like the look of the ‘Lost Robot’ theme. You also have two different widgets; a full screen rendition of the weather in the theme you have chosen, plus a colourful and neat 4×1 widget which displays the weather and temperature.
I guess what I personally like about this is that it caters for both users who like a weather app to look pretty, and those who want a good range of information. With Weatherwise you kind of get the best of both worlds. The smaller widget looks really great, quite minimalist, so that alone might tempt some users to download. The app is entirely free and has no ads, placing the onus on users buying new themes as a way to monetize the app. I really like this model, and I sincerely hope it works- no one likes ads in apps.
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Weatherwise – Light rain animation
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Weatherwise – Main info page: temp, weather, forecast, animation
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Weatherwise – Rain
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Weatherwise – Large widget
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Weatherwise – 8-bit Windmill theme
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Weatherwise – Small widget
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Weatherwise – Theme Store
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Weatherwise – Hourly details
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Weatherwise – Preferences
Usefulness:
Great for checking the weather now and over the next few days. It contains lots of weather information that will suit people who like to know these things.
Ease of Use:
I did find the navigation a little tricky to begin with. From the main screen there’s a tiny tab which indicates ‘Hourly Details’ that doesn’t really look like a navigation button. This aside, everything else is quite straight forward.
Frequently Used:
Weather apps are usually something I check on a regular basis, possibly a few times a day. Of course with the handy inclusion of widgets, this might be something you check even more regularly.
Interface:
The interface is really nice. Combining solid tabs and indicators with the cool animations on the main screen.