In a world dominated by online information and all sorts of virtual possessions, there aren’t many applications that are so tightly linked to the real world like a weather app is. The comfort of accessing weather forecasts and information at practically any time, makes most of us the happy owners of at least one installed weather app.
If you’re really serious about the weather, you should definitely take a look at Appy Weather. The app is priced at $3.99 – not overly expensive, but most apps I’ve seen are somewhere between $0.99 and $1.99 so not too cheap either. Luckily, Appy Weather is highly customizable and encompasses a slate of features that make it worth its price, should you be willing to pay it.
Expandable weather info
It has a beautiful interface of an elegant simplicity that makes information easily readable. The main screen shows the weather forecast of your current location for the present and next hour. Essential information such as temperature, precipitation and temperature feel is displayed by default. However, each section has a ‘+’ sign that expands it, showing even more info such as chance of rain, cloud cover, humidity, atmospheric pressure…etc.
Different panes with multiple views
I think even the most demanding users will be satisfied by the level of detail this app offers. The best part is you won’t see it unless you want to. When you’re simply looking to view the current weather at a glance, the default layout gives you just that.
Scrolling down on the main screen you can see the forecast for the next hour and for later today. The expanded ‘Later’ section offers two graphs – one for temperature and another for precipitation – and the third view shows the same info as a list. All of this is just for the current day. On the next pane you can see a 3-day forecast and the third one shows the weekly forecast as a simple, straightforward graph or as a list. In list view you can expand information for each day via the usual ‘+’ sign.
The third pane displays a 7-day forecast also view-able as a graph or as a list. In graph view tapping on any day shows a pop-up containing the forecast, temperature and chance of rain for that day. In list view each day is also expandable, but it offers even more information including sunrise and sunset times as well as the moon phase.
Customization and settings
Appy Weather allows you to save multiple locations – something most weather apps let you do even if some of the free ones impose some limitations.
When it comes to changing the app’s appearance all you can do is choose between a dark and a light theme, a bit disappointing if you like brightly colored apps and the ability to match your apps with your phone’s current theme. I happen to like the app as it is, and find the incredibly well organized layout a lot more important than its available color schemes.
Besides the theme, there’s so much you can change from Appy Weather’s settings menu. The temperature scale, measurement system, time format, default location – these are just the obvious ones. You can also define what ‘weekend’ means to you, default views for ‘Later’ and “Next 7 days’ panes, choose a Live Tile size and the size of icons it shows and more. The app can also show the weather for your default location on your lock screen and it even lets you force restart the background task if the lockscreen and/or Live Tile are not updating anymore.
I’ve tried my fair share of weather apps on my Windows Phone, but honestly Appy Weather is by far the most comprehensive one I came across. The richness of information and degree of customization it offers, definitely makes it one of the most feature-rich weather apps currently available for Windows Phone.
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