What’s that? The weather around your neck of the woods isn’t looking too fabulous the way Al and his friends present it? Are they randomly cutting to your local station for your state’s forecast only to give you a 30 second briefing on how the weather is just outside your window, as if you could walk out the door and find out for yourself? Never fear old chums, the Windows Phone App Flow detective agency is on the case. (No really, it’s a thing –we’re having jackets made.)
Just as in the case of news readers, Windows Phone 8 and 7 users find themselves in a very peculiar situation for our platform of choice, there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to weather applications.
Without a doubt, the most popular weather application thus far has been and may very well always be The Weather Channel’s uncreatively named Weather. Yes you’ve got the obligatory near future forecasts, and weather radar, but it’s just doesn’t do it for us. Though it is free and available for all those using Windows Phone regardless of operating system version, so it’s got some good things working for it.
No, we’d much rather you entrust your daily weather preparedness with a developer who’s focused on the Windows Phone platform itself and used the tools provided to create a unique application for you to enjoy, including all of the latest bells and whistles that make Windows Phone worth using. With all of that in mind, allow us to introduce you to Gergely Orosz’s terrifically beautiful, feature laden WeatherFlow. Do you have a Windows Phone that uses one of the newly added screen resolutions? This app is already compatible with it, so no black bars for you. Do you want the most comprehensive granular and beautifully simplistic Live Tiles you’ve ever seen? Got that. How about a little eye candy, the ability to switch to photorealistic themes and an updating lockscreen that can display today’s forecast or the weather you’ll be experiencing in the future? Yes, this app will cost you $1.99 and does lack a few niceties like radar, but you know what? Who cares? It’s a must try.
Lastly, we’ve got an old standby of sorts. Though I’ve moved on from it to WeatherFlow, WeatherLive did serve me well over the last year and comes featured packed with supporting for Moon phases, (no we don’t know who ever needs them, but as it’s in there I’m sure someone does), the ability to have your backgrounds load from Bing’s recent cache of fancy backgrounds, and weather toast alerts –something we haven’t found in any of our other picks yet. While it’s not our first choice, WeatherLive still stands as a decent application whose only real fault is not being attractive enough for our taste. Yes, we’re shallow.
Speaking of shallow depths and empty hearts we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the extended break the column took over the holidays. We heard from a few of you worried about the future of the column. All of you should rest assured, we at least plan on making it well in middle age.
Until next week, if you’ve got applications that you’d like us to stare at wistfully and contemplate its mysteries, send them via our Twitter page at twitter.com/enConnected. We’ll see you here next week, oh and remember –when an app asks you whether you find its counterpart more attractive, just say no. We’re not joking.
