By The Weather Channel has released a pretty big update/overhaul for their Android app today. The most noticeable changes come in the user interface, which received updated graphics and the addition of custom tabs for different locations. A new widget comes in several sizes, and multiple widgets can be set each to a different location.
Other enhancements include “Did you know?” weather facts and TruPoint Nowcasts for up to the minute weather data. Backend enhancements improve battery life, help with location accuracy, and decrease load times.
I must admit I haven’t checked out The Weather Channel app since last year, having uninstalled it long ago due to an ugly interface and no real benefits over other weather apps. Recently I have been using the Android 2.1 News and Weather widget, but this version of the Weather Channel’s app shows some promise. What do you all think?
You can snap the QR code to grab the app from the Android Market now:
hmmm.. i dunno weatherbug’s new radar widget is incredibly awesome and reliable. I’ll try this one out though.
Tried it out because I live in a city with unpredictable weather. Accuweather on Palm Pre was good, but the android version wasn’t as good as this Weather Channel widget.
Pretty cool but I like the stock 2.1 weather app best. All the other fancy stuff I wouldn’t ever use. I live in Oregon and the forecast is usually 7 days of rain.
Meh, it’s not that great really, the fact that there’s always an American ad at the bottom bugs me too, UK people use it too.
just loaded it.
seems to work better.
over the weekend the weather channel widget alerted me on numerous occasions about some serious storm activity in western tennessee where i live, kudos to them.
The 2.1 stock weather wdiget is perfect. a lot of information, gorgeous icons, and the hour drag forcecast graph. Best I’ve used, sticking with it.
Very nice! I was pleasantly surprised. I like it better than the HTC Sense UI one.
looking good!!!
can’t wait for my incredible:DD
Definitely looks better than the previous version, but it is running god awful slow!
Big improvement. I might not have bought WeatherBug Elite if this had been around for free when I got my N1. I think WB may still be a bit better, especially with radar animation, which for me is the central feature of any weather app. I’ll keep them both on the phone for a while and see which I prefer over time and varying weather conditions.
I’ll stick with weatherbug elite.
Hmm, quite a bit improvement over the old version. But alas, it still doesn’t hold a candle to Weatherbug Elite, or even the free Weatherbug for that matter. WBE was well worth what I paid for it, and the incremental changes over the past few months show steady improvement. My only real problem with the app as of right now is the fact that I can’t change that ugly cartoony blue background color. I want to be able to make it black, or at least dark gray, or heck, even a nice warm green if I want. Oh well, I’m sure they’ll be adding that soon in another update.
Switching from city to city on moto droid is slow.
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The setting to only notify of “most severe” weather alerts is encouraging. I’m tired of getting alerts everyday from weatherbug alerting me of “elevated fire risk” or “wind advisory. Seriously weatherbug?
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Hoping this only alerts me for severe thunderstorm and tornado watches.
Can it be right that it can’t show the temperature in celcius (metric)? It’s possible in the widget, but when you launch the app, it shows the temperature in fahrenheit.
i liked the weather chan one because it seems to cause less battery drain on my eris. the weatherbug one killed performance and battery life
I think it’s still ugly. I use Weather Widget off market mainly because it’s pretty and can be skinned and somewhat configured.
I updated the app yesterday and noticed the much improved look to the interface, but it had some lag when switching screens. Also the real time data is 45 minutes behind which is no good when a storm is ontop of you and you need a current map.
Blah. Grabbed it, and yeah it’s better than the old version, but still not great.
I hadn’t used WeatherBug, so I grabbed it to compare side-by-side, and like WB way better. Ended up buying WeatherBug Elite because I liked it so much!
Now I wish they’d merge. Both have valuable traits. That wasn’t true when the WC app first dropped.
I like it and use it. I tried weatherbug first but it …well it had bugs. I didn’t like the way it played with my gps. This app plays much nicer. BTW – pr3w from the main screen hit the menu and find settings. You can set it to use metric.
Haven’t you people heard of Celsius . . and Europe and Australia and . . .
O sorry you are the ones that elected Bush. . .sorry
Newest version has eliminated the majority of ringtone choices for severe weather notifications. My favorite is now missing. Wish I could downgrade to prior level.
I think the latest weather channel app is what has been causing my phone to run SLOOOOW. I’ve noticed lag of up to 10 seconds when trying to drop to the home screen. I’ve been systematically eliminating apps and it seems like the Weather Channel app was the culprit.
I’m going to try WeatherBug out per the comments in this thread. I like the Weather Channel app overall but killing my phone performance is a non-starter for me.
It really is about time they released the Weather Channel Max app for Android. Coming from the iPhone to the Evo 4G, this is the only app I really miss. Was far better than Weatherbug Elite, but sadly, that’s the only worthwhile weather app available on Android right now..
I loved this app and used it for several weeks. Yesterday it started to make my phone shut down. After a hard reset I added the app again and the phone started shutting down again. I removed it and will try again in a week or so.
Why no metric or celsius versions.???? Great app but not really practical for the metric user.