The Best (and Worst) Free Android Weather Apps

 

Ah, Autumn. When cooler temperatures and colorful leaves make the outdoors more inviting than ever. But fall weather can go from sun-drenched rapture to cold, wet, misery in a moment. When Mother Nature is in a bad mood, it helps to keep an eye on what’s going on in the sky, and these Android apps can help. Well, some of them at least.

Information, Style, and Widgets
When testing weather apps, I spend most of my time evaluating the apps as apps. Effective design is one of my key criteria: I want my ideal weather app to be visually pleasing and easy to use. I consider not only what information the apps present, but also how and where they present it. If I have to dig through several screens to find out when it’s going to rain, the app is off to a bad start.

I also look at widgets, which are a defining characteristic of the Android experience (and nowhere to be found on iOS). I assume that most Android users prefer to get their weather information from a handy widget, rather than having to open an app. The number of widgets included with weather apps varies, but more widgets isn’t necessarily better. Again, I look primarily at design and how the widgets present their information.

To my surprise, performance turns out to be a differentiator in the weather app category. A few of the apps I’ve tested are sluggish, some to the point of being almost unusable.

Accuracy Schmaccuracy
What I don’t look for is whether or not the predicted weather came to pass. Am I lazy? Absolutely. But that’s not why I left accuracy off my checklist.

My reasons are two-fold: First, most weather apps get the bulk of their data from the National Weather Service. Some even pull the predictions from services like Weather Underground or AccuWeather. Some companies, like The Weather Channel, have their own predictive models, but many apps are just shells into which data flows.

Second, and more importantly, to really determine the accuracy of the service’s model we’d have to perform exhaustive tests across the globe. We’re simply not set up to tackle that kind of challenge. As it stands, we’ll assume that if a company has invested the time and effort to create its own predictive models for something as complex as weather then it probably knows more about meteorology than I do. For what it’s worth, the apps all seemed quite accurate during my testing.

If you’re really concerned about accuracy, consider getting a weather station of your own. I’ve looked at the Ambient Weather WS-1001-WIFI Observer and the BloomSky Solar Powered Weather Station and found it surprisingly compelling to have my own, hyper-local weather data. Some stations, like the Observer, hook into Weather Underground’s service, giving you a custom forecast and improving the overall service. Plus, setting up and maintaining a weather station is a fun project—just maybe not right before a hurricane hits.

I Don’t See My Favorite App!
When I began this project, I did not fully appreciate the sheer number of weather apps on Google Play. In the end, I picked the ones that I thought offered something unique and the ones that are the most popular. If your favorite app didn’t make the cut, let me know in the comments below. The next time you stop by, you’ll probably see spiffy, new reviews.

 

Weather Underground       Free Weather Underground is a darling among weather geeks, using its network of personal weather stations to supplement the weather data the other guys draw from. That community aspect even makes its way into the Android app, letting users submit their own weather observations with just a few taps. A recent design refresh has made this very capable app sleek and tasteful, landing it in the top spot as my Editors’ Choice for Android weather apps.

 

Yahoo Weather     Free A very close runner-up, Yahoo Weather is a beautifully designed app that brings in the best features of other weather apps—and even improves on them. Crowd-sourced images from Flickr are featured prominently and really bring this app to life. What’s missing? More radar map options, and a tool for crowd-sourcing weather observations. If you don’t like Weather Underground, give this one a spin.

 

The Weather Channel       Free I got off to a bad start with the Weather Channel app, but an update changed everything. The new version of the Weather Channel app is a slick and capable companion.

 

1Weather     Free 1Weather hangs its hat on its design and a slew of slick widgets to deliver your weather information. To me, however, the app feels a bit stale, and its design is more glitz than substance. That said, this app has one of the best hourly and weekly forecast pages of any app I’ve tested. Other developers should steal these ideas.

 

Weather     Free If you’re a fan of iOS’s pre-7.0 skeumorphism, you’ll probably appreciate the clean look and wood-grain theme of Weather for Android. This app is little on the skimpy side, but it delivers all the important information.

 

AccuWeather       Free AccuWeather is in serious need of a design refresh on Android. It feels very dated, but, worse yet, it’s sluggish. While it does provide multilingual video forecasts, I would rather use the AccuWeather website than muck around in the app. Recent updates may have changed the story, and I’ll be investigating soon.

 

WeatherBug       Free WeatherBug bugged me so much with its dog-slow performance that I couldn’t wait to get it off my Android phone. Add to that a scant collection of lackluster widgets and poor design, and you’ve got a real trifecta of unpleasantness. Not even WeatherBug’s unique lightning-detection feature can do much to retrieve this one.