Yahoo Adds To A Crowded Android Weather App Market

One app that I must have on my smartphone is a good weather app, and I keep my eye out for any new ones. It's surprising how many different weather apps are available for Android, and Yahoo has added another one to the crowd with the release of Yahoo Weather for Android. Yahoo Weather is not as full featured as other apps like Weather Bug, and it does not display a radar, which is a deal breaker in my opinion. However, Yahoo Weather may be the most visually appealing of the weather apps I have used on Android thanks to its integration with Flickr. In fact, it's the first Yahoo app that I have run across that leverages Flickr and I think it does it wonderfully. In the screenshot you see the main display of the Yahoo Weather app. The picture that you see in the background is retrieved from Flickr and the app attempts to use location information to match pictures with the weather location being displayed. When I first ran the app I was stunned to see a picture of Detroit displaying in the background. If you want to see only the picture you just flick up on the screen and the weather information swipes off the screen; flick again and the information returns. As you can tell the main screen in the app shows a minimal amount of weather information. To see more weather details, you simply rotate the phone from portrait to landscape. I think the app's use of the gyroscope is a really neat feature, and I applaud Yahoo for providing some unique features to their weather app. Like other weather apps, Yahoo Weather uses the phone's location services to display the weather at your current location. You can also specify locations for which you want weather information to display and you switch between each location by swiping left and right across the screen. You can share a screenshot of the main screen using any of the sharing options set up on your phone, including Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately the app has a tiny share button at the bottom right of the screen that is way too difficult to tap, but there is a simpler way to share by tapping Menu, Share. The app includes a widget that displays the same photo from Flickr that displays in the app, but I find having that picture in the background makes it too difficult to read the information on the widget. As I wrote earlier, I wouldn't rely on just Yahoo Weather, but I like the features it has enough that I intend to keep it on my phone.

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Yahoo Adds To A Crowded Android Weather App Market

Frank McPherson

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Frank McPherson