Weather Doodle Gives You A Fresh New Perspective On Weather
Weather Doodle ($0.99) by Tiny Mammal is a fresh take on weather for your iPhone and iPad.
When it comes to weather apps, there's never seems to be an end to them. For the most part, they all do the same thing, but in different ways. Now Weather Doodle can jump into that fray, but it does offer something unique - doodled illustrations that are animated to represent the weather.
The first thing Weather Doodle will do is ask for your location. This is pretty accurate, but if you're one of those paranoid types, you can deny it and manually select your location too. Weather Doodle will then pull up the information for your current or selected area. The interface of Weather Doodle represents something like those old television sets where the screen was kind of curved - this is the window that will display the beautiful weather illustrations.
You'll notice that it will show the city name and a location underneath - this is where the app is gathering it's weather information from (the weather stations located around the city). The first result is normally the one that is closest and probably more accurate and reliable than others on the list, but you can choose this in the settings, as well as more locations.
When you have locations you want to know the weather for, you can swipe back and forth between screens (if you have more than one location) to change cities. You get a display of the temperature as well as a beautifully crafted illustration of the weather.
The bottom will show "current" and "forecast." If you go to the Forecast view, you'll get a five day forecast with a brief snippet of information about that day's weather along with a illustrations depicting it.
At the bottom left corner, there's a button with a circle on it. This button will toggle the detailed view that will show up with the current weather information. This detail includes Conditions, WInd, and Humidity. You can hide it again by tapping the same button.
Back on the Current view, you can even share the weather on Facebook, Twitter, email, Tumblr, or copy or save to the Photo Album. All of these can be accessed by tapping on the button with the all-to-familiar 'f' of Facebook.
The 'i' button will bring up the Settings. You can manage the locations here, along with the weather station. Additionally, there are different art packs that you can purchase from the in-app "Art Shoppe," that you can get for $0.99 each. So far, there are only two different art styles in the shop, but the developer should have more in the future. Purchases can be restored, from which you can then access in the settings under "Choose Current Art." Detailed data can be displayed by default or hidden, which you toggle. The default temperature is fahrenheit, and default distance is miles, but these can be changed to celsius and kilometer if desired.
I found Weather Doodle to be a pleasure to use. The artistic illustrations to display the weather is a nice change from other weather apps. However, if you're looking for something that is more detailed, then Weather Doodle is not for you. But if you just want a refreshing change in weather apps, then this is worth a shot. It provides accurate information thanks to the weather station database and is great to look at.
