Weather forecasting has traditionally been a popular sphere of activity for smartphone application developers - literally every platform(even the obscure ones like the Motorola Z8/Z10) has like xy different (looking) weather forecasting programs. Elecont Software has just released its new flagship application, Weather - can it stack up?
After installing the application, your today screen contains an additional plug-in:
Clicking it takes you through a configuration dialog:
After that, you can select a city using the classic Country/City process. The program seems to have a very big database - I had no problems locating even smaller Austrian cities:
Once a city has been chosen, the program proceeds to downloading weather information:
Elecont has chosen a rather particular way of displaying data - the list at the top contains the data points, the bottom half of the screen shows some details about the currently-selected data point:
The program can break down forecasts on a per-hour scale(!!!), although some detail(e.g. humidity,…) is lost:
Elecont Weather is very flexible - you can configure literally every parameter: Animation speed of today plugin? Display format - 50 formats available. Style - 3 included. Automatic updating - when? Over which network? How often?
Finally, here are a few images showing some of the different configurations possible with the Today plugin. On a real device, data scrolls across the screen like a stock ticker while the icons show rudimentary animation:
This review looked at Elecont Weather v1.0.616s on a QTEK 8500 running Windows Mobile 5. The program needs a hefty 5000KB of storage memory and can be installed onto an external memory card without any excessive problems(it still eats an (annoying - remember, its a QTEK 8500) bit of storage RAM).
In the end, weather forecasting programs are a matter of taste. Elecont Weather has all features one expects from a weather forecast program. The ancient latinians already figures out that there’s no accounting for taste - I consider discussing fully-featured weather programs futile as everybody has his own favorite(for completely irrational reasons). Thus, why not get the free 3-day trial and see if you consider this well-done program worth 15 of your hard-earned US dollars!
