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Dark Sky app for Android

The popular iOS weather application Dark Sky has been ported to Android. The first public version is now available on Google Play, but it is limited to the US currently.

If you check the ratings of the application, you will notice that they are quite bad, and the reason for that is that the developers decided to offer a subscription-based premium version that costs $2.99 on Android, while the iOS version is available for a one-time payment of $3.99.

Anyway, if you look beyond that for a moment and concentrate on features and the app itself, you get the following.

First, there is a free version that gets you a full 24-hour forecast, and a detailed 7-day forecast. Add to that current conditions, and weather maps and that is about it.

Dark Sky

dark sky weather app

The premium version of Dark Sky adds to that the popular down to the minute forecasts which tell you exactly when it starts to rain and when rain stops again, rain notifications and alerts, daily summaries which may be displayed in the morning directly on the lock screen, and support for weather widgets that you can place on your homescreen.

The app displays options to display the day's and the week's weather information at the bottom of the screen.

Tap on an item and weather information are retrieved from forecast.io and displayed in the application.

A two-hour bar is displayed for the whole day which highlights weather condition changes using colors and descriptors.

You may switch from the temperature forecast to precipitation, wind, humidity and UV index forecasts instead using the menu displayed at the bottom of the screen.

dark sky

The seven day weather forecast displays the the temperature range of the next seven days. A tap on any day here displays the same forecast bar that you get on the 24-hour forecast screen.

The map view finally displays the changing weather conditions on a map that you can rotate freely.

The options are fairly basic. You can change the units from the US imperial system to the system used in the UK and Canada, or the metric system. You won't find options to change the 12-hour format to the 24-hour format though.

Closing Words

The free version of Dark Sky is not a bad weather application but it does not offer anything out of the ordinary either.

If you compare it to long standing established weather applications like Weather Timeline, then you will probably come to the conclusion that the latter has more to offer than Dark Sky.

The premium version adds all the nice features of the iOS application but it comes with a subscription cost which, while low at $2.99 per year, many are probably not willed to pay especially since the iOS version is available for a one-time payment of $3.99 instead.

Add the limited availability of the application to all that, and it is very likely that the majority of Android users will stick with established applications instead.

Now You: Do you use a weather app? If so, which and why?

 

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

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