Mobility Digest Review: A look-see at Weather 2.0 by SPB

Had to rhyme… couldn’t help it… 🙂

So here we go.  Time to take a look at SPB Weather 2.0.1.
I installed it to my Device, which in this case was the AT&T Fuze, like I do just about everything, and it installed without a hitch.  I even installed it with TF3D enabled, and it didn’t break like I thought it POSSIBLY might.  I half expected it to disable TF3D and enable itself, but it didn’t, and that’s nice…

As you can see, I added a few things to my Today screen just so you could see how it looks with SPB Weather mixed in, and if you’re a Today fan, you’d like it.  The interface is FAST and kind-of fat finger friendly.  The weather icons are big and easy to click on, but I found myself clicking on the messages line instead of the next city/location over.

Keep reading after the break for more on my review of Spb Weather 2.0

OH and don’t forget to Register.  It promptly reminds you that you need to register and you only have 15 days of your trial left.

Clicking on the weather icon brings you to the 5 day outlook (today and 4 more days) which is nice, and clicking on the individual day brings you to a night/morning/day/evening outlook which is very nice.  You even get the Humidity, Barometric Pressure and wind which is impressive.  And again I’ll have to say that the speed is FAST!  Finger swipes are also active in the program, so if you are looking at Monday’s hour-by-hour forecast you can just swipe your finger Right to Left and get Tuesdays forecast.

The Options included are more than adequate.  You can choose from Fahrenheit and Celsius.  Would anyone want Kelvin?  For Wind Speed you can choose knots, m/s, km/h and mph.  Pressure is in mBar(hPa), mmHg, in. and if you know what those mean, you’re a better person than I.  The Sync options are nice for those who don’t have a data plan.  You can choose to Auto Update or Manually update and if you choose automatically updating you can choose the intervals from every hour to every day.  That may be something that I’d like different.  Possibly every 30 minutes maybe?  You can even change the sources(which I won’t break yet) from “Default Source” to “Foreca”(foreca.com) or “Weather.gov”.  You can even add your own source which is very cool.  And finally under settings you can set the cache folder.  So instead of looking through your registry it is built in which is NICE!
So on to adding a city.  When going to Add City, you can add one 4 different ways.  By “Name”, “Country”, “Airport”, “GPS”.  According to spbsoftwarehouse.com there are over 10,000 cities in the DB, which is nice but of course my town isn’t in there, but I wasn’t expecting it to be.  I do wonder if they would save space if they had people add their own cities which I’m sure most of them do anyways.  Not everyone lives in Agen France or New York City, NY.  So I tried to add my town on the “Edit Custom City” page, and got nothing which is disappointing and also clicking on the “Get Location by GPS” didn’t work either, so I ran GPSTest to see if getting a lock first would help out and it found my location almost instantly.  BUT when i hit “ok” to “Choose nearby city” the list was blank.  Disappointing.  I could add something close, Springfield, MA, but not my town.  I could add close cities or airports without a problem which is good for travelers, but I want to know what the temp is at my house.  And strangely enough when I choose “By GPS” I got Zahlah, Syria and Seeb, Ohman which aren’t really close to me.  So for me, Custom Locations is not so hot.

On to the cool features, the globe.  It loads up on your preferred city and then spins(like a globe hehe) to the other cities you have loaded.  By default it shows the satellite, but there are 4 total options, Satellite, Sky, Temperature and Precipitation.  You can even animate the options and zoom in and out which is all really cool and it moves very smoothly.  I even found a way to make the globe upside down, which is always interesting.  One option I wanted to take off was “Animation” because it would always move you to the next city and I didn’t really want to.  You can also turn off “Show Sky” which gives you a crisp globe which can be used for other things.

Overall SPB Weather is very good, slick and smooth and definitely recommended if you use the Today screen or SPB Mobile shell.  It gives you great information and the globe is a very nice tool to be able to use.  If you are a traveler, then I would HIGHLY recommend it for you.  For me, I couldn’t add my own town which is a big turn off since I don’t live in a big city, but if you are happy with the town or city next door, then go for it.  Also the fact that I use TF3D sort of keeps my options limited.  Very nice, very slick, but didn’t blow my mind enough to switch to the Today screen.  Maybe if I were using SPB Mobile Shell I’d feel differently.  Also at $19.95 It is pricey for those of us who are cheap. 🙂

On an afternote, I looked on the forums over at SPB and it seems that adding the cities is a bug, but a big on IMO which should have been found out before the release, so I wont change my thoughts on it.
-SCDavis