Just when you thought we reached a saturation point with weather apps in the Windows Phone Store, here comes another option to consider. Meteolens is a clean looking, easy to use weather app.
The Windows Phone app covers the basic weather conditions and offers you several extended forecast displays. Meteolens does have Live Tile support and automatic location services, but lacks lockscreen support and weather radar options.
Still, it's an attractive option to consider if you are looking for a basic weather app for your Windows Phone. What may turn many away is the cost.
When you first launch Meteolens, you will be prompted to choose between the Trial Version and the Premium Version that has an annual fee ($1.99). At this point I can see many reaching to uninstall the app and in fairness to the developer, they do lead their Store description with this information.
However, for those who dig into the Trial Version here is what you will find. Meteolens is laid out in panoramic fashions and includes the following pages:
- Current Conditions: This will display your forecast city information, an icon representing your current weather, the current temperature, a Feels Like temperature and what to expect in the next hour.
- Today: This page offers a little more information on what to expect during the day. Here you will find the forecast high/low temps, the chance of precipitation, precipitation rate, humidity levels and wind speed/direction.
- Next 24 Hours: This page, as you might guess, offers you a forecast for the next twenty-four hours.
- Next 7 Days: A seven-day forecast display.
In tapping an individual day or time period on the 24 Hour or 7 Days pages, you can expand that forecast for a little more information on what to expect from the weather.
Throughout the app, you will find a three-dot menu at the bottom of the page. This menu will expose options to refresh the weather information, view/manage your locations and access Meteolens' settings. As far as locations are concerned, Meteolens has the option to automatically update your forecast location based on your Windows Phone location services or by manually entering cities.
Settings are rather minimal with options to set the data format (Imperial or Metric), the time format, turning on/off the Live Tile and choosing the Tile background (image or transparent).
The Meteolens Store description notes support for severe weather alerts, but they are for unlisted, specific regions only. I haven't seen any alerts come across Meteolens over the past few days. Granted, I haven't had any severe weather either.
Overall Impressions
While a very basic weather app, Meteolens looks good. The background images for the app is a collection of some rather nice weather related pictures. The layout is clean and the information is straightforward. Speaking of images, they have that "living image" effect where the photo zooms in and out ever so slowly. It's an interesting change from the run of the mill animated weather images.
Now for the $1.99 question. Is Meteolens worth paying two bucks a year? While I liked the app, I'm struggling to find a reason to pay that much for a basic weather app annually. It is an interesting app but you don't have weather radar, lockscreen support or any other premium styled feature. There are several other Windows Phone weather apps available that are comparably priced (or free) and offer more features than Meteolens.
My guess the cost is associated with the weather provider for Meteolens. Regardless of the reason, I could see paying $1.99 once for this app if had a little more meat on the bone, but not on an annual basis. If I'm missing the mark on this one, feel free to toss out your recommendation for Meteolens in the comments below.
Download Meteolens from the Windows Phone Store (Trial / $1.99 annually)
