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
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.
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?
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?