The Weather Company is introducing a major update for its The Weather Channel iPhone app today, introducing a new visual design, longer-range weather forecasts, user-tailored weather updates, and support for 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus.
When opening The Weather Channel app, users will be greeted with a personalized dynamic home screen that offers up custom weather information that's based on user location. It includes current weather conditions and information that changes based on time of day, weather severity, and changing local weather conditions. For example, if rain is predicted later in the day, a user might get a rain alert, or during a storm, a severe weather alert might be visible on the home screen.
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A completely new visual aesthetic is the chief change in The Weather Channel app, with a design that's cleaner and more informative. Gone is the circle-shaped weather listing in the middle of the app, which has been replaced with a full screen image on the home screen overlaid with relevant weather information.
Drilling down into the app will show an easy-to-read list of more detailed weather information, like wind speed, humidity, pressure, and more, along with a new 15-day forecast, which is a full five days longer than the previous 10-day forecast. As with the current app, the new app includes information on local health alerts, pollen levels, airport conditions, weather news, and beach conditions.
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It continues to offer Weather Channel news updates, breaking news on weather, local maps, interactive radar maps for rain and snow information, hurricane reports, relevant weather-related notifications, and social weather reports that aggregate weather reports from social networks. New to the app is The Lift, an Al Roker-hosted mobile-only morning show that combines weather-related news, nature stories, viral videos, and more.
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iPhone users with an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus can use 3D Touch on the app's icon on the Home screen to enter one of four user-customized screens that include radar, saved locations, current location, search, or tools for sharing the weather.
For those who don't want to see ads within The Weather Channel app, there's a new $3.99 in-app purchase option that will remove all ads for one year. The $3.99 fee must be renewed each year to keep ads from being displayed.
The Weather Channel for iPhone can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
Really I wish someone would make a good weather.gov app. It is for sure the best weather source. The problem with for-profit weather prediction is that there is an incentive to make sensational headlines and predictions. The crazier the prediction, the more clicks and revenue. There is very little incentive to be accurate in the prediction. On the flip side, NOAA and NWS receive federal funding and their data is used to plan all sorts of government activity, from military to your local state road service. They have a good incentive to be as accurate as possible, and really don't care how many clicks they get. I trust them more because of this.
Last time I used the Weather Channel's app, I had serious battery drain issues.