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The Weather Channel and Samsung join forces to create a new app, here's what it looks like [Gallery]
Cam Bunton
- Apr. 22nd 2016 6:16 am PT
@CamBunton
Samsung has joined forces with The Weather Channel to launch a brand new weather app, designed specifically for the latest Galaxy handsets. The Weather Channel for Samsung has a whole host of really useful features and metrics, and will be available on the Galaxy Apps store for Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S7 Edge and Galaxy Note 5.
Thanks to a discovery by Android Police, we were able to download the app directly from APK Mirror on to our Galaxy S7 Edge. It should work (mostly) on any Android device when side loaded, however.
On first impressions, it seems like a very well rounded weather app, and one that's far smoother and more attractive than Weather Channel's usual apps, although it's not perfect yet.
The default home screen is a large attractive graphic (see the sun above) with the weather conditions for your current location. If there are any weather warnings applicable, those will show up beneath the temperature/weather in a list along with satellite video showing the upcoming weather movements. Color and graphics seems to depend on the time of day and conditions.
This 'home' screen is actually the top of a very long, scrollable screen which contains various Material-like cards interspersed with ads and related videos. This includes a 'Now' card with current temperature, wind speed, humidity, dew point, pressure and UV index along with a sunrise/sunset graphic. There are also cards for hourly and daily weather breakdowns as well as a weather radar card. You can see the the extremely long screen below (sorry!).
Tapping on each of these individual cards brings up its own relevant screen. For the 15-day breakdown you get another long, scrollable screen full of cards, each showing an overview of each day's predicted weather. Metrics include expected weather, temperature, wind speed range and sunrise/sunset times.
The hourly breakdown is a much simpler overview of the current day hour-by-hour, whereas the Radar gives you access to see current satellite imagery with various weather metrics overlaid to give you the big picture view of your area.
It's worth noting that — as well as having it show your current location — you can search for and add various other cities from around the globe by tapping the drop-down menu on the top toolbar and selecting 'manage locations'. You access any individual city by selecting that place from the created list of cities.
Of course, the app comes with its own selection of notification options to warn you of impending doom or, in my case, constant drizzle and mild winds. It also has a number of different widget options which show up in your widgets drawer as soon as you install the app.
All the widgets have a flat, rich blue background to match the app's default color scheme, and each has its own purpose. One has an alarm feature that can wake you up with weather alerts according to your own schedule each morning. There are also general weather status widgets, some include time, others just a weather icon. There's also a permanent weather card in the drop-down notification shade.
One confusing part about the widgets is that they don't seem capable of being resized. That means a 4×2 or 4×1 sized widget looks very unusual when you have a screen set up with a grid containing five columns of apps.
Still, if you want to download it, you can snag it free from APK Mirror to try it on your own device. Let us know how you like it in the comments below.
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Samsung is a technology conglomerate based out of South Korea that makes some of the world's most popular smartphones such as the Galaxy S20, S20+, S20 Ultra, and Note 10.
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