The only thing predictable about Syracuse weather is its unpredictability. It may have been 70 degrees and sunny when you walked to class, but that is no guarantee you won’t need your rain boots for the walk home.

Chances are you already use your smartphone to track the weather. But if your current weather app seems a little stale or you just have a weakness for good design, check out Nice Weather, a minimalist weather app released for free into the Google Play store last week by French developer Aurélien Hubert.

After finding your location via manual entry or your phone’s built in location services, Nice Weather represents the day’s weather graphically. The background color of the app changes in response to the forecast — yellow for sun, gray for cloudy and so on.

The day’s temperature is shown as an interactive line graph, rising or falling based on the predicted temperature. A second, shaded graph shows the chance of precipitation for the day. By sliding the graphs up and down, users can pull up specific data on the day’s weather in three-hour intervals.

Swiping to the right brings up the forecast for the next five days, all of which is stored locally so it can be accessed offline. If you happen to have more European sensibilities, the app can also be customized to show metric or imperial measurements, and is available in French, Dutch and Finnish as well as English.

While the detailed forecasts and customization options are nice, Nice Weather is a standout because of its intuitive design. Thanks to the inclusion of color and the graphs, it only takes a quick glance to get an idea of what type of weather you need to prepare for. Currently there is no associated widget available, but hopefully Hubert has it in the works. This app would be handy to have directly on the home screen of your computer.

Unfortunately, Nice Weather is still suffering from some bugs that interfere with the app’s performance. In my own experience, the app was not always able to secure a location and sometimes quit unexpectedly. Reviewers on Google Play reported other issues with incorrect time and weather data.

Given that the app has been available to the public for less than a week, it’s fair to overlook Nice Weather’s flaws — for the moment — and applaud its creative reinterpretation of a smartphone staple.

Published on September 30, 2013 at 12:14 am

Contact Linda: lggorman@syr.edu