Reviewed: Fizz Weather 2.3

Posted by: Brandon Steili on Aug 02 2006 - 3,926 views

 

Solsie had a post on the first of August about this nifty looking app called Fizz Weather that had just recently been updated. While looking at the post I noticed the picture they had chosen showed my baby the Cingular 8125 with the application "running" on it, so I thought - wow … maybe this app will actually run good on my 8125 since they wouldn’t put a picture of it on there if it didn’t. But of course I love my 8125 being as stable as can be, so I broke out the Dell Axim x51v and loaded it up to test it out.

My inital thoughts - damm I’m stupid for using such a small screen all day long. But that’s not the fault of the Fizz Software people, so lets avoid that for now. Although I really do wish my 8125 had a bigger screen … ARG! Not Fizz’s fault!!!

Ok, enough fun. Let’s get serious. Initial impression - This app is incredible. The program flows wonderfully, is very logically laid out and has a ton of different settings. BUT … where’s the customization? Where’s the ability to make it "mine"? This is one part of things that I love about all of SBSH’s software - customization. If I want my icons to be pink, purple, hard-boiled, or rubber duckied, SBSH allows me to do it. Spb has a few options in thier weather app for icons (defaults), but not a lot and so far there aren’t any custom icons for Fizz. However, there are some different themes that allow the full application to have a nice feel if you aren’t big on the default setting. We’ll get to that later… for now, here’s the today screen, and the part you’ll likely see the most.

Now, that’s not too snazzy. But thankfully it appears there is some icon work being done in colaboration between Fizz and Juni (according to the Fizz forums) so keep your eyes open for upcoming releases that might allow a little more customization. Anybody who know themes knows who Juni is, so this is great news if it turns out to be a reality. 

Alright, so we’ve talked about the bad, so lets move on to the good. Better yet the great. The main application interface on this program is everything a PPC application should be (at least to me) - easy to navigate, easy to control, and not overwhelming. Oh, that and good looking. Most applications in the PPC arena are good at being functional, few are good at being a pleasure to look at as well.

I never touched the manual for this application but I was easily able to setup everything in a matter of seconds, and wouldn’t have a second thought about handing this program over to someone who wasn’t a techie. At the same time I know my wife would like using it (if she cared anything about the weather) because it doesn’t look geeky, it just feels good.

Did I mention nice to look at? I don’t think I did.

Did I mention functional? How about this for your current weather conditions? 

 

Ok, so there’s a taste of the visual impressiveness. Now, how is the rest of the application? Just as good. So, I’m just going to breeze through the rest of this review, not because I’m lazy but because I think most of the application really is capable of speaking for itself. Without further ado -

Options:

 

With localized support for English, French, German, Spanish, Italian & Dutch I think they’ve done a nice job of covering the major languages (of course they could have done more, but PPC’s only have so much room.) Temps can be in F or C (ick!) and the other options are fairly self explainitory, but if I didn’t explain them would it really be a review? There’s a total of 7 skins to choose from, but alas they are only skins for the main program and have no effect on the Today page icons. As I’m sure you can tell there’s an option for the Icon Set… yea… its only option is default. I think we covered that little letdown earlier didn’t we? The final option is for the selector. What’s the selector you ask? Well this is the Selector:

By choosing original for the option, you get this single Icon scrolling way to navigate between pages, if you choose the option for Icons, they lay out all the icons on a single page for you to select the page you wish to view. I really like both options, so I think they did a nice job of including this as a setting for people to choose.

Now, My biggest complain is when I can’t find the city I live in, or can’t get the right data for the city I live in. I mentioned this regarding Spb Weather the other day in a thread on Aximsite. Spb includes a single source & the problem continues on with Fizz Weather. BUT … Fizz did something right, quote "Fizz Traveller & Fizz Weather use
Customweather.com for our data source. We do not screen-scrap, or
manipulate HTML pages, instead we have a direct feed from the weather
suppliers servers.
At the moment we have no plans for a second source, Customweather
support over 58000 cities worldwide and most other sources can’t beat
that ! " I’m impressed. Now, I don’t think the city selection page shows 58,000 cities, but there’s a ton.

 

Now, we’ve got our (ok, my) city … so what’s the forecast you ask? Well, I’m glad you did. You choices are:

2-Day (actually a full 48 hours)

 

7-Day

 

Airport Delays

The Map (with moving images as an option)

 

And of course the Ski report. Now, showing you a ski report in the summer time seems a little stupid, so I’ll save you the "No Report" image. But just know you can see the ski report… if that matters to you. Now I live in Denver, so of course that’s a cool feature for me. But not so much in the summer.

Finally (and one of the coolest parts)… for those who like me want to keep track of the amount of data they are downloading, everything can be tracked and customized to tweak the application to your data plan.  There’s options for how often to download, if it needs to wait for a docking connection, and what items you want to download. Since the large set of moving map images can be a sizeable chunk of data it’s really nice to be able to pick and choose. You may also notice in the shot below, there’s a nice graph. The graph features individual bars for each page and you can select each bar to get the specific amount of data downloaded to support that page.

 Ok, so let’s wrap this up. Why? I’m getting old. It’s sleepy time. 

 Fizz did it right. This is an excellent application that although missing a few features (customization) would upon first impression seem like its worth every penny they ask for it. The trial is a bit short for me to give you my long run impressions, but I think it’s long enough to know that you couldn’t possibly go wrong. The price is right ($14.99) and with that you get free upgrades for life. So, would I buy it? Well, I own a weather app already, but I’m tempted as tempted gets. IF they add the ability to customize my icon sets? Absolutely. 

 From Fizz’s description: <— click to buy!

Fizz Weather is a fully featured application & home screen plug-in. Supporting over 58,000 cities world wide we have one of the best, most comprehensive weather reporting tools for your mobile device.Localized : English, French, German, Spanish, Italian & Dutch
New In Fizz Weather 2.3 - Free update for all registered customers.

    *Animated satellite maps - short, medium & long range.
    *Current conditions now displayed on your home-screen/today plugin.
    *Updated QVGA Smartphone home-screen layout for Motorola Q.
    *Auto-rotate option for home-screen/today plugin to cycle cities automatically.
    *Many smaller customer requests & bug fixes

Supporting Window Mobile 2003SE, & Windows Mobile 5. Main Features include :-     

    *Windows Mobile 5 Compatible, Square Screen Support, Landscape/Portrait Support
    *Global Coverage - Over 58,000 cities worldwide
    *7 day full forecasts, 2 day forecasts, 6 hourly intervals, Current location conditions.
    *Weather maps with zoom & pan support
    *Ski Reports from popular global resorts & Airport delays
    *Weather warnings and alerts for the US
    *Customizable interface with amazing new graphics and skins
    *Full VGA support for compatible devices including support for TrueVGA
    *Full control of downloads, update your weather whenever and however you want
    *Active Sync Synchronization
    *Download forecasts on the move
    *Graphical display to allow you to track your downloads
    *Customizable home-screen support
    *No Subscriptions - Pay once, that’s it !  
    *3 Day FREE Trial - Download today and try for free.
      
      Fizz Weather is for Smartphone & Pocket devices and you can buy for just $14.99
 

---

Tags: Fizz Weather, Pocket PC weather programs, Just Another Mobile Monday

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!