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Short Review: Fizz Weather - Smartphone

Posted by: Brandon Steili on Nov 15 2006 - 686 views

Alright folks - Time for a little Fizz lovin again. Honestly I moved away from Fizz weather a while back - And not because of any software flaws, but because I had this whole all Spb today screen thing going on with my 8125 (and I still do). But I got to thinking I wonder if there’s a Home Screen weather do-hickey for smartphones. Well there is YAY! While I’m sure there’s others Fizz was one of the first to come to mind, and surprise surprise it’s as stellar as the Pocket PC version - and honeslty 100% as functional. Truth be told if I had to pick a version it would be the smartphone version because the Home Screen replacement is excellent! Read on past the break for more -

Without further ado - the Fizz Weather Home Screen on smartphone -which of course can have the background and many other things modified as it’s written in XML.

Personally I was very impressed with the Home Screen. Fizz recognized there’s no need for a big button launcher, and that the information doesn’t need to be all fancy - it just needs to be there. The only somewhat annoying this is that the Text Messages tab could/should disappear when there aren’t any (which the mail tab does) - but other than that the screen is nicely laid out. But again to be honest the Home/Today screen isn’t where Fizz Weather shines. It’s all about the interface of the full application. I’m not going to re-hash most of the application (you can read the bulk of it HERE in my prior review for Pocket PC) - I’m going to toss in mostly just a screenshot tour and a couple thoughts as we go along. Quick thought - I would love to see a longer preview period for the demo - 3 days just isn’t enough to make sure you really want to pony up for most programs. I think it could be for this one, but still a longer trial period would be nice.

The original view: Move the control left or right to select the various pages in the program.

The icon view (my preference)

You can’t possibly imagine how pretty this program is. I said in the last review, and it remains just as true - Fizz sets the bar as far as I’m concerned for making an application look good. Teamed with an excellent screen (like on the SDA I’m using) and the program is just amazing to look at.

Here’s a few more - keep in mind this is no where near what it looks like - it’s 10 times better on the smartphone!!!

Ok, so let’s touch on something else that’s a little more important than just pretty pictures. Data useage. Nothing kills a program more than it being incredibly data hungry on a smartphone when you have a limited data plan. Here’s another part where Fizz shines. For one they let you choose what the program does and doesn’t download. The other really cool thing is that you get to choose when it does and doesn’t download - Observe:

Slick right? So how does it work? Well - I’m going to present a couple more screenshots. The first is just the Current, 2-Day, 7 Day and Ski report (I live in Denver it’s important) - The second is all the goodies! Note the (total) data amount differences: