App review: Outside

by: Christine Chan

If there is one weather app that must be bought to replace the default Weather app on the iPhone, Outside is the app. The developers are Robocat, and this is their first app thrown into the fray of the App Store – but what a great job they’ve done with their first app.

Outside’s way of showing you the current temperature is to present an open window with an animated scene with a tree outside, representing the current weather, with a large and easy-to-read temperature reading above the tree. Another bonus is that in addition to telling you what temperature it is, it also tells you what the temperature feels like outside. Most people have had this experience – it feels different than the temperature described. Well, Outside understands that and also fulfills that part of wondering what the weather is like outside.

On this ‘Home’ screen, a swipe down will pull up additional info of the current weather, such as the current UV Index, Humidity, Cloud Cover, and Wind speeds. Swiping to the right will bring up the Forecast for the next five days (including the current day). Viewing each day’s forecast will also give you a view of what the weather will be like in the animated scenery window.

Notifications are a great addition to the app. There’s four types of notifications that you can add to your daily regime – Rain, Cold, T-shirt Weather, and High UV. Each notification lets you set the appropriate time to receive them, and you can customize the message that will appear in the notification popup and the sound. For Cold and T-shirt Weather, you can set the temperature that would be appropriate for you, and the High UV lets you choose the minimum UV Index for your personal preferences.

The most important thing to mention about the notifications is that it is a subscription based service. The reason behind this is that the developers need to pay for the servers monitoring the notifications, therefore, they need to get a small fee from the users in order to supply this service. With the initial purchase of the app, there is already a free 4-week subscription included. There’s an option to buy 90 days worth of notifications for $0.99.

When you start up Outside, it will ask if it can locate you using the iPhone Location Services. The only drawback is that the app seems to only store one location at a time – so if you frequently go around to different cities, you’ll have to manually set the location from within the app Preferences tab. It also seems to only ask to use Location Services on the first launch of the app, since I was unable to get it to ask again automatically. You can change the location in the Preferences, where you can enter manually or hit the GPS button to get a lock on your phone’s GPS signal. Hopefully this can be addressed in a future update, but for now, you’ll have to make-do with one city at a time with manual changing of cities.

The only other real setting in the Preferences tab is the Unit System of your choice (US or Metric) and Sounds.

Overall, Robocat has done an excellent job with their first app in the App Store. With or without notifications, I am in love with the lush interface of the app itself, and have already replaced the default Weather app with Outside. Notifications are a bonus, and the price is so small for such great practicality. The only thing that needs to be fixed is the Location. Other than that, the app is well worth your $3.

Learn more about Outside for iPhone in the App Store

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.