Review: Rain Gauge UWP: nice concept, but it's not fully working
Score:
72%
Yes, yes, I'm English and like all Englishmen I have an obsession with when it's next going to rain. Either because I want it (dry garden) or because I don't (I'd get wet and need to remember an umbrella!) Rain Gauge is a UWP application for all Windows 10 devices (including Mobile) that claims to provide this crucial information, in addition to animated radar maps and a general forecast. For countries within striking distance of the Netherlands, anyway (UK is supported).
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
From the Store description:
With Rain Gauge you can check at any time of the day how much it's going to rain on your specific location in the next 3 hours! Rain Gauge is also able to give you the current weather, and the forecasts for the upcoming and with the awesome rain-radar you're able to see what's coming up!
Heck, you don't even have to open Rain Gauge! Setup rain alerts to get a message once it's going to rain, and check the live tile for the rain graph. When it's dry, the live tiles will show you the current weather, and the forecasts on the back!
RAIN DATA IS ONLY SUPPORTED IN: UK, IRELAND, GERMANY, NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, LUXEMBOURG AND DENMARK.
- Simple and beautiful overview showing the rainfall per 5 minutes in the upcoming 3 hours.
- Zoomable radar view that shows the actual radar images.
- Extended weather information: check the current weather or hourly/daily forecast.
- Live tiles: always up to date on the current weather or rainfall on your start screen.
- Rain alerts: get notified when rain is incoming!
- Dark or light color theme.
- Easy-to-use settings: change your default language, live tile preferences or adjust the rain notifications!
As usual, this is well worth a walk through, let's see what does and doesn't work:
The opening prediction - bold and confident, though it didn't actually rain for me at that time - weather forecasting is always a bit of a gamble! (right) the forecast view, with some nice visuals.
Swipe down to get a full five day forecast/overview, with humidity, wind, and cloud cover detailed stats; (right) the animated radar view, here showing a cloud mass sweeping past Ireland. I presume these are JUST rain clouds, since as I write this I'm looking up in to an overcast, cloud-filled sky and yet Rain Gauge shows no cloud masses in my area.
Finding a location is a little fiddly in that you have to tap the 'return' on the softeare keyboard in order to actually kick off the quick matching. But it does work, even though 'Seattle' (here) isn't supported fully for predictions; (right) alerts and live tile functionality didn't work for me, but they're here anyway. Is it just my phone? I've tried all the usual power cycles, I've tried waiting a couple of hours, etc. To no avail.
Nice to have a choice of themes, this is the default dark one, all very efficient; (right) here's the list of premium benefits, though I think I'd want the basics to work more reliably before I dipped into my wallet...
More animated rain radar, the graphics get downloaded at animation time, first frame by frame slowly (about five seconds for all) and then you can replay more smoothly, etc. (right) the Precipitation bar chart view. All very clear, even if the weather here wasn't obliging by being more dramatic.
Curiously, although there's a whole Settings tab for setting the live tile operation, I couldn't get this functionality to work. My pinned Rain Guage tile remained just its icon - and I do wonder whether the developer has tested this with the latest Windows 10 Mobile builds. Also of note on this front is that the only (theoretical) live tile layout is a weather forecast - I'd have liked a simple textual "Rain expected at nn:nn" display. Oh well.
Add in the missing notifications (under Windows 10 Mobile branch 1709, at least, which was the one tested), add in the somewhat iffy forecasts, and I'd urge the developer to test more and release an update. There's so much of potential here, but I just have zero confidence in the current version, hence the low review score. (I'll update the review if an update fixes things)
Still an interesting application and one worth supporting if you're carrying on with Windows 10 Mobile in 2020. It's been dry over Christmas here and so I haven't been able to really put the predictions to the test, but I'd welcome data points from others, from rainier countries!!
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at