The 7 Best Weather Apps for Android Phones

Carrot Weather is a fully-featured weather app that displays everything you'd want from temperature and humidity to UV levels and wind speeds. What really sets Carrot Weather apart from its rivals is its dynamic animated backgrounds, which change depending on location, and the numerous quirky phrases that populate its screens.

What We Like:

• Loads of fun trivia about different locations.
• The dynamic animated backgrounds are consistently entertaining.

What We Don't Like:

• In-app purchases of up to $5.99 are required to unlock the widget and Time Travel feature.
• The weather widget is very barebones.

Dark Sky has a reputation for being one of the best Android weather apps and it's well deserved. The app features detailed weather forecasts that can be broken down to the minute instead of the hour and there are a variety of digital maps for viewing current and historical weather patterns all across the globe.

Dark Sky also boasts an animated radar view of storm fronts which can be viewed in real-time; these will appeal greatly to the weather enthusiasts out there.

What We Like:

• Incredibly accurate weather reporting.
• Most of the must-have features are available for free.

What We Don't Like:

• Many of the app's features, such as the down-to-the-minute weather report, require an annual subscription. This is only $2.99, however.
• Dark Sky is only available in the US, UK, Ireland, and Puerto Rico.

Weather Underground is an app powered by its own community who own over 250,000 personal weather stations. This may sound a bit untrustworthy at first, but the company has been around since 1995, is the source of weather reports for numerous companies, and its forecasts are genuinely reliable; perhaps more so than some of its rivals, depending on your location.

The free Weather Underground app is packed full of features from basic weather data and widgets to information on flu outbreaks. There's even a National Weather Service Radio feed to listen to.

What We Like:

• Special Health screen that lists UV, air quality, and flu danger levels.
• Customizable weather widgets.

What We Don't Like:

• The app contains ads which require a $1.99 payment to remove.
• No option to compare weather data with other sources.

Arcus Weather is a free Android weather app that creates forecasts based on the average of what other services predict, with the aim of producing the most-accurate weather report. Almost all of the content in Arcus Weather is free, with the exception of some features like adding more than two custom locations and removing ads, which require in-app purchases of around $2.

What We Like:

• Weather data is collected from a variety of sources.
• Android weather widget is free.

What We Don't Like:

• Radar feature doesn't work outside the of the U.S.
• Down-to-the-minute weather forecasts are limited to the U.S. and the U.K.

Few Android weather apps have put as much effort into their design as Today Weather. Today Weather boasts a clean, easy-to-navigate layout with numerous small touches, such as its mini animated weather icons.

This Android weather app renders forecasts against randomly generated photos that match the weather and location chosen from a library of over 1,000 images. You're also given the option to take your own photo of your surroundings, which you can use when sharing a weather report via email or social media; very few weather apps allow this.

Today Weather allows for the pinning of numerous locations via its widget and also provides information on sunrise and sunset times and moon cycles.

What We Like:

• Stunning app design with a functional and attractive look.
• Addition of daily pollen count will be appreciated by some users.

What We Don't Like:

• Pollen count only works for U.S. locations.
• Radar quality isn't on par with the rest of the app.

Weather Timeline is a weather app for Android users who want to try something different on their smartphone or tablet. In addition to the primary display of the day's weather and current temperature, Weather Timeline creates a stylized graph of the weather forecast for the rest of the day in bi-hourly intervals, thereby making the data faster to browse and easier to consume.

These timelines can be customized with different colors and the source of the weather reporting can be changed for a more controlled experience.

What We Like:

• Option to change weather forecast providers.
• Streamlined look that's easy to understand quickly.

What We Don't Like:

• Lacks the features of other weather apps on Android.
• Artwork on Places widgets looks cheap and unattractive.

1Weather is easily one of the best-looking weather apps on Android. This app features professionally designed icons and graphs that manage to make even the most-mundane weather data engaging, and its dynamic backgrounds that change depending on the current weather conditions really set it apart.

In addition to all of the usual weather forecast information, 1Weather also includes a video series called the PrecisionCast that features up-to-date weather reporting and predictions for the next 12 weeks.

What We Like:

• Visually impressive with animated icons and dynamic weather backgrounds.
• Options to use your own photos as background imagery.

What We Don't Like:

• The 12-week forecast sounds impressive but should be used as a rough guide only.
• Severe weather alerts are for the U.S. only.