If you’re like me, you want to know the weather forecast before leaving the house. Will you need a warm hat or a light jacket? Sunglasses or umbrella? And will it stop raining before the weekend?

Mobile weather apps can help. Free mobile apps for your Nokia touchscreen device? Even better.

To learn more, I recently tested three free weather apps on a Nokia N8: Weather Touch, ForecaWeather Free, and the AccuWeather widget.

An open Internet connection is required by all three of these free weather apps, so local charges could apply. Also, because they are free, all three of these apps display banner ads. On Weather Touch and AccuWeather, the ads are discretely placed at the bottom or top of the screen. By contrast, on ForecaWeather Free, the ads appear in the middle of the screen for about 5 seconds, over a greyed-out version of the screen information. When the ad disappears, the screen refreshes itself at full colour.

Which one is best for you? It depends on what information, and how much detail, you want and need. While all three work as advertised, they differ dramatically in their features and options. Let’s take a look.

Weather Touch

This app, published by Offscreen Technologies Inc., is the simplest, most basic and fastest of the three free weather apps I tested. Weather Touch provides just two sets of weather information – no more, no less.

First, when your device is in portrait mode, Weather Touch takes a few seconds to determines your location. Then it downloads the most basic weather information for your nearest large city: the current local temperature — in your choice of Fahrenheit or Celsius – the day’s expected high and low temperatures, and a cloud/sun icon showing the current weather conditions:

Second, turn your device in landscape mode. Now WeatherTouch provides a thumbnail five-day forecast. For each day, you get the expected high and low temperatures, along with the general forecast, as shown by a sun/cloud icon:

That’s it. You can’t check the weather in other locations, you can’t see a longer-term forecast for your location, and you can’t get any other weather information other than temperatures and general sunny/cloudy conditions.

But on the plus side, Weather Touch is fast and simple. Aside from choosing Fahrenheit or Celsius — which you select by simply touching the ‘C’ or ‘F’ to the right of the temperature reading — there are no settings or locations to select. There are only two buttons: an information icon for the version number and publisher name, and an X button to close the app.

Perhaps one other option would be handy: date format. On Weather Touch, the date is shown only in date/month format; for example, March 15 is shown as ‘15.3’. But because I live in the United States, where we use the month/data format, I would have liked that option, too: ‘3.15’.

To see Weather Touch app in action, watch this video, courtesy of mobonoid:

AccuWeather

With the AccuWeather web runtime (WRT) widget, your options grow considerably. You get the current weather conditions, nine-day forecast, maps, a graphic representation of the forecasts, and a calendar showing a quick forecast for the next two weeks. What’s more, weather forecasts are available not only for your current location, but also for virtually any city in the world.

The slight downside is that compared with Weather Touch, the AccuWeather widget takes a bit more time to pull your information from the Internet cloud to your device.

Here’s a look at the main screen. To change the view, tap one of the five icons just below the temperature reading: forecast, hourly, maps, graph, or calendar:

The user’s current location, determined by the device GPS, is the default. Of the five views, Forecast is the default, as shown above. In this view, AccuWeather shows the expected high and low temperatures, the ‘RealFeel’ temperature range, and a general overall forecast (rainy, sunny, etc.). To see additional days, tap the arrow on the right of the screen.

The Hourly view shows you just that – an hour-by-hour forecast for the current day. By tapping on the right-hand arrow, you can scroll through the entire day, all the way to 11 p.m.

Maps view shows a satellite map of your region. To enlarge the map, simply tap it. Once the map is enlarged, you can also pan from right to left by dragging a finger across the map. A Back button returns you to the main display.

Graph view shows the next 14 hours or so as a bar chart. The bars display the expected temperature and weather condition: clear, cloudy, rain, snow or ice. Here’s a view:

Finally, Calendar view shows you a calendar for the next two weeks. For each day, it shows the expected high temperature and weather condition: clear, cloudy, etc.

If you travel, you will sometimes want a weather forecast for a city other than your current location. For example, let’s say you’re travelling to Berlin, and you want to know how to pack for your trip. AccuWeather lets you set a different location from the Options menu. Here’s a look at the Add New Location screen:

To reduce the amount of typing required, AccuWeather lets you enter just the city name – for example, there’s no need to enter ‘Germany’ after ‘Berlin’. Then you select your city from a list of locations with the same, or similar, name. Here you can see the list for ‘Berlin’:

After you select your city, the main screen reappears, this time with the city of your choice. From there, you can select any of the five views (forecast, hourly, etc.). Also, from the Options menu, you can save and remove locations to and from your list, and set a new location as your default. And in Settings, you can select both Fahrenheit/Celsius and the way you want the date shown – either month/date or date/month.

To build this widget, publisher AccuWeather used Qt, Nokia’s development framework, and the Qt SDK. To learn more about how the app was created, watch this video from our friends at Nokia Conversations.

ForecaWeather Free

The most feature-rich app of the three apps I reviewed, ForecaWeather Free displays current weather conditions, 10-day weather forecasts, and a long list of weather animations for any location worldwide. Because there is so much information, this app, from publisher Foreca, is also the slowest of the three to load – although by slow, I mean only 10 to 15 seconds.

And once the app is ready, you have a choice of no fewer than nine views: current conditions, short forecast, long forecast, temperatures, precipitation, symbol, wind, cloudiness, and satellite. The default setting is current conditions. Here’s how it looks for a recent day in Paris:

To change the view, tap the Views icon in the lower right corner – it’s the one that looks like three horizontal lines. Up pops the Views menu, shown below. To select a different view, simply tap it.

Current conditions is just that – the temperature, amount of cloud cover, and wind speed/direction. You also get the ‘feels like’ temperature, the relative humidity, and visibility in either miles or kilometres.

Short forecast view gives you a chart that, in my opinion, is not very useful. Far better is the long forecast, which gives you high and low temperatures, and prevailing winds, for the next nine days.

One of my other favourite views is Satellite. This brings up a detailed satellite map of the region. You can even display the map as an animation, showing how clouds are expected to move over the next few hours:

Getting a weather forecast for another location? You have more options! First, select Change from the bottom of the screen. The next screen gives you five options: browse, search, favourites, my position, and create.

Browse provides pulldowns of major countries and cities. First, select the country from a long pulldown menu. Then the Location menu is revised to include only cities in that country. For example, if you selected Thailand, then Paris, Berlin and London would be removed from the Location list.

Search lets you enter three or more characters of a location name. For example, enter ‘ber’, and ForecaWeather shows you a list: Berlin (DE), Beirut (LB), Berne (CH), etc. To select a city, tap it.

Favourites are your stored landmarks. Assuming you have stored some locations, you can tap one to bring up its weather forecast. To store a location, go to Options > Location > Save as favourite.

Select My Position, and ForecaWeather engages your device’s GPS to determine your current location. Then it provides the local weather information. Finally, Create lets you set a location by entering the coordinates – longitude and latitude.

Forecasts can also be saved as memos in your phone’s calendar. To make this setting, go to Options > Settings > Memos in Calendar > Yes.

There are yet more settings, too. You can set the access point — the network you want ForecaWeather to use. You can decide whether the app should update while roaming. You can set the app to use U.S., metric or Imperial units. A Refresh button lets you update the weather data whenever you want, as well.

Weather Touch, ForecaWeather Free, and AccuWeather are all available on Ovi Store, and all three are free. All three apps run on Nokia touch-enabled Symbian devices.