Widgets – Apps To Use

List Of Live Weather Widgets for Android

Weather unarguably plays important role in our life. To cite an instance, our vacations depend on the climatic conditions. Obviously we every now and then turn to our phone for the required information. Since the very beginning i have been writing this down that what ever it is android doesn’t lack quality weather applications (for example Yahoo Weather app).

Adding some more variety to the way we access weather information, in this post we discuss some widgets that make your wallpaper live by displaying dynamic information. If you have been a regular android user, widgets wont be a Chinese term for you.

Clear Conditions HD

Clear Conditions HD is one of the most minimalistic looking Weather Widget for UCCW. However there is little catch here. You will need to install UCCW app prior for the best experience. Once you have installed the skin, just long press the home screen to create a widget. Next select uccw from the widget list. Thats it.

Download: Android

cLock Weather Widget UCCW skin

This skin again uses UCCW and comes at a price of $1.5 (Rs 80.78). The theme has some resemblance of cLock application from Cyanogen Mod 10.1. With this beautiful widget comes a included clock feature too.

Download: Android

Weather Clock Full

We specifically liked the way information presented behind a minimalistic analog clock. Developer of the app claims this as lightweight in terms of apk size as well as data traffic too. Pretty useful for people who like to track the weather conditions of city located in different timezone.

Download: Android

EZ Weather HD Forecast Free

The app became our one of the favs since its previous update. Based on the HOLO interface, this beautiful widget is a must try.

Download: Android

Weather Screen

This is specifically for people who love live wallpapers. It animates informations such as current weather, and time of the day with any chosen background and makes it dynamic. The app comes at a price of $2.99 but is worth it.

Download: Android

Similar Options

If none of the above has managed to impress you, you can give a try to Metro Clock and Weather Full. Weather+ is again another option if you like flip-clock fans. And still if you want additional information such as pressure, humidity, precipitation i would recommend Weather Live.

Conclusion

Widgets in android make any information easily consumable. They are quiet handy and carry potential to replace the functioning of a full fledged apps. Let us know in comments which widgets do you use and why?

Remove Lockscreen Widgets on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean Phones and Tablets

While Android 4.2 was just a minor update over Android 4.1, it still brought with it certain new features, lots of bugs and two new Nexus devices – the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10. One of the key new features that Google introduced in Android 4.2 is lock screen widgets.

Sadly, the implementation from Google is really sub-par and defeats the whole purpose of widgets. While users can have widgets for any of the app that has been updated to take advantage of it, they need to actually swipe to the left from the lockscreen to access it.

Instead of having multiple widgets in one screen, users are only limited to adding one widget per lock screen. This kind of beats the purpose of widgets, which is to provide all the relevant information to its users in a glance. In addition to this, if users keep a 4*4 widget on their lock screen, it will be automatically resized to 4*1 when a user tries to unlock the phone.

When I first read that Android 4.2 features lock screen widgets, I was really happy since I had been looking for such a feature since quite sometime. However, Google has failed miserably on the execution part with its lock screen widgets idea. While Google does not provide any way to disable lock screen widgets officially, a simple app from the Play Store does and it does not even require root access to do so.

How To Disable Lockscreen Widgets On Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

Step 1: Head over to the Play Store and download ‘Lockscreen Policy‘ on your device running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

Step 2: Start the application after it has been installed, and then select the ‘Activate’ button on the bottom of the screen. Users will then be prompted with a screen asking them if they want to make ‘Lockscreen Policy’ a device administrator. Until and unless users provide the app with administrative access, it will not work.

Step 3: Once Lockscreen Policy has been made the device administrator, simply toggle the On/Off switch beside Widgets to disable Lockscreen widgets.

Optionally, users can also disable the Camera widget that can be accessed by swiping to the left from the lock screen.

Conclusion

As an Android user, I really hope Google improves or enhances its lockscreen widgets implementation in future versions of Android. Until then, I really don’t think I can use lockscreen widgets, and I am pretty sure many people will agree with me on this.