PolyScreen gets customizations, Blue Skies gets new features and Weather Premium goes clear

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Monday is turning out to be a busy day for Windows Phone users, as plenty of interesting app updates have landed on our phones. Besides Facebook and Wikipedia, we have three other exciting updates to share with you folks.

Our favorite wallpaper app PolyScreen, the Dark Skies clones Blue Skies and super hip Weather Premium all get bumped with worthy new additions. Let’s take a look!

PolyScreen 2.0

Whenever we post photos of our phones running Windows Phone 8.1, many of you ask about our wallpapers for the Start screen. Well, look no further as we make ‘em with this app. PolyScreen takes the popular polygon wallpaper fad that has taken over design circles and brings it to Windows Phone. Not only do they look great as a Lock screen, but they rock as wallpaper for Start screens on Windows Phone 8.1 with the new transparency effect.

Version 2.0 is now live and with it brings all sorts of user-requested new features:

  • Custom palette
  • Accent palette
  • Random palette
  • Full Brewer palette (original work by Cynthia Brewer)
  • Undo button
  • Noise support
  • Input text instead or +/- for options

Not only that, the developer notes that a hexadecimal reader in the color picker and HD images are in the works too. Awesome!

Pick up PolyScreen here in the Store. Free. Windows Phone 8.0/8.1

QR: polyscreen

Weather Premium

Weather Premium 3.0

It was only a few days ago since we reviewed Weather Premium, a new free weather app that brings some cool new features to the mix. For one, it has a very nice ‘Modern’ Live Tile that should pique your interest. It also has a neat ‘what to wear’ for today recommendation engine and a smart-alecky ‘awesome weather’ forecast, that tells you how it is without pulling punches.

Version 3.0 just went live and it has some great new additions, including:

Weather Premium

  • New Transparent Live Tile
  • Fixed some bugs
  • New Paid version without ads

I already love the Live Tile on this app, so the transparent one is just a bonus (although the regular Modern one is great looking too, if you want a bolder look). So for those on 8.1, you should be plenty happy with this app, which I think ranks up there with one of the most interesting weather options for your phone.

If you previously downloaded Weather Premium, it looks like you’re grandfathered in without ads. New users can have a free ad-supported version or pay 99 cents to remove ‘em.

Pick up Weather Premium here in the Store, it’s worth a trial. Windows Phone 7.x, 8.0 and 8.1

QR: weather premium

Blue Skies

Blue Skies 1.2.6

Blue Skies is a clone of the popular iPhone app Dark Skies. It’s also one of the most popular weather apps around, skyrocketing to the top right after we covered its release. The app is updated on a regular basis, and today, version 1.2.6 is now live with a nice, detailed changelog:

  • You can now choose to use your accent color
  • Next hour summary now appears for nearly all locations
  • UI tweaks
  • Added "Last updated" on wide Live Tile
  • Yet more bug fixes and live tile updating fixes

This is one of those seemingly superb weather apps that is a no brainer. It’s free, it’s awesome looking and it looks great pinned. I’m glad I have multiple phones, because I use this and Weather Premium now and like to switch between them. If you haven’t tried Blue Skies, you really should.

Pick up version 1.2.6 of Blue Skies here in the Store. Free. Windows Phone 8.0/81

QR: blue skies

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

25 Comments
  • Polyscreen crashing quite a lot for me now, when I change those settings
  • Same here...
  • Imagine having animated backgrounds on our start screen using gifs? Guys make this real by voting here:
    http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions/sugg... How amazing would it be to for example have slowly shape shifting polygons :-o . Please help share this idea
  • Nice idea but it's a battery drainer!
  • Sure, but given that we don't spend most of our time on our start screen daily, the draining could be minimal. Also remember live tiles use more power than static ones but we don't mind since we don't spend long on the start screen. It also depends on how confident a user is about his battery, or how heavy the gif is, he can choose to have a gif or simple image. It's always good to have options :)
  • Totally agree
  • Blue skies has lot of bugs.
  • Like....... It works like a champ on my ATIV S.
  • Glad to hear it! :)
  • Maybe once. I've not seen any recently. It just improves each time.
  • Glad to see you haven't been having any problems!  Let me know if you have any feature suggestions. I'm all ears!
     
  • Hi Pratik, Can you email me about the bugs you're experiencing so that I can work on getting them fixed? Thanks, Rohit
  • It's a busy day for you also Daniel as maximum posts are coming from you
  • Polyscreen too buggy. It's crashing all the time.
  • The Blue Skies developer is great. I recommended the accent colour option for in-app content a couple of days back. He (Rohit) has already provided the update!
    Definitely my favourite weather app...super simple and elegant. Exactly what WP is all about.
  • I second that!I recommended the wide tile update and the degrees symbol switch around :¬) He's a good lad. Although correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the app have a dark blue theme at night and light blue in the day? Is that reflected in the theme option?
  • Thanks again for catching that!  Yes it does have a dark blue theme at night and a light blue theme in the day.  When you turn on your accent color, it sticks with your accent color throughout the day.
  • Thanks for the support! :)
  • Blue Skies really is great.  I downloaded it after they mentioned it here and it tends to be my go to weather app for forecast right now.  It loads fast, looks great, gives just enough information.  Frequent updates too so I'm excited to see where it's going!
  • Glad to hear you're liking it!  Let me know if you have any suggestions on things to improve! - Rohit
  • Can't install poly screen app.
  • http://1drv.ms/1fKnXRI
    Getting this error :'(
  • I absolutely love Blue Skies, but they really really need lock screen support, then it would be just about perfect.
  • Don't worry, it'll be coming. I don't have a timeline yet because I'm busy with finals and everything (I'm in college) but hopefully soon!
  • Yeah and also it would be great if you could cut down the time it takes to "consult the weather gods" :) like in AccuWeather, where it loads instantly. Awesome app, keep up the good work, love the interface :)