The Weather Channel iPhone app updated with streamlined UI and improved photo sharing

Originally released back in 2008, The Weather Channel’s iPhone app was one of the platform’s first weather applications to offer functionality beyond what Apple included with the iPhone. Today the app is receiving a major update that brings a sweeping new redesign along with several feature additions. The changes start with the main weather screen itself; the app’s text-heavy main view has been replaced by a minimalistic look, with the background of the page reflecting the current weather conditions and the primary weather data spelled out in large, bold lettering. You can still drill down to the normal selection of hourly and multi-day forecasts, but the new layout is maintained throughout. The app has also bumped up its social capabilities. While it was already possible to tweet and share photos from within the old application, the redesign foregrounds the features, putting a camera button on the app’s main weather page — which leads directly to options to share your weather-related photography with Facebook friends, Twitter followers, or the Weather Channel itself.

All of the app’s previous features seem to have made it along for the ride — including the radar map view — and in general we found the responsiveness to be a nice improvement over the previous version. The update for the free, ad-supported app is rolling out today, for both the iPhone and iPod Touch, with a similar redesign coming to the paid “Max” version sometime later this year.