Review of MorningReport – Time to replace your alarm clock and weatherman

MorningReport is a wonderful way to wake up with the morning, and it gives you all the information you need to start the day for only $0.99. Not only is it great for the mornings, but it can also provide you with updates throughout the day regarding the current conditions. Although it is a very simple app, with just a few small additions and some little tweaks, this app has the potential to replace both your weather app and alarm app.

Features

Waking up in the morning and being able to know the time, weather, and current conditions without even opening your eyes is the highlight of MorningReport. Once you have the alarm set, you will wake up to a male or female voice, which will speak all of the aforementioned information to you. You can view the high and low temperatures for the day, and throughout the day you can listen to a report for the city you are in, which will provide you with the same, but updated, information as when you woke up. This can also be in a male or female voice, and it does not have to be the same as the alarm.

Review

Although not packed with features, the ones it has are implemented very well. The first thing it will do is automatically determine your location for you, and it will update it if you travel. The morning report it provides you is excellent, and the other report, which can be heard throughout the day, is great as well. Both reports are exactly the same, except one will play automatically when your alarm goes off, the other must be played manually. It does not give the exact time, but instead will say something like “It’s nearing 12:00,” or “It’s just past 7:30.” Some people may prefer the exact time, but I think this is nice, and you can just at the clock for the exact time anyway. Aside from the time, you are also given the current conditions, such as whether it is sunny, raining, etc., and the temperature, which can be in Fahrenheit or Celsius depending on your preference.

Then there are the alarms which are easy to set and can be set quickly. You can also choose the voice for each individual alarm, and if you want, you can make one alarm a male voice and the other female. You can choose whether or not you wantthe “Snooze” option on, and under “Settings” you can choose the duration of the snooze. However, the only alarm option is the vibrating combined with the spoken morning report, and it would be nice to see the ability to wake up to either a chosen radio station, or a song from your music library. The morning report is short and may not be too helpful at waking some people up, so having the option to pick a song or radio station, then play the report after the song or radio has played for a chosen duration, would be a very beneficial feature. It would also be great if the alarm would go off even if the app wasn’t open, but was still running in the background. Other small complaints are that the weather updates only every three hours, which is not very frequently at all, and seeing some added weather information would be a bonus as well. Lastly, although it looks very nice and it quite simple to use, a nicer, more elegant interface would be welcome, although that is more of personal preference.

Conclusion

Overall MorningReport is a handy little app to use in the mornings, and for only $0.99 it provides you with the time, weather, and the outside conditions right when you wake up. You can simply tap the speech bubble to get an updated report any time during the day. While this app could benefit from a few tweaks and additions here and there, overall it is a convenient app that does its intended tasks very well.