With access to millions of instant information at our fingertips our phones are increasingly valuable. Smartphones have potential to make our lives easier and more productive.They also can make our lives more complex and less social but that's a whole different blog arena.
If your like me and live near a U.S. coastline you may need or simply want a good solid tide app for quick reference!!
Well i did the work for you!! You can thank me later.
I looked at 7 free apps and picked my top three fave's!!
The good, the bad and the ugly combined (the 7 apps):
TideDataFree, Tides, Tides...Free, Sea Tow, Tides:...Free, Tides Planner and Tides Weather. These names were taken from each app's icon. All were a penny short of a penny...free!!
The background picture is my two month old nephew! I had to so him off somehow!
The 7 tidal apps are shown on the top of the picture.
I wanted to find out which app was the best and easiest to use. I don't go to the beach regularly but visit enough to have a permanent app on my iPhone for good tide references.
My decision on which app was the best, was based off of two priorities: quality information and easy browsing!
After browsing through each app i decided on the top three apps. Here they are from best to third best: 1.Seatow, 2.Tide Data Free, 3.Tides Weather
Third Place:Tides Weather
Pros:
- offers three day weather info
- your home screen as tidal info for your location
- Home screen can be saved to a specific location for weather
- Can save tide station favorites
- Tide graph easy to read
- Info is in feet and meters
- Offers a map
- 10 day tide forecast
- A nearby tide station list
- search option and U.S. station list
Cons:
- Map loads slowly
- Seemed like map has less tide stations compared to other apps
- no sunset, sunrise, moonrise or moonset times
- browsing through app not as easy as others
Second Place: Tide Data Free
Pros:
- Saved favorites
- List of each states tide stations
- Great map
- Sunset, sunrise, moonrise and moonset times
- Easy graph to read
- Easy to browse and use
Cons:
- Only a two day tide forecast
First Place: SeaTow
Pros:
- 11 day weather forecast
- Weather radar
- 7 day tide forecast
- moonrise and tells which quarter it's in
- Map
- Good graph
- Saves up to 7+ locations on tide homescreen
- Rotate screen for tide graphs
- GPS/Compass
- Meters or feet and miles or kilometers
- Search option
Con:
- Map only shows tide stations within a certain number of miles of your location. Example: if near the Puget Sound you can see all Puget Sound stations but cant see all the Washington coast stations unless searched for.
- No station list
- Map doesn't always seem to have all surrounding stations.
Hope these reviews helped! Now that SeaTow is on my phone the tide forecast is seconds away!!Time to play in the sand!!
