When comparing Weather Timeline vs Telegram, the Slant community recommends Weather Timeline for most people. In the question“What are the best Material Design apps?” Weather Timeline is ranked 9th while Telegram is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Weather Timeline is:
Offers choice of weather information sources between Weather underground (recommended), Dark Sky, YR.no, OpenWeatherMap, World Weather Online and SMHI (Sweden).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Choice of data sources
Offers choice of weather information sources between Weather underground (recommended), Dark Sky, YR.no, OpenWeatherMap, World Weather Online and SMHI (Sweden).
Pro Simple, elegant, unique UI
Once loaded the first thing the weather app does is present the user with temperature and conditions of saved places. If more information is needed, clicking on one of the places will give information about rain, sunset times, wind and give an overview of the upcoming week with possibility to go even deeper and get more information about each day hour by hour.
All information is presented in a logical, straightforward manner with a Material Design inspired look.
Pro Great notifications
Notifications are highly customizable, and have separate folders and unfolded layouts that show the right information at the right place.
Pro Excellent widgets
A large number of widgets are available, and each of them are customizable down to the details.
Pro Weather alerts
Sends a daily notification at a set time about a general forecast or to remind you to take your umbrella (if needed).
Pro Allows checking weather years in advance
A feature called Time Machine allows checking weather forecast years into the future.
Pro Persistent notifications
The weather is always at the bottom of the notifications stack, making it easy to glance at the weather.
Pro Android Wear support
Pro Free and convenient large file sharing
Copy/paste videos, gifs, images, geolocation, documents, and even executable files. Drag over files for practically any time up to 2GB in size. Images can be compressed, too.
Pro Free of cost
The application is available free of cost.
Pro Privacy focused
In addition to the end-to-end encryption [only in secret chats] that provides privacy to communications, the app also includes self destructing timers for chats, and the ability to permanently delete messages, yours and theirs, from your and their devices.
Pro Media messaging
Videos, gifs, images, geolocation, and documents.
Pro Channels for one way broadcasting
Broadcasting channels suitable for announcing things.
Pro Beautiful UI
Very customizable with a lot of clean looking options.
Pro Possible to send photos and videos without compression
Pro Supergroups of up to 200,000 people
In Supergroups, anyone along with admins can delete their messages from all sides. A message can be pinned to the top. All of the user's messages can be deleted by an administrator, and they can be banned and reported as well. Supergroups can have a public link (outside of Asia, due to high spam volumes), which is also a username.
Pro Two-step verification
You can set up an additional password to your account, which can be reset by your email. You don't have to use an email if you do not want to. If you lose access to your email or forget your password, you will be able to reset it via text message if your account is over seven days old and will receive it within a week (in case you recover anything before then).
Pro Secure
Pro Saved messages
You can write messages to yourself. You can write some notes, add links, and see everything across all your devices.
Pro Cloud chat keys are kept in different jurisdiction
Even though encryption used for cloud-based storage (e.g. Gmail, Facebook, iCloud) may not be as secure as end-to-end encryption or zero-knowledge storage, Telegram does the most that it can by holding keys to chats in different jurisdictions, requiring intergovernmental cooperation to obtain the keys. This is aside from whatever other security measures have been taken, of course.
Pro Multiplatform native client apps
There are native desktop, mobile and web client apps, that are optimized for speed and are light on memory usage.
Pro Open source client apps
Client apps are open source, making whole service more trustworthy.
Pro Unlimited storage
Unlimited number of files can be stored forever on the cloud. You can upload files up to 1.5 GB each.
Pro Voice and video messages
You can post voice and video messages if you are too lazy to write text messages.
Pro Group Voice Chat
This Discord-like feature adds to the interactivity of the application.
Pro Pinned Messages
You can pin messages to the top of groups or supergroups so members will see them when opening the group.
Pro Self-destruct messages
Messages in individual chats can be set to self destruct on a timer. They will disappear after the timer expires.
Messages in all new chats can be set to self-destruct with a global auto-delete timer in Settings > Privacy and Security > Auto-Delete Messages.
Pro Edit or delete messages after sending them
Pro Banned in China
Pro Save time with inline bots and link previews
Unfortunately, on the desktop videos don't play, but images are viewable without visiting popular websites like imgur and Instagram.
You can play YouTube videos and others within the app, so you don't need to embed code or anything.
With inline bots, such as @gif, @pic/bing, @vid/YouTube, etc, you can look things up without leaving the client or chat that you're in. Simply type the name and some keywords and wait for the results to load.
Pro @mentions
You can ping people to get their attention by @mentioning them.
Pro Desktop app handles HiDPI
The desktop app has a built in setting to scale the UI of the app up to 200% which allows for those with 4k monitors/screens to use the app without scaling issues.
Pro High quality calls
Uses the latest GPL audio codecs, such as Opus, an adaptative high-quality codec that supersedes AAC at any bitrate.
Pro Customer support is within the app
Although it's volunteer based, but still pretty top-notch if available, which it tends to be.
Pro Large groups can have channels called 'Topics'
Topics are now available in groups of 100+ members and have a sleek two-column layout and new buttons to quickly navigate.
A default topic called General is now in every topic group, holding the group’s service messages and previous message history.
Pro Popular in the USA
On SimilarWeb you can see that Telegram is on the top 15 among all communication apps.
Cons
Con Not available
Con Need to find the data provider that suits your location
In a perfect world, all providers would provide the same level of accuracy. But in actuality, one service will have better predictions than others for your region.
Con Not fully open source
Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone, but the backend software is not open source. Therefore 100% privacy can not be evaluated.
Con Can only be used with a phone number
It is not possible to activate and use Telegram by mail etc. You need a phone number.
Con Only "Secret Chat" messages are encrypted end to end
The only way to get end-to-end encryption (client-client) using Telegram is to use the Secret Chat function, anything through the service is server-client encrypted. Also secret chat is only implemented in the mobile apps, meaning there is no way to encrypt messages end-to-end when using the desktop client or the web browser client.
Con "Secret Chat" feature is not available for desktop client
Secret chats with end to end encryption are only available on mobile apps.
Con No source code sintax highlighting
Telegram does not have source code syntax highlighting, making it difficult to share code snippets.
Con Does not work for visually impaired
Doesn't work for visually impaired.
Con Does not support spherical 360° photos
Spherical 360° photos becoming more popular these days, but Telegram does not support such format.
Con Does not support text messaging
You can NOT make it your default text messaging App.