iOS 5 brings us a number of welcomed new features, including Notification Center.

Notification Center puts all of your alerts in one place (new email, texts, friend requests, calendar reminders, etc.). It also allows you to view stock information and the weather forecast. 

At first I enjoyed this new area – it even allowed me to stop using my weather app (WeatherEye). Soon, however, I realized that the weather in Notification Center didn’t provide me with enough of the information I was used to having.

When you slide down the Notification Center, you’re presented with the current weather:

A sideways swipe will then reveal the weather for today, as well as the next five days:

Now this is great, but there’s definitely tons of room for improvement. 

Here are a few things I’d like to see:

• slide again to see the following 5 days (for a total of a 10-day trend)
• slide one more time for hourly weather (this is important for planning things like a trip to the beach)
• a toggle to switch the location of weather displayed* 
• perhaps some other information like P.O.P., humidity, wind speed, etc. (this might be overkill though)

I know this widget is meant as something to quickly glance at for some basic information – it’s not a full iOS app. However, if enough weather information can be displayed here it’d save most people (on most occasions) from launching a separate weather app. Eliminating the need to launch a separate app saves the user time, ultimately enhancing the user experience.

*Tip: Currently the weather displayed in Notification Center will reflect the location you have “active” in the default Weather app that comes with iOS. If you launch the app and swipe left or right to a new location and close it, the weather in Notification Center will reflect your new selection.