As someone who spends a lot of time with a weather radio and lots of more technical than usual weather apps (I photograph extreme weather), this is an interesting concept but I have a hard time seeing the practicality in when held up to the existing network of apps and baked-in phone features that do this. The latter being the most important -- for real weather emergencies like Tornadoes, the wireless carries now push out WEAs automagically to customers in the warning's geofenced area (https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/wireless-emergency-aler...). I often get them before the weather radio does. There are a handful of apps that do this as well through proprietary channels, though I agree that it's difficult to vet which app you can trust.
But all this ignores that there is a really cheap, rugged, robust solution out there that already exists - an actual weather radio. I'd much sooner use one of those than start slapping hardware onto my smartphone (which has to stay on continually if you want to catch the alert), which I'd first have to root.
Now don't get me wrong, as a nerd I love to see stuff like this -- making technology do things they were never designed to do. But it doesn't do much for me as a product concept, even if you could streamline the hardware down to something the size of a penny and eliminated the root requirement.
But all this ignores that there is a really cheap, rugged, robust solution out there that already exists - an actual weather radio. I'd much sooner use one of those than start slapping hardware onto my smartphone (which has to stay on continually if you want to catch the alert), which I'd first have to root.
Now don't get me wrong, as a nerd I love to see stuff like this -- making technology do things they were never designed to do. But it doesn't do much for me as a product concept, even if you could streamline the hardware down to something the size of a penny and eliminated the root requirement.