The use of a smartphone in flight to access online data – particularly current wind station readings – is popular amongst XC-orientated pilots in Switzerland.  I used to think this was ridiculous until I tried it myself, and discovered great benefits both in terms of safety and XC decision-making.  Here are three examples from just one month:-

• 13/8/23.  Approaching the eastern end of the Goms very low, and therefore concerned about getting rotored and flushed by the Grimseler, I could see that this was very weak and that there were upslope winds at the Sidelhorn and nearby, so continued in that direction rather than turning back.
• 14/8/23.  With föhn forecast to develop later, increasing gusty wind values at Binn and Ulrichen (see image below) showed it had arrived earlier than expected, and led to a timely decision to land immediately, before conditions became dangerous.
• 24/8/23.  Scraping over the Furka pass with less than 3,000m ASL, southwesterly winds in Andermatt and at Gütsch indicated that without the usual headwind from the normal valley breeze, there was no need to prioritise gaining height, in anticipation of plenty of lift on what would be a windward slope just beyond the village.

I use the web page widget in XCTrack Pro to display values from the nearest wind stations to my current position.  I set this up before I launch, and then don’t need to touch the screen again during flight:

This works for me because I know the geography of the area and therefore the position of these stations; as a visitor you may find a map display such as SpotAir provides a more helpful interface:

A page on the Air³ manual has instructions on how to set this up.  You can zoom in and out, and tap on individual stations to access more detailed data there.

Winds.mobi is similar, includes more relevant stations, and is supposed to re-centre on your current position, but I don’t know if it’s compatible with XCTrack Pro:

The Burnair app (from which the header image on this page is taken) is quite popular among Swiss pilots, but it’s only available in German, and seems to be aimed at those who are happy with touch screen use in flight (which I prefer to avoid).  However, the map can be configured to show a wide range of relevant data as well as wind values, including airspace, thermal hotspots, known leeside areas, cables, landing fields, and even other pilots, colour coded to indicate whether in lift or sink!  A step too far for me…….

If you want to get a Swiss sim card to save on data roaming charges, I can recommend the Coop mobile prepaid sim (which is what I use).  At the time of writing, 2023, this costs CHF 19.80 and comes with 100 MB of data and CHF 15.- of credit (which can be converted to 1500 MB of data).  Neither credit nor data has an expiry date, which is unusual.  My use of XCTrack for access to the wind station data plus live tracking consumes less than 4 MB per hour, but obviously other usage may be more data-hungry.  You can buy one of these sim cards at Fust and Inter Discount shops, as well as some Coop supermarkets; Swiss law requires photo ID to be shown, but foreign passports are accepted for that purpose.

Paraglidingforum members have recommended travel-dealz and digitalrepublic but I have no direct experience of either.