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Ahh, the lure of SPB products! When I got my new HTC Touch Pro2 at the beginning of the month, I vowed that I would stick with the default TouchFLO 3D on the device for a while, giving it a chance and running it through it’s paces (typically, I have been a Mobile Shell affectionado). I was doing fine until I received an email from SPB this weekend, with a review copy of version 3.5 of Mobile Shell. In all honesty, I have been quite pleased with the improvements to TF3D, so I wasn’t feeling compelled to install Shell or any other UI at the moment. HTC made some improvements in areas I felt were lacking before, so the UI is pretty darned good.
But simply knowing that SPB has been in the woodshed hammering out enhancements to Mobile Shell had me very tempted. I mean, who doesn’t get excited when SPB releases something?! Needless to say, I installed version 3.5 of Mobile Shell and began playing. Here are my findings…
I was eager to see what enhancements and improvements SPB did to Mobile Shell, and I must say, for a “dot release” (from 3.0.1 to 3.5), the changes are plentiful. I have plenty of screenshots below, but here is a partial list of what 3.5 offers:
- 3D email viewer & 3D SMS viewer (with contact pictures)
- Online catalog of background images
- Streamlined background change (with cropping and easy to view local gallery)
- New “Add Widget” dialog
- Numerous widgets
- Widget skin selection with preview
- Ability to choose a default action for Contact favorites
- Current weather conditions (in addition to forecast)
- Professional home customization using widgets
- Option to have only one home screen (lifestyle or professional)
- Option to change number of screens in lifestyle or professional layouts
- Weather in Agenda
- Option to choose the default tab for Contacts and Launcher
- Improved design of most dialogs (popup menus, settings etc.)
- Category filter in the contact list
- Improved widget edit mode (widget can be dragged to other pages, recycle bin for easy delete etc.)
- Color themes support on Windows Mobile 6.5
- Integration with SPB Weather and SPB Traveler via widgets
- Improved “Choose Shortcut” dialog with similar look to SPB Menu
- Option to disable tap and hold
- Redesigned settings dialogs
Now I will go through some highlights I think are worth mentioning. Occasionally, I’ll make comments as to how something compares with my current experience of the default TouchFLO 3D which came on my Touch Pro2. Keep in mind that might not be the same as your personal experience.
The Home screen
I simply love the customization that is possible on Mobile Shell, and in version 3.5, they have taken it even further than previously. In 3.5, you can choose to have only one Home screen if you wish (Professional or Lifestyle), or choose both. And you can choose to have 1, 3 or 5 screens for either of those layouts. Here is how I set up my Lifestyle home screen. I will discuss the widgets that can be added in a moment:
I selected to display three Lifestyle screens, though I could really get by with just two:
On the left screen, I currently have just one widget, and that is the Internet Search bar. It’s essentially a Google search, and is very handy. Predicted search results show up, and when you tap on one, it immediately opens Opera, which is nice.
Here is my Lifestyle panel in Landscape mode. At first, when I rotated the screen, everything was jumbled, and I thought “Oh great”, but I soon realized that you can edit the layout separately in Landscape mode. I like that capability. The catch: you can’t have as much (wide stuff) show in Landscape mode as you might fit in Portrait (I discovered that really quickly!). For example, I would have loved to include the Google Search Bar widget on the main screen, but I ran out of room! Yes, perhaps I could divide up where the Call/Message notifications were situated and make it fit, but I just opted to have the Search Bar be on the left panel. No big deal!
By default, the Professional home screen was not activated, but I turned it on to explore any changes it had in version 3.5. The Professional home screen is now as customizable as the Lifestyle screen, which is very cool. By default, the Home screen looks mostly like what you see in the two screenshots below. The default view includes three shortcut links, which I used to link to most-frequently-used items at work. Very handy! In the other screenshot, I replaced those shortcuts with the Google Search Bar. As you can expect, the possibilities are endless. Mobile Shell really allows you to tweak to your heart’s content and make Home screens that truly work just for you.
Editing the View
The edit mode has been improved. Notice the trash can icon at the bottom of this screenshot. If you want to remove a widget, simply drag it to the trash can and viola, gone! If you have the Home screen set to display more than one panel (3 or 5 panels), you can drag left or right and easily move the widget to the panel of choice. That is a nice improvement over the previous method, which required choosing ”Move Left” or “Move right” from a menu.
And speaking of widgets, here are three screenshots displaying nice assortment of available widgets. Once you choose a widget and have it on one of your panels, you can choose a different skin/look for many of them (small, large, detailed, simple, etc).
Expounding on some of the widgets:
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The Twitter and Facebook widgets are for updating status only. Given that I update Facebook via Twitter, I find the Facebook widget useless (but others might like it). And it’s disappointing the Twitter widget only does updates - heck you can do that by sending a text message to 40404 just as easily! It would be nice to see SPB offer a more robust Twitter applet that could run in a panel!
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The Birthday widget is cool - I just wish there was an Anniversary one too!
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Thank you SPB for including a Tasks widget! Far too often, the PDA part of these devices (Calendar, Contacts, TASKS…) is overlooked for all the latest fun stuff (social networking, etc). Many of us still use our devices to maintain tasks, so it’s nice to see Tasks offered in a widget.
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And one of the small things that I just love about Mobile Shell is the ability to add Shortcuts, be it on the Home screen or in the Favorite Programs screen. It is an area in which TouchFLO severely lacks. Shortcuts give you the freedom to include links to stuff you want to get to quickly. I’ve always enjoyed having a direct link to particular Excel files (as seen in the Professional screenshot shown earlier), and things like a NOAA weather radio link or a link to animated weather radar on WeatherUnderground, particularly when we have severe weather. Yes, I can get to those things with a couple of taps, even through TouchFLO, but I like the option to create those shortcuts!
Backgrounds
This feature has also been enhanced quite nicely. Along with a local gallery or the ability to choose a picture file as your background, there is an impressive online catalog to choose from. Some images are a bit too busy for my taste (makes it hard to read text), but they sure are nice looking shots!
Other Screens
Weather
Below are screenshots of the default weather feature in Mobile Shell. If you have SPB Weather installed, you can opt to launch it instead. The default version is pretty nice, providing two panels of information - Current and Forecast. The most frequent (automatic) weather update is every 30 minutes, which is great, but (making a comparison to the newest version of TouchFLO) I wish it would update automatically right when you go to this panel. Instead, you have to choose Update Now from the menu. Not a big deal, just a wish list item! One other wish list item: a link to live weather radar - if you recall, I usually have that as a shorcut. But seriously, between these two panels, most of us would get more than we need for weather data for the day!
Contacts
I don’t really care for the “flip card” Contacts tab in TouchFLO - I much prefer how SPB does it! Again, there are a myriad of ways you can personally customize the Favorite Contacts, but I like big, thumbable icons for my most-frequently called numbers!
And a cool new feature is the ability to configure the default action for any of those favorite contacts. In the second screenshot below, you can see the options for default actions. That’s pretty handy, because for my mother-in-law, it’s always going to be Call Home, as she has no mobile phone and no email!
Agenda
Weather has been added to the days in the Agenda view, which is convenient. I didn’t observe any other significant changes to Agenda, but if I discover them, I will update this review!
Carousel and Tiles View
In all honesty, to me, the Carousel feature is just eye-candy, but someone out there must like it… SPB has added G-Sensor support (seen in this first screenshot) for those devices with G-Sensors. Looks cool, but adds no spectacular function, in my opinion.
You can switch to a Tiles view for all of the panels, which again, is something I have never seen the need to use. If it were up to me, that button on the lower left of Mobile Shell would be enabled for something different - something more useful! But I digress, I am getting to personalized. There are probably tons of users who love that feature!
Favorites Panel
This panel hasn’t changed from version 3.0.1, but I just wanted to show how I tweaked the view to my own liking. Not bad, having 30 favorites all on one screen! And at the bottom, other items which have been frequently used. SPB smokes TouchFLO in this category, particularly since it is so customizable.
3D Message Viewer
There is something quite similar to this in TouchFLO, but SPB has created what I consider a nicer version. Granted, I’ve read about the version of TouchFLO that is on the HTC Leo, and it’s vastly improved, but I am comparing to what is currently available.
Messages have a larger view, the SMS messages include the contact photo (if you’ve got one for the person), and you can Reply, Mark as Unread, Forward and Delete right from this view. The one thing I wish they had included was a menu item of “Call this Contact” in the SMS view.
Wish List / Issues
As I played with Mobile Shell 3.5 on my Sprint HTC Touch Pro2, I noticed some small issues. Some of them might be device-specific, but they are worth mentioning:
When the default phone screen is up, the following two things don’t work. Press them and nothing happens. I like to use that little “contact card icon” a lot, so that is unfortunate.
I also like to open up my keyboard on my Touch Pro2 and just start typing a person’s name (when I want to call them or message them). In the following screenshots, I have type Ian Husk, and typically I would tap Menu to choose SMS the person. As you can see, the options are grayed out. And as mentioned earlier, the “contact card icon” is not functional either. Obviously there are some things in the Sprint build that do not cooperate with Shell. These are not deal-breakers for me, but I certainly hope SPB can do a workaround…
The Windows hardware button (Windows Button) on my Touch Pro2 only opens up the (lame) default Start menu when Shell is running (with TouchFlo, this opens up a fullscreen Start menu of programs). Spb acknowledged this is a difficult key to map to anything else… Even Pocket Plus added button functionality can’t do anything with that button, so with Mobile Shell running, that button is relagated to the stupid default Start menu - yawn…
Lastly, I look forward to SPB skinning a little deeper into Windows Mobile, but maybe that won’t happen since 6.5 is upon us. it would be nice to have the Contacts and Calendar entry/viewing be more thumbable.
Conclusion
SPB has created a stunning user interface, and 3.5 simply takes it to another level. This is a free upgrade for anyone who already owns version 3.x, so I encourage you to upgrade. Yes, I have some minor issues, but I attribute them to this new device, and I’m confident SPB will work them out. Get Mobile Shell here.
As usual, nice job SPB!