“SPB Mobile shell brings forward a new, exciting, user-friendly and easy-to-use way to interact with the device. The windows mobile device never felt so easy to use. All the core functions and applications can be launched without taking your stylus out!”
SPB is the creator of many great applications. Many of their applications are top-sellers at handango and pocketgear. SPB mobile shell is an application which targets towards providing a simple yet powerful interface to the users. Lets us take a look at this application
We use our devices in plethora of scenarios. It can be for checking the email, missed calls, sms, time, weather outside; starting an application etc. Mobile shell focuses on making these tasks easier for the users.
Looks pretty and functional. Doesn’t it? It is the first panel. The Menu is actually divided into 3panels, namely, ‘now’ screen; SPB menu and speed dial. All the 3panels perform different functions. If you click on the time, you get a world time clock with a smooth fade in display.
As you can see, it also shows the today’s weather. Clicking on it will show the weather in detail(1). Tapping at the other days will give you weather of the that day(2). Tapping on the ‘back’ arrow(
) will take you back to the previous screen
 
Back to the main screen, clicking on the respective date in the calendar will open the calendar application and that day too. Sweet! You can kept notified of the missed calls and unread SMS/email.
 
SPB mobile shell also has profiles function. You can change between ‘normal’, ‘silent’ and ‘vibrate’
Lets move to the second panel(1). This panel contains the recently used applications on the top. Note that the applications can be ‘pinned’ too(that is, they can be permantely fixed on their position). Below that contain finger-friendly menus. The first icon in the recent program list is backlight. It can be adjusted as per required as shown in the following figure(2)
 
So, the first two rows fill the most recently used applications. Below them are again a couple of big rows that make launching applications easy. In the following screenshots, we tapped on “organizer”. This launches a finger friendly interface to launch the usual pocket outlook applications. Clicking on the contacts launches the contacts, but, the ‘normal’ contacts applications, but, a very finger friendly application as shown in the figure. As you can see, it is very user friendly
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(calendar)
Internet panel
Multimedia panel
>>>>
Tools panel
The third panel is the picture dial tab. You can assign pictures to these little boxes, which when tapped give user a set of options. The application is very intelligently coded. So, if you’ve no picture assigned to a particular contact, the name is shown instead
 
Lets us now move to the today plugin
 
It looks pretty and sweet for sure, but, underneath it hides tons of great features. The battery tab contains the most frequently used applications. These applications can be pinned so that they always remain there in their position.
The Time Tab(below) displays the time of upto three cities
The weather tab
The picture speed dial tab.
The last tab shown below is a custom tab(batterystatus). SPB mobile shell handles the custom tabs very effectively
You can also make the tabs permanently shown by turning the ‘auto hide mode’ off
Following are the self-explanatory screenshots of the ‘settings’ of the mobile shell
The last screenshot(3) of the below given screenshots shows the professional view.
 
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You can assign various useful utilities offered by the Mobile Shell to the soft keys too(below)
 
One of the new features of the SPB mobile shell 2.0 from v1 are the animation effects. A total of 5 animation effects are there to chose from. All are easy on the easy and are smooth
 
 
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Pros:
*user-friendly
*stable
*great animations
*finger friendliness
Cons:
*cannot edit the icons
*limited customisations(officially though. Not taking into consideration unofficial hacks)
Final thoughts: A rock solid stable software from a very reputed software company, SPB software house. A must have for all the windows mobile professional devices.
Well worth the money
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Product Category:Utility+Today screen plug-in
Manufacturer: SPB software house
Link: www.spbsoftwarehouse.com
Price: $29.95 USD
System Requirements: Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6 device