RSSWindows Mobile 5 and 6 get a new interface
By Tim Conneally | Published September 30, 2009, 4:27 PM
As smartphones gained popularity outside of the business world, a division formed between devices made for consumers (lifestyle smartphones) and those made for enterprise deployments (professional smartphones). Professional devices tend to be more integrable into bigger systems and offer more in the productivity department while lifestyle devices cater more to the individual's tastes and offer more in terms of entertainment.
Though Microsoft has plenty of consumer smartphones running Windows Mobile, the operating system has found itself on the far end of "Professional," struggling to appeal to consumers enamored with touch-based operating systems. So Microsoft has worked to make Windows Mobile 6.5 and future versions much more "finger friendly," without sacrificing their professional capabilities.
Meanwhile, SPB Software has devised its own interface for previous versions of Windows Mobile that does that very thing. Today, the company has released the latest update to its SPB Mobile Shell, an interface for Windows Mobile Professional that has layouts for both lifestyle and professional users which can run either simultaneously or individually.
Earlier this year, SPB Software released Mobile Shell 3.0, which really took the software ahead into the most current UI zeitgeist, with much greater emphasis on widgets. With this release, the company has added many more widgets, including social networking, wireless settings, and Internet search.
While many mobile interfaces incorporate portrait/landscape screen shifting when the phone is tilted, SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 goes a step further and lets a phone's velocity sensor control the UI in three dimensions. It's somewhat like HTC's TouchFLO 3D Windows Mobile interface, except far more 3D.
SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 is priced at $39.95, and can be downloaded directly from SPB. It is compatible with Windows Mobile 5 (Phone, Pocket PC,) WM6 (Classic, Professional) and WM6.1 (Classic, Professional).
This thing really drains the battery.
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|I think it needs some more improvements.
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|Click interface. About ~4x what I would pay for it, realistically, especially for a dead/dying platform.
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|Dead? Last I check M$ spends more on R&D then apple does on it's mobile interface.. But you would say windows is dead also right??
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|No, I wouldn't. But I'd say a platform that MS has ignored for 2+ years as a sign that MS has given up. WM 7 is coming, but it should have been here at least a year ago as Apple took 3rd place from Microsoft within that time. Apple is gaining 5-10% share a year at this point.
Score: -1
|I wouldn't call the platform "dead" or "dying", but I know that Microsoft is late to the (new) game. However they still have a significant capture of the business market, which is one of their main focuses anyway. I would say that it "seems" dead compared to the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre, but it's still a common platform and used by many, especially in business markets. WinMo still has a stronghold in that area.
As far as the story, I agree with you. I would never pay this much to "re-skin" my device. Sure it's cool & all, but not worth it IMO. I'd rather deal with what I have now and wait for 7.
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|I just speak from my own company's experience. Our users *hated* WM devices, and they switched to iphones the day that 3G came out, and nobody needed training. Sure itunes is a PITA to manage from my perspective, but the users simply will never go back to WM again. MS lost those customers for good.
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|This is great for the loser that actually got tricked into buying a phone with the incredibly lousy Windows Mobile operating system. Seriously, a phone that brings up a message stating "Waiting for modem" for a very, very, very long time before you can make a simple phone call (like the HTC Fuze phone and other WM phones do) should be against the law to sell since it is a defective product. Windows 3.0 was faster and much more reliable than Windows Mobile. Programs crashed a lot less in Windows 3.0 than they do in Windows Mobile.
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|My personal HTC Touch has never given me a single error, nor have any of the 50+ apps I run on it. It has never crashed or frozen. It's smooth and handles all I've thrown at it. Our company uses HTC Touch Diamonds running WM6 as our company phones and we've had no problems. Maybe they're crap just in the US were everyone wants an obscenely overpriced iPhone... which still bends you over a barrel for trying to sync with Outlook and which until recently couldn't even sent a picture message. So who is the loser, really? WM may have it's problems like any product from any manufacturer but it's hardly the disaster you think it is.
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|erm dude, have you ever tried WM in the first place?
If not, shut up and go to play with your stupid iTard.
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|@ Aoi_sora9x - I've tried both the Samsung Blackjack II and the HTC Fuze. Despite the faster processor, the HTC Fuze doesn't run WM any faster than the BJ II does even when HTC's interface is turned off. It takes longer to boot WM than it does to boot Windows Vista on a desktop PC. The Opera web browser on the Fuze has a major bug that causes the phone to zoom in and out on a website simply by tilting the phone back and forth. Because of the Fuze's delayed reaction time this seems to happen almost at random. GPS Navigation software such as Telenav and Mapquest Navigator took eons under WM to get a GPS lock even though I was out in the open with a clear line of sight to the sky. Most of the time my BJ II couldn't even get a GPS lock. The only reason the Fuze could is because it could download the current position of the GPS satellites over the internet. The iPhone 3G gets an accurate GPS lock on my position almost instantly. Despite the iPhone's shortcomings (most of which have been fixed), it's extremely rare for applications to crash. WM has major memory management problems. It's full of memory leaks and it feels like cooperative multitasking instead of preemptive multitasking.
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|Um, you must not own a WM device and saw that error on some old WinMo device from a long time ago. "Waiting for modem"? I've never seen that error and have been using Windows Mobile since it was called the "Pocket PC" years ago.
I do notice a 5 SECOND connect time to my mobile network after I disable flight mode. But never what you've mentioned.
I can understand that ONE negative device experience ruins your view for ALL other WinMo-based devices, but I can assure you that is not common, especially from a device made under the last 5 years.
Why do I like and defend the Windows Mobile platform? It's the only platform that has the best Microsoft Exchange support AND devices with touch screens + physical keyboards. I know the iPhone has Exchange support, but it lacks a physical keyboard (something power users and people who type a lot need). The Blackberry also has Exchange support, but you're forced to buy a version that's touch screen only or physical keyboard only and no touch screen. That drives me crazy. Only the Windows Mobile platform has the best of both words, with Exchange support.
And, does anyone realize that the Blackberry takes an astonishing 3+ minutes to boot after a soft-reset? I'm not knocking the platform, I'm just saying lol
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|Yes, the Blackberry sucks, but it's just as bad as Windows Mobile. As for the "Waiting for modem" message, this happened on the HTC Fuze. Certainly not an old device. Despite the lack of a physical keyboard, the iPhone is by far the easiest phone to set up for Microsoft Exchange. In many cases once you enter your user name and password on the iPhone, it can automatically determine the rest of the Exchange settings. Windows Mobile 6.5 just puts a new UI on WM 6.1. Other than the UI, nothing has changed under the surface. If you can't get Exchange to work on an iPhone with very little effort then obviously you are not very experienced with Exchange.
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|@ smarterthanyou no one said the iphone is difficult to setup with Exchange. I was saying that there's one major feature missing from every other platform--the Palm Pre, Blackberry & iPhone. It baffles me why they just can't make a device that has a physical keyboard AND touchscreen WITH Exchange support. If someone other than Microsoft/Windows Mobile devices can get that right, I might switch finally, after all these years lol
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|I think it is too expensive for a User Interface Add-on.
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|what the f*** is it with such big clocks wasting your screen space?
and you have to pay for the new interface?
...
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|SPB Mobile Shell is a 3rd party software - an add-on - that you can buy if you're not happy with the default Windows Mobile interface, or various manufacturer interfaces, like the HTC's Touch Flo 3D.
I've been using Mobile Shell since 3.0, and it's nicely customizable (you can remove the "big clocks", replace them with a weather applet, or make them smaller, whatever) and also provides better usability than Touch Flo 3D IMO.
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|The big clocks are one option of many. That's the beauty of SPB Mobile Shell... it's fully customisable to your liking. I've used it since 2.1 and I love it because I can set it to look just the way I like.
I take it your phone can't show any interface but the one that it's creator gave it? Such a shame for you. How about you try the software before bashing it?
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|SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 is awesome . . . not perfect, but they've addressed most of the shortfalls of 3.0x. Much more going on with it than TouchFlo 3D. Working very nice on my new HTC Touch Pro2.
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|Agree this is a great improvement to any supported device. For those complaining about draining power well that happens when you play games on any portable device. The GPU takes lots of resources and those the device is taxed and power consumption is higher.
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