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SPB Mobile Shell 3 – Raising the bar

SPB Mobile Shell has been one of the most used UI replacement application. Fast and sleek with smooth animations and the ability to easily create themes for the shell made it popular among all users of Windows Mobile users who wanted to escape the Windows Mobile interface or wanted an alternative interface for their device.

Recently SPB announced SPB Mobile Shell 3, and we finally get a small demonstration of what the new version has to offer. Beware all UI developers, the bar has been seriously risen! SPB Mobile Shell 3 is not only as smooth and sleek as before but it now includes tons of customizations, features, and way cooler animations. The question on my mind at this moment is; will SPB release a SPB Mobile Shell 3 Panel? I seriously hope so, but i doubt that it will come for free. :)

Check out the videos below…

Comments

Stu McPhee said…
Not really impressed myself, it's just a flashier version of the same old overly-cluttered SPB interface.

Point UI is looking more like what i want, it's just a shame that it's relying so much on the community developing Themes and Applets for it. Not all that useful now, but maybe in a month or two it'll be worth using.
Pointui said…
We haven't even released a Pro version and we've supposedly already failed.

We're not going to buy into a we do this and they do that, simply we've got a Free out now and it took less then a week for people to be creating applets and themes.

We're really happy that we're seeing results well ahead of our expectations.

As for relying on the community, we can understand the perspective but you don't get a dozen applets overnight with a team of our size. How many decent panels are out there for the Xperia and did Sony write them all?
msalmank said…
@PointUI - Sorry for being insensitive. There definitely is no comparison of PointUI with SPB since the later has been around longer.

but just to be clear, when i said 'Delivering where PointUI failed', i meant in animations mainly. BellUI's animating background and windows and programs browser were way better than the free PointUI's... which is what let me down mainly.

I personally liked your Bell UI a lot! and hope that the PointUI Pro version is close to it and more powerful.

Relying on a community is good... i always think that a solution that offers customization and control over what is displayed is more powerful than a glossier looking solution which doesn't offer any. We'll hopefully see more and more applets coming out soon.

Furthermore, you definitely raise a valid point... You guys did release an Xperia panel!

Two of the biggest let-downs of PointUI, according to me, are (1) no animated back like in the Bell UI, and (2) it is not really WVGA... there is extra space under the quick bar which kills the look'n'fell of PointUI on Xperia. Maybe if the bar had been aligned at the bottom - like BellUI did when i ported it over onto my Xperia.

Keep up the great work!

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