Review: SPB Mobile Shell 2

It’s been a long 9 months since SPB graced us with an upgrade to one of the top selling programs of 2007, SPB Mobile Shell 1.5 (see review here) a program that Dieter and I consider to be a “must have”, especially for new WM users. In fact I was just wondering a few weeks ago what SPB were up to and whether we’d ever get a version 1.6.

Well, luckily here at WMExperts we got in our email a sparkling new version 2.0 in our mailboxes and let it be known, SPB has been hard at work with some new and interesting refinements to Mobile Shell 2 ($29.95; 50% for upgrades; Free if 1.x was purchased within 90 days). How does it match up with the popular 1.5—is the sequel a let down or smash?

Click the link to read my in-depth review with screen shots (240x240 & landscape) and even a full video (kudos to Dieter) of all the fancy new features, tweaks and surprises!

As I previously mentioned, SPB has been really wooing me lately with their releases (Mobile Shell 1.5, Brain Evolution) and I was quite excited to get an early look at their new flagship launcher/UI replacement. In short, I wasn’t disappointed and the best way to sum up 2.0 is this: if you really like 1.5, you’ll certainly enjoy the 2.0 improvements; if you never liked Mobile Shell, 2.0 probably won’t sway you to change your mind--but you should still reconsider ;-).

The Big Changes

In 2.0 you still have the following:

• Now Screen (main items like counters and system status)
• SPB Menu
• Tabs for the Today screen.

What is added is a new Picture Speed Dial screen, the collapsing of your Most Recently Used (MRU) applications and/or Favorite applications into the SPB Menu and some new smaller features, including gestures and a smarter navigational system. In turn, you are now only allowed 6 panels on the SPB Menu (which some will demure) but a more robust launcher menu. SPB has also managed to reduce the RAM consumption across all devices—using their numbers:

• SPB Mobile Shell 1.5 = 2.34 MB
• SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 = 1.24 MB

This of course is quite remarkable considering the added transition effects and it's welcomed, especially for memory strapped devices like the HTC Mogul. There is a small trade-off though as Mobile Shell 2.0 takes about 1.7MB more of storage memory (Total = 3.34 MB), which is not terrible especially since between the lower RAM consumption and the still zippy UI you get slightly better system performance (plus I can confirm, for you advanced users out there, that you can successfully UPX MenuLauncher.exe & MobileShell.exe, reducing their program memory size by nearly 2/3).

Now Screen

The Now Screen at first glance looks exactly the same and in most respects it is, but there are a few really nice additions. For instance, the Weather icons can now be clicked to bring up the weeks weather directly (before you had to use the Today Plugin). You can also now manually update the Weather with a simple click of the “sync” icon—a much clamored for option that works very well. Unfortunately the weather doesn’t give you a current conditions report, but rather the estimates for the day. For the average user it should still be enough and for the advanced one, you’ll probably want to continue using WeatherPanel or SPB Weather.

Likewise the Clock can now be clicked to expand to a more detailed clock screen, showing you world-time for 3 cities and any upcoming alarms (it sure makes getting to the default alarms easier, though perhaps SPB should just add their own alarm program since so many have problems with the WM ones).

SPB Menu

The launcher portion of the Mobile Shell really received an overhaul from 1.5. Now, instead of just having the Program Panels to select your applications, you can have an Most Recently Used (MRU) and/or pinned favorite apps near the top (or both), with room for 12 icons. The tradeoff here of course is that you are now more limited on screen space, instead of 8 Program Panels you can only have 6, which is something that some users will cringe at while others will shrug (I shrugged). I’m not a huge fan of just an MRU so I pinned my favorite used programs as the first 8 and then left the remaining 4 as MRU—I’m digging that setup.

One current drawback is although you can edit the icons for your applications in the Programs Panel, you cannot edit them in the MRU/pinned favorite section, which is a bit disconcerting if you visually get used to one type of icon for a program only to find its hideous default in the MRU. Hopefully that can be addressed in further revisions. It’s also nice to see a uniform color scheme for all Mobile Shell screens, including the Menu.

Picture Speed Dial

The Picture Speed Dial screen is a nice, although predictable, addition to Mobile Shell. Here it is pretty straightforward: 3 rows of 4 Picture IDs from your contacts. Tapping them will bring up a very nice contact screen with quick access to home, mobile and SMS options that are perfectly mashable with your fat thumbs.

Also, instead of a contact you can have in one of the squares your “Recent Call” (showing the last incoming) and/or an icon to the Contacts. The Contacts is a nice extension of Shell, keeping up with the current theme background and it has a “smart” filter search (plus it is keyboard friendly, unlike Vito, natch).

Gestures & Navigation

One of the biggest and most welcomed changes to Mobile Shell is the way you bounce around those different screens. For you HTC Touch users our there or those who like to emulate that function, Mobile Shell is now very nice—you can swipe left --> right to switch between screens, swipe up or down to minimize. The most impressive gesture though is the ability to bring up all 3 Mobile Shell screens by tapping and dragging your finger on the Task bar, allowing you to quickly access any of those screens. This feature can also be mapped to a hardware button.

Granted, the finger gestures are primarily for those HTC Touch users (hey, 2 million devices counts big time) but that’s what I love about SPB: they didn’t forget us Treo users or people who would rather use hard keys. SPB Mobile shell has everything accessible via D-Pad and the Soft-Keys, making navigation a breeze and intuitive.

To conclude, in total you have 3 different ways to interact with Mobile Shell:

• Gestures
• Tapping the lower icons/arrows
• Soft Keys/Dpad

Those types of navigational options, which Vito’s products currently lack, are a highlight of 2.0.

Animations/Today Tabs

Finally the other noticeable change is the addition of menu animations. There are 5 options for these animations (plus “none”)

• Sweeping
• Sliding
• Folding
• Revolving
• Flipping

All are visually stunning and add the, dare I say, iPhone-flare to the UI. On my 700wx the animations were very fluid although an argument can be made that turning them off will obviously result in less CPU usage and faster menu hopping. Luckily that decision is up to the user and having said that I have decided to keep them enabled. Check out the video above for an example of the "flip"

Regarding the Today Tabs, there is actually nothing new to report as nothing has changed, they just work as well as they did on 1.5 and offer a great way to jam a many Today Plugins on your device without sacrifice.

Some areas that are still lacking and which many will be disappointed are you still cannot add your own icon-sets to the program, change the default Tab icons or significantly customize the program. However, these are some small grudges but the overall functionality of Mobile Shell outweighs these oversights.

Conclusions

SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 is a significant advancement over its 1.5 predecessor. It’s not a revolutionary change but rather a noteworthy refinement in integration, performance and features. Having used it rather intensely for the last week, my usage has revolved around 4 screens: SPB Now, Menu, Speed Dial and my Today screen, which is to say those screens constituted 95% of my daily usage.

And that is the success of the program: the ability to almost entirely replace your UI for the overwhelming majority of WM activities. The only time I needed to do delve deep into non-Mobile Shell territory was to change my settings or find that rare program that I didn’t add to the launcher menu.

Should you upgrade from 1.5? Definitely, or at the very least give the demo a try (to upgrade, SPB is offering 50% off of Mobile Shell 2 for previous 1.x owners). What if you never liked SPB Mobile Shell? Then probably not as not enough has changed, including some remaining redundancy with SPB Weather and SPB Pocket Plus. There are also the same Color Themes as before--nothing new there.

Our final conclusion: Mobile Shell 2.0 is a win for WM users and still a must-have application. The price may seem a little high, but considering you are using the app every day for so many functions, it is worth the cost.