Spb Mobile Shell v1.5

[Pibe38]

Ok more in-depth first look with own screenshots!

The Now screen

I think this is the core of the app. Makes looking at the phone a pleasure when take it out of your pocket. It is not perfect though... here's some good and bad things.

* Not very customizable. The app is designed so that if you have a device with a square screen it will not allow you to display appointments as in 240x320 devices. I would prefer to have the ability to resize the HUGE clock and have more things avaialble on the Now screen.
* SMS and E-mail indicator take you to POutlook (from what I've read). If you use a third party PIM or Messaging app, you are out of luck... for now.
* No memory meter, only battery.
* Clicking on the clock or weather icon will bring you to the time or weather tab, respectively, on the Spb Shell Today plugin.
* Soft keys are remapped to Close (Now screen) and Spb Menu.

This is what my Today screen looks at the moment, yes it's crowded, but bear with me... it's for testing purposes.


As you can see you can keep your Today screen the same, you can disable the tabs (Spb Mobile Shell Today Plugin) or pin a tab. You can also choose to have them automatically minimized, like I do.

The tabs are 'live' tabs. The battery is an actual battery meter, the weather tab will actually show the corresponding forecast icon (although I noticed there are no moons, it's 11 PM and it shows a sun!), the Time tab shows the actual time on the clock, etc.

Unfortunately... there's no way to resize the tabs! You are stuck with them being huge, for now, and we all now real state is scarce on our screens.

The Home tab.


Now... did you see that??? I think it is awesome that these tabs are kinda 'virtual'. It covered my iLauncher and TodayAgenda to display the content of the tab instead of creating the dreaded scroll bar. And if I close the tab, my info it's still there... it basically just covers it while in-use. I love that feature.

So the bad with this tab...
* It basically displays the last apps you used. You can pin shortcuts, but it's annoying to modify since you cannot drag icons... or I haven't been able to figure it out.
* Also, so far... no way to change the size of icons and removing/adding icons. So you are stuck with 2 rows.
* BTW, the light bulb on the upper-left is a slider for screen brightness. You can choose not to display it on the Settings screen.

The Weather Tab.


Very basic unless you have Spb Weather. Which most of us here don't since we use WP. The stripped down version includes what you see... today info, and 3-day forecast.

Easy to change from F to C degrees, but only support for 1 city. Setting the city is not very intuitive, it is not done from the settings screen but you have to access the tab and hold down your finger/stylus.

The Time Tab.


Stripped down version of Spb Time, you'd get more features if you purchase the full version. Once again, what you see if what you get. It displays times for 3 cities and the next alarm.

You will see on my next screenshot that the 4th tab was changed... I did that on purpose to discuss something shortly. However, on the screenshots above it shows the Dial Tab which works as a Photo Dialer, basically what Treo 700 series users already have but a nice add for other users.

Replacing tabs.


Another thing I'd also like to see is being able to have more than 1 plugin per tab. As of now, see screenshot, you can have any plugin you want on a tab... but only 1. So having WP and WP-Pilot is out of the question... although someone may have found a way to still have them work together when tabbed. More on that after I test it.

Custom Tab.


On this tab I replaced the dialer for the Web Search plugin. Very cool, just as adding plugins to PocketBreeze for example. You can also customize the icon for the tab from a list given to you, it's be nice to be able to add your own icons. I haven't really tried to do this, so it may be possible.



So... so far the app is nice, very nice. I did not take screenshots of the Spb Menu since those are above, but it works very well and very responsive. Keep in mind your Start key will be mapped to the Spb Menu.

One thing I forgot to add... on most devices when you are on the Today screen your right soft key will be changed to Spb Menu, just as on the Now screen. However, due to how Palm coded the right soft key to other today plugin DLLs your soft keys will not change if you are on a Palm Treo device.

Once again, the app is very nice for a v1.0, however, with PA, WP, iLauncher, TodayAgenda, etc. I do not see the need to pay $30 for this shell. Would it be cheaper, or some of the features more customizable I would consider it.

One thing most people are complaining about is lack of support for 3rd party apps. For example... if you access the Spb Menu and then click on Messaging you get a nice submenu that allows you to go to SMS Inbox, E-mail Inbox, Send SMS or Send E-mail. Guess what though, it brings you to POutlook and most users have other apps. Same thing happens with Internet, PIE opens up even though you may have Opera installed and use it; file explorer instead of Resco; regular camera instead of cool camera; you get the point

If they fix these things I would consider it, but once again... having paid for PA and iLauncher, and being happy with TodayAgenda and WP I do not see the need to spend $30 on this app. The Now screen is not enough.

Ok I'm tired of typing... hope this helps! Don't get me wrong, the app is very responsive and looks awesome! But the $30 mark still is a downer for me...

Ohhh before I forget... as you can see hidelogo works with no issues whatsoever.

[PerfectHybrid]

Pibe,

What PA skin are you using for your today scren in your pics?

PH

[Pibe38]

Originally Posted by PerfectHybrid

Pibe,

What PA skin are you using for your today scren in your pics?

PH

HERE

The original had a GPRS button for PA full, but I modified it to have a whole BT button. All the info is on that thread.

[luv2chill]

Nice writeup Pibe38. Like everything else SPB does, I'm sure it will steadily improve over time.

[Pibe38]

Thanks!

A couple of things I forgot/just noticed...

1.- The weather on the Now screen actually shows High/Low temperature instead of actual temperature. I kinda don't like that, if that screen is supposed to give info on what's going on now, you'd think the actual temperature would be displayed.

2.- Another thing that happened to me is that I went to Spb Shell Settings and selected their black theme. Well it slowed down my device a lot and changed the font of my Today screen soft keys. Even after I disabled the theme the font stayed the same. I had to uninstall and soft reset for my font to go back to normal and then reinstalled the app.

[Big D5]

I have been using this for a couple of days and I like it. The only problem I have had is some of the menu shortcuts wont work. I have reset, reloaded the programs both to main memory and to the storage card with the same results. 6700 hacks wont open at all not even using the original program menu.

[aniado]

I installed the SBP Mobile Shell demo on ipaq 6915. It worked fine for a couple of hours and then it locked up when I was downloading email. Did soft reset and all works ok...but I cannot have cleartype font. I check the tick box in \settings\system\screen\Clear Type\Enable Clear Type, but it does not do anything; I mean I tick it, hit "OK", the screen blinks, but the cleartype remains off and when when I go back there there is no tick mark anymore. Weird. Anybody can help?

[Pibe38]

Originally Posted by aniado

I installed the SBP Mobile Shell demo on ipaq 6915. It worked fine for a couple of hours and then it locked up when I was downloading email. Did soft reset and all works ok...but I cannot have cleartype font. I check the tick box in \settings\system\screen\Clear Type\Enable Clear Type, but it does not do anything; I mean I tick it, hit "OK", the screen blinks, but the cleartype remains off and when when I go back there there is no tick mark anymore. Weird. Anybody can help?

Cannot say I've encountered or heard of this issue. Have you tried reading their support forums?

http://www.spbclub.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48

[wowthatisrandom]

is there a way to just have the NOW screen and NONE of the other functionality... i just want to use it mainly for a clock. the rest of the program is of no use to me...

[Pibe38]

Yeah, you can remove the Spb Mobile Shell Today plugin so there won't be any tabs on the Today screen.

However, you'd have to pay $30 just for the Now screen