Love Windows Mobile’s features but loathe its fiddly user interface? All is not lost. Lots of new smartphones now come with pre-installed program launchers that makeover Microsoft’s mobile operating system to the extent where anyone can make sense of it. If you’re wrestling with an old handset though, how about installing a third-party application that not only masks Windows Mobile with a slicker-looking skin, but makes it much more user-friendly, too?

We’ve seen a few attempts at improving Windows Mobile’s user-friendliness over the last year or so. HTC has tried it with TouchFLO, Vodafone teamed up with Palm with a new skin for the Treo 500v and Pointui is an interesting, if embryonic, attempt to make Windows Mobile work along the same lines as the Apple iPhone.

Spb first released Mobile Shell last year, but this new version (2.0) has a lot more polish and looks a lot more stylish. As with other applications of this type, it’s little more than a program launcher that keeps Windows Mobile out of sight until you actually need to use an application, but it goes much further than other launchers we’ve seen.

At its most basic level, Mobile Shell simply adds one or more tabs to the Windows Mobile Today screen. These show such information as the world time and imminent alarms, the weather, application shortcuts and favourite contact quick-dial icons. Depending on how you use your Today screen, tab content can be left permanently on-show or hidden until a tab icon is tapped. Up to six tabs can be displayed, chosen from a pre-defined list of 12.

If your device is stuck with the standard Windows Mobile Today screen, Mobile Shell’s tabs alone will make it instantly more functional, but it does little to hide the fiddly nature of Windows Mobile. The tabs and icons are all large enough to be activated with a fingertip, but you’re sent straight into Windows Mobile as soon as you want to use any of the features it offers. This is where the main Mobile Shell component comes in and it’s activated by dragging the stylus or a fingertip down from the Taskbar.

There are three main screens to Mobile Shell – Now, Spb Menu and Contacts. The Now screen is essentially a more sophisticated (and much slicker-looking) version of the Today screen. According to Spb, it’s intended more as a supplement to the Today screen rather than a replacement, but it can be set to automatically appear when a device is turned on and if you launch a program from Mobile Shell, you’re returned to the Now screen when you’re finished with it.

There are two versions of the Now screen, Classic and Professional. Classic bears a close resemblance to HTC’s TouchFLO, and shows the time in either analogue or digital formats, the current weather conditions, plus the next appointments, along with large icons for battery life, signal strength and new email, text message and missed call counts. Professional defaults to a digital clock along with the date, displays a calendar beneath the next appointment and adds a shortcut to the device’s ringer profiles.

Spb Menu and Contacts, the other two Mobile Shell components, are accessed via icons along the bottom of the screen – or you can just drag a finger across the screen and have it cycle through each component with one of several (and optional) animations, a la HTC TouchFLO.

Spb Menu is a program launcher and it splits the screen into two parts. The top quarter displays shortcuts to the 12 most recently used applications, though you can permanently ‘pin’ any application here for quick access and create sub-menus if you need constant quick access to lots of applications.

The rest of the screen consists of six large icons that lead to finger-friendly menus and sub-menus for every Windows Mobile component. Spb has done a pretty good job at logically categorising the various options and while some menus are rather lengthy as a result (blame Windows Mobile for that), they can be pruned if there are bits of Windows Mobile you never need access to.

Most users will be happy with Spb's default menu arrangement, but the menus are fully customisable and you can create additional entries for applications, URLs and websites, as well as further sub-menus. Spb also offers a free plug-in that adds support for Pocket Informant, Agenda Fusion and Agenda One support, so you can link to your third-party calendar application of choice in the Organizer menu, rather than the stock Windows Mobile calendar. This doesn't go as far as opening your calendar when you tap an appointment on the Now screen, though -- Mobile Shell still opens WM calendar. 

Contacts, as you might expect, is a quick-dial list for up to 15 contacts, complete with photos. This is populated by tapping an empty entry then choosing the contact from the address book. One particularly nice touch is that each entry is for a contact, rather than a contact number, and when you tab an entry, large icons for mobile, work and home telephone numbers appear, along with an icon to send a text message.

Mobile Shell also replaces Windows Mobile’s Phone application with a dialler that looks up contacts in the address book. Contacts are displayed based on the closest first and last name matches to the letters on the buttons being pressed (much like the way T9 predictive text works) – or you can just dial a number in the usual way.

Such thoughtful touches abound in Mobile Shell and it’s by far the best program of its type. Despite being almost endlessly configurable, it works perfectly from a fresh installation and it’s a fantastic attempt at addressing Window’s Mobile’s multitude of foibles.

Still not convinced? Well, one measure of Mobile Shell’s effectiveness is that once installed on an old HTC TyTN for testing, it managed to re-ignite our interest in Windows Mobile long after we’d abandoned it in favour of the ultra-slick interface on the iPhone – and that’s something we never thought would happen.

So, is Mobile Shell the perfect Windows Mobile user interface replacement? In a word, yes, but there is one tiny quibble. We like the Now screen so much that we want the option to keep it in place all the time. It does automatically appear at power-up, but the screen is all too easily hidden and it’s a pain to have to drag a finger down the screen to re-activate it.

Spb Mobile Shell

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