Database Users

Shells and Today alternatives

Just saw announcement of Winterface shell from Vito, and I know some people use SPB shell... but also heard it can create problems.
What are the ups and downs? What alternatives are people using?
For reference, I use iLauncher, PhoneAlarm (for profiles, notifications), PocketBreeze for easy access to calendar, contacts, weather, and WkTask and SmallMenu (start menu replacement) for task management. Altogether, this works "fine" but some of the alternatives seem like a more integrated and polished interface.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

For myself I use: Real VGA at 96dpi, Magic Button to show the running applications, Small Menu as a Start replacement and launcher assigned to my home button, and Handy Menu for access to soft reset, screen capture, or device OFF (other options are available). All of them have small footprints and runs well at 96dpi.

I use spb time to give me the alarm with big button and multi location times.
Then, spb phone suite for missed call/email/sms alert, turn in/off wifi/bt/data, phone profile.
For weather, I use sbsh pocket weather.
For launcher and safe mode soft reset, I use iLauncher.
For task switching, I use wktask.
For calendar, I use today Agenda which uses one line per item.
Works very well and is very flexible.
For calendar items, I use

Ultimate launcher with xmt using either a modified manilla style clock or modified x lucent theme, with wktask and quickmenu.
although the new today prog i linked to looks like it will have potential.
ocassionally especially if its sitting on my desk ill use the tempus13 swf manilla animated clock running fullscreen inside flashlite. must write a mortscript to trigger it automatically when docked.
all in 96dpi

--off topic---
cktlcmd, i see you've finally bought a replacement for your uni... Im still waiting for mine, still havent decided on x7510 or be cheap and stick with x7501... anyway, good on you! So did you bury your uni?

I've switched to spb mobile shell with Diamond skin. It's very customizable and flexible.

eaglesteve said:
I've switched to spb mobile shell with Diamond skin. It's very customizable and flexible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does SPB Mobile Shell work with Real VGA 96dpi in yours?
cuteangelika said:
--off topic---
cktlcmd, i see you've finally bought a replacement for your uni... Im still waiting for mine, still havent decided on x7510 or be cheap and stick with x7501... anyway, good on you! So did you bury your uni?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol
The best purchase I've done yet. I am happy with the quality and performance. Compared to my Universal, my X7510 is very stable even with hundreds of applications installed. It can survive a whole charge without having to soft reset. It is very solid with no creeking plastic sounds like the Universal. I still have not bought a micro SD card, and I still have tons of storage despite having 200 reference books in it. The screen size... I just love it. I never knew the importance of having a GPS till now.
Nowadays, I just use my Universal to play my music in my car. I hard resetted and only installed WM5torage 1.8 and SPB Time. It has become a permanant fixture in my dashboard. It still looks cool at night... especially with the screen on fully bright.
If you value the use of the buttons, go for the X7501 especially if you can buy a cheap brand new unit. Do read about the issues and how to solve the microdrive quirks though. I read that formatting the microdrive to FAT 32 using WM5torage prevents any data corruption. Never use the built-in format drive to format the microdrive.
On the other hand, since you are a first time Advantage seeker, going for the X7510 I think is the better purchase. I use my X7510 mainly on landscape, so buttons are no problem with mine. I can survive with just using the home button for launching any application via Small Menu. The 16GB SSD is a big plus. The keyboard is amazing. The only thing I can say about it is the absence of Soft Keys and Backlight. It's top has a rubberized coating, so no scratching of the unit can occur.
Here in the US, we have no option to buy a cheap brand new X7500 or X7501. All of them: X7500, X7501, and X7510 have the same price if you are purchasing them brand new, so it is most logical for me to go with the X7510.

cktlcmd said:
Does SPB Mobile Shell work with Real VGA 96dpi in yours?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. nowaday I'm using only 192dpi. I find that most of my applications look better in this dpi - from Opera mobile, phone, dictionary.... I can use my thumb (yes, not just finger but the big thumb) to do almost everything. There are a few applications which I wish I'm in 96dpi (such as office applications), but most of them work better in 192dpi.
It's funny that after using it for a while I'm so used to it that I wonder how I managed to see the tiny tiny characters in 96dpi. When I was using 96dpi, the feeling was reversed - I wonder how anyone could live with those gigantic taskbar!
Installing SPB mobile shell with diamond skin is a breath of fresh air for me for now. I don't know when I would get sick of this and change it again. I'm always looking for new toys so to speak, and each time I change I feel like I've just bought a completely new gadget.

eaglesteve said:
No. nowaday I'm using only 192dpi.
Installing SPB mobile shell with diamond skin is a breath of fresh air for me for now. I don't know when I would get sick of this and change it again. I'm always looking for new toys so to speak, and each time I change I feel like I've just bought a completely new gadget.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I envy you with SPB Mobile Shell. I really like it too, but I love 96dpi more... can't have them all I guess.

eaglesteve said:
Installing SPB mobile shell with diamond skin is a breath of fresh air for me for now. I don't know when I would get sick of this and change it again. I'm always looking for new toys so to speak, and each time I change I feel like I've just bought a completely new gadget.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How were you able to get SPB Mobile shell to work with the Diamond Skin (the one posted in the forums somewhere, right?) to work on a VGA phone? Or did someone convert in the the thread with the hundreds of pages?

polstein said:
How were you able to get SPB Mobile shell to work with the Diamond Skin (the one posted in the forums somewhere, right?) to work on a VGA phone? Or did someone convert in the the thread with the hundreds of pages?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=409528&page=4
See post 39 by Resaponderman.
Cheers.

eaglesteve said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=409528&page=4
See post 39 by Resaponderman.
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the link - much more better then translating and working with the French site I was trying to download and play with yesterday.
Installed - wow, it's much darker then I thought. Will play for a day, but my initial reaction is I like the original better.
Really wish that the program was somehow made to allow compatibility with some of the beautiful QVGA themes and VGA themes.

How are you getting to the dialer with Diamond Skin loaded?
Hey eaglesteve, how are you bringing up the phone dialer? With the lack of hardware buttons on the x7510 and no soft keys in Diamond skinned mode, I am hitting the home button to bring up the base Spb screen, and then selecting Phone soft key from te sys tray. When I want to go back to Diamond I then select Spb Menu which is my other soft key. That is a few steps when one used to do it.
Do you have a better approach? Thanks.

robjhellis said:
Hey eaglesteve, how are you bringing up the phone dialer? With the lack of hardware buttons on the x7510 and no soft keys in Diamond skinned mode, I am hitting the home button to bring up the base Spb screen, and then selecting Phone soft key from te sys tray. When I want to go back to Diamond I then select Spb Menu which is my other soft key. That is a few steps when one used to do it.
Do you have a better approach? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I pin the phone icon to the home tab. When I want to make call, I swipe my thumb upward to go to today and directly press the phone icon.

OK now I'm going to show my total ignorance. What do you mean by "pin" to the home tab.
Again thanks a bunch.

robjhellis said:
OK now I'm going to show my total ignorance. What do you mean by "pin" to the home tab.
Again thanks a bunch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once you have installed SPB MObile shell, you will be able to see the following items in the Start/Setting/Personal/Today program under the Item Tab.
- spb mobile shell
- Home tab
- Time tab
- weather tab
- Dial tab 3
- Dial tab 2
- Dial tab
I only tick the Home tab.
The items on these home tab could represent the most recently used program so is dynamically added or removed, unless you "pin" them there permanently. To pin an application such as Phone on the home tab permanently, click and hold the tab until a menu pops up and choose Manage Pinned.. (the bottom item). You will be then allowed to tick the programs that you want to stay on the home tab. This is what I meant by "pin".

Thanks for that - now I get that piece.
My ability to finger swipe seems very hit and miss on my device. When I have the Diamond skin up mostly I can swipe right to left to flip the pages (which is not that useful seeing as there is a button to get to the same place) but swiping up and down to return to the Today screen works maybe 1 in 20 times - and the Today button gets me there anyway!
Any thoughts on why my screen gestures are not very responsive?
Also have you tried ThumbCal? If so I cannot get it to respond as the default calendar from within the Diamond Skin, although it works fine as the default from ouside of Diamond (ThumbCal has a setting to tick to make that happen).
Anyway, also watching out for any other alternate VGA skins. Have you noted any others on the forum yet? There is continued promise of more to come in certain of the "Development and Hacking" threads in the General section.

robjhellis said:
Thanks for that - now I get that piece.
My ability to finger swipe seems very hit and miss on my device. When I have the Diamond skin up mostly I can swipe right to left to flip the pages (which is not that useful seeing as there is a button to get to the same place) but swiping up and down to return to the Today screen works maybe 1 in 20 times - and the Today button gets me there anyway!
Any thoughts on why my screen gestures are not very responsive?
Also have you tried ThumbCal? If so I cannot get it to respond as the default calendar from within the Diamond Skin, although it works fine as the default from ouside of Diamond (ThumbCal has a setting to tick to make that happen).
Anyway, also watching out for any other alternate VGA skins. Have you noted any others on the forum yet? There is continued promise of more to come in certain of the "Development and Hacking" threads in the General section.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have already installed FtouchSL, then the most likely reason for the lack of responsiveness is that you have not excluded Spb mobile shell in your FtouchSL. It should be very fast.

I didn't know about FtouchSL relying entirely on HTC TouchFLO. I've downloaded it now and will try it out. Thanks for the tip.

am thinking of buying SPB mobile shell 2

am i stupid to do so???
is it better than the free panel or SE's panels?

imho, yes
we can have touchflo3d, spb mobile shell isn't confortable as it can seems. It has poor integration even with spb products, i.e. if you need phone profiles and use spb phone suite you can't have a wireless switch on today, you have to navigate trough menu (feature request from about 1 year!!!). Also menu customization isn't simple and some basical function are still difficoult to reach. And I reported a lot of crash when customize.
It's UGLY and we don't have much skins for wvga, and skinning is a real pain as they don't release any documentation and all new version messes up all our knowledges changing layout, calls, api... I was about to release a pretty wvga xperia theme for mobile shell 2.1 but the upgrade from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3 has break too much things and i have to give up. They don't deserve us and I don't encourage people to use it
tflo3d is a mess too to skin, but at least it's free for us, much cooler by default and more stable even on xperia

I don't think that you're stupid if you buy SPB mobile shell 2.
I've tried both spb panel and tf3dhd, and the fullversion of spb mobile shell 2 beats them hands down. It's quite easy to customize the menues and is lighter on the cpu than the hog tf3d (in comparison to spb MS2 it is a hog.).
I say go for it.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=420325
Try spb. I think they have 15 day tral . and see may post in the link.
I kinda want allways to have that other peapler dont use. want manilla buy oem

What are the differences between the panel and the real thing?

nurps said:
What are the differences between the panel and the real thing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The real thing has more options and a "today" plugin and it looks nicer.

i tried the spb mobile 2 and i like it overall, but would prefered to have it as an panel otherwise i had to keep pressing the button for the spb shell to appear every time. is there any way to have it as a panel as i could not see the option to?
at the moment i use the spb shell panel from SE which i like to layout of?

a5ian300zx said:
i had to keep pressing the button for the spb shell to appear every time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you use s2u you can set it to wake uo directly to spb, otherwise if you use search you'll find some sort of "daemon" that cares about switching automagically to spb when normal today comes up
but the point is: spb is undocumented, heavy and a pain to skin/customize

using 2.1.2
Spb Phone Suite w/wireless, and profile, switches is avail as a plug-in/tab in Today screen.
The first option in Shell settings is to "Show the [Spb Shell] Now Screen when device wakes up."

as a one on one compare, does it WOW much more than the SE panel?

yyzxex said:
using 2.1.2
Spb Phone Suite w/wireless, and profile, switches is avail as a plug-in/tab in Today screen.
The first option in Shell settings is to "Show the [Spb Shell] Now Screen when device wakes up."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not directly as with normal today plugin

Im using SPB 2.1.2 and I tried TF3D.
IMO SPB shell is much better and easier to customize and gives me satisfaction. Im using several plugins and it works as a charm. Quick and nice looking and its setted up as my "Today Screen" so I dont have to push anything to make it come up.
I love it and would recommend u to buy it. But try the Trial first to see if it fits u..

ok.. btw what does plug in do?

For SPBMS users:
is the standard version able to work together with panels? i.e. in case you install MS AND want to use another panel, like Facebook or Google?

I have bought it and thinks it is a great program til i noticed that i had to charge the battery every day. I uninstalled it and now i can wait four days before i have to charge it again.
They have a 15-day trial that u can try, but remember to check your battery

guap said:
not directly as with normal today plugin
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I enable the Spb Phone Suite plug-in/tab in Mobile Shell settings. Then enable Spb Mobile Shell in Start> Settings > Today > Items. Phone Suite wireless and profile switchers are shown as drop down tabs on the WM Today panel. Can't imagine how a more "normal today plugin" would look.
Re. battery life. Wrote this yesterday in another forum; will quote myself here -
100% when I left for work this morning at 6:45am
2.5 hrs BT stereo use (HBH-DS220) to/from work
auto-chk my 2 email addresses at every 15 mins and hour all day
Spb Traveler is set to auto-update weather & currencies every 2 hrs
10 texts
15 mins of calls
1/2 hr of internet at lunch
right now[17:45], my battery is reading 60%
mobile is set to GSM/EDGE with auto band selection

Is it possible to integrate the full mobile shell as a panel, like the lite version?

nurps said:
Is it possible to integrate the full mobile shell as a panel, like the lite version?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunatly no

Maybe its possible to simply overwrite the files from mobilebshell panel edition with the files of the full version?

well in a way it IS a panel as it works on your home panel (which I have changed the image of to show Mobile Shell) and on your fish panel too. but if I want my Mobile Shell panel, I just choose my home panel.

spb 2.x over spb panel??

Hi there, I was wondering if there are pros or cons of installing spb 2.x over the panel that is on the x1...?? are they the same or are there differences in the performance... affect the phone in any way for either... thanks for any thoughts...

I had spb on my last phone but love the panel so I didn't install it. If you would rather use the today screen then get the SPB 2.X, but if you like using the spb panel like I do then stick with that. SPB 2.X offers more custimzation, but everything in the panel just works for me (like I don't have to add programs/games/etc. they just show up in the right places).

I prefer SPB 2.X because its more easily customizable and the most recent spb shell has some great new features over the older one. OF course i use neither lol. I use TFL3D.

I tried SPB 2.x but didn't like that when you press end or go to the today screen, you're still stuck with the Windows Today Screen and have to then open up the SPB screen. There's a hack to semi fix it, but it still flashes the today screen for a second before switching over.

I don't know this too. I think my phone is a little bit slow down after installing this.

SCtud said:
I tried SPB 2.x but didn't like that when you press end or go to the today screen, you're still stuck with the Windows Today Screen and have to then open up the SPB screen. There's a hack to semi fix it, but it still flashes the today screen for a second before switching over.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea there is a cab that i used on my tilt called spbwatcher. If anyone needs it i can post it in this thread. Just let me know

I use SPB (the not-panel version) too. I just like the idea of having SPB Shell and still being able to use all the great Today plugins there are.
Works like a charm, although it automatically uninstalls SPB Panel. (I don't ever use the panels)
Differences:
- The looks are a bit different, and I think the not-panel version has a few options more. It installs a few direct shortcuts like "[Soft Reset]", "[My Menu]" as actual program shortcuts (you can use these from anywhere).
- Adds a few options when to use Windows today and when to use SPB today
- Adds a today screen button assigner for WinMo.

Thanks for the replies... I might give it a whirl and Bxsteez, yes please can you post that cab... I am loving my xperiance though... now that I have nearly got it completely how I want it I guess its time to reflash the ROM...

Spb Panel doesn't Appear after install on X1

Help! This is driving me nuts! I've searched the threads and can't find the answer.
I've downloaded and installed the SPB Mobile Shell Panel from Sony but there's no sign of it on my Xperia as a Panel.
What I do have is an executable called Mobileshell in the Program Files which runs all the SPB functionality.
WHAT is going on with this??
Thanks for the help and apologies if I'm being unbelievably stupid!!

firebladeboy said:
Help! This is driving me nuts! I've searched the threads and can't find the answer.
I've downloaded and installed the SPB Mobile Shell Panel from Sony but there's no sign of it on my Xperia as a Panel.
What I do have is an executable called Mobileshell in the Program Files which runs all the SPB functionality.
WHAT is going on with this??
Thanks for the help and apologies if I'm being unbelievably stupid!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to panels --> settings and add your new SPB panel to an empty slot
If you dont have an empty slot, change an existing panel for the SPB panel

Embarassed!
It's that easy? Thanks so much.
You know, I did that before and the Spb panel didn't appear in the list of Panels to add in the slot.
However, after re-installing it's there now. D'Oh!!
Thanks again.

I have the same problem, however, the panel isnt there when i look at my choice of panels. on the panel i have now, i can click bottom-right on the screen to bring up "spb menu"

SPB mobile panel - Without the panels

I'm thinking of flashing to Jack's lite 1.04 rom, which has no panels. However, I couldn't live without the SPB mobile panel anymore. I've tried the SPB Mobile Shell, but it wasn't what I was looking for (especially the button to close it is retarded). I already found out that you can run the SPB mobile shell program just from it's program folder, even from another panel. There are two more things I need to find out:
-The softkeys on the panel are "Recent" and "Contacts", and they work. When I launch the shell as a program, they are "SPB menu" and "Agenda", and clicking or touching them does absolutely nothing.
-How do I get the SPBs-shell-program to replace the standard today screen? It doesn't have a today plugin.
I'd be really grateful if anyone could answer these questions!

are you using the newer SPB Shell? the 2.xx one? i have this and it's working just fine..oh and i have SPB Pocket plus 4 as well, maybe they're supposed to work together? but with this it's more of an extra feature of pocket plus rather than as a replacement for the today screen like the older SPB Shell. Maybe you could try getting the one from sony's website and see how that works

I am using the one from Sony's website, hence the term "SPB mobile panel".