SPB Mobile Shell 5.0 debuts with Android, Symbian support (update: video!)
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 15th 2010 4:37PM
posted February 15th 2010 4:37PM
We'd already caught a glimpse of it on Toshiba's new TG02 handset, but SPB Software has now gotten fully official with SPB Mobile Shell 5.0, which will be available to consumers and OEMs alike. The big news with this one is that SPB has added support for both Android and Symbian in addition to Windows Mobile, all of which will be able to take advantage of a spiffy new 3D engine and a new "natural interaction engine" that apparently has full multitouch support. Other additions include some 3D widgets, and an array of tightly integrated social networking features, including Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Still no indication of a price or release date for the consumer version, unfortunately, nor is there any official word on any other phones that will come with it pre-installed.[Thanks, Srle]
Update: Check out a video demo after the break!
WOW, where do I pay?
@brrip
Try www.spb.com, $30 direct.
@brrip - I know. But what is it? some sort of gas station app? where I live, Mobile and Shell are petroleum stations :)~
@wraith404 this isn't out yet or i honestly would.
and i think this is gonna be really useful for symbian users who only have handy shell as the alternative, which is really ugly and rather hard to customise
@brrip
What is it??? is a UI??? that consumers can put on there phones????
@Alexandertron it's a UI Shell, go check out the current version for windows mobile. all the apps still look the same, but it makes accessing them a lot easier.
Theres a short but sweet video of it on youtube from pocketnow. I wasn't overly impressed until they showed the live 3D view, damn damn impressive...if maybe not the most functional.
@runadumb Google turned up one for the Android version. It's running on a Nexus One and horribly slow. The video did show the 3D wheel, but nothing that improved on usability. Probably shippable for Android.
Sweet!
I try those 3rd party shells now and again and always end up back with a stock load, I prefer performance over eye-candy.
@Charles Knight
Too many of them arent very flexible, and in SPB's case, are ridiculously expensive.
Android and Symbian will find it more useful to them with the new direction the WP7 is taking.
@Charles Knight Actually I'm using Home++ now and it's pretty fast on my Magic, that usually slows down to a halt when I'm doing anything with the phone. Heck, it even seems to be a bit faster than the stock home screen!
I agree though that this looks way too slow. On a N1!
SPB mobile shell is the only that prevents me from totally hating my winmo 6.1 phone
SPB saves the day with Windows Mobile, but is it really an improvement to Android?
Home ++ for Android for the win.
@Bobbo
SPB simply wants a piece of the Home pie. There are many customizable Home apps on the market right now, so this isn't anything new.
Am I spazzing here? Didn't they just bypass 4.0? (3.5 to 5.0)
@zachavm
I'm glad someone got that before me.
I'm running 3.5 and had to check if I missed 4.0 lol
Some videos of the 5.0 on the symbian, NOW!
Cool, as Symbian, even that new S^3, totally needs SPB.
Dumb question, but where exactly can anyone see what this looks like?
The link just seems to go to a press release with no other info.
@LAY
No other info yet available
No release date? I am not pleased.
YES!
Now that windows phone 7 wont allow shells it makes sense to take it where they can
Android & Symbian support - that means soon I can buy almost any phone and make it worth using... SPB Mobile Shell + mskip plugin from xda = who needs windows phone 7 SERIES
i got bored of SBP on minmo pretty quick.... and uses up ram, in fact went to stock winmo6.1 eventually..... so naaah stock android is nice enough
If it looks and works anything like other alternative menu layout apps on Symbian i think i'll pass.
Every similar app i have tried so far was worse than the default layout so i'm extremely sceptical about this being useful at all. Let alone useful enough to spend money on.
i never really liked spb I used it on my htc touch and touchpro but never the less it's nice to see interface choices for other platforms besides windows-mobile :-)... webos and windows-phone 7 are the only platforms that can justify the fact that they will not allow different ui's on there devices because the entire pull of there devices are based inside of there ui...(webos= card view) (wp7= all related apps working together in the same workspace)
but platforms such as the blackberry os and mobile osx really should fallow suit with customization, there really is nothing special about a grid of apps thrown all over the screen... it was cool back in 06 and 07 but.. it's tired now
Her is the link to youtube
http://pocketnow.com/tech-news/mwc-video-spb-mobile-shell-50-on-android
I had SBP Shell running on my WinMo 6.1 Touch Pro 2. Nasty. It interferes with all kinds of apps. ,really slows things down, and finally hung up my phone completely once I integrated it with a screen rotater apps. NEVER AGAIN.
WinMo 6.1 is good enough for now.
I'll join the others here. Have used different versions of SPB Shell over the years with WinMo. I would always get excited with the possibilities, load it up, have fun for a month or two and then revert back to stock. It's a nice idea, and can be very useful for old 6.1 phones. However, 6.5 is much nicer IMO and certainly TouchFlo and Sense rock SPB.
I think SPB have realised their mobile shell won't have a place on WP7 so it is reaching out to other platforms to ensure it can live on in some way. I just think it is less relevant on other platforms as their UIs are already pretty good. It was a godsend on some WM6 devices where the vanilla homescreen was pretty lacking.
spb has failed on this miserably 5 months and not even a release. what a joke