SPB Software Releases Update to Mobile Shell!

"Taipei, September 30th, 2009 – SPB Software, a leading mobile software developer and a holder of numerous globally recognized mobile application awards, officially announced the release of SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 for Windows Mobile today at a press event in Taipei, Taiwan. SPB Mobile Shell has been publicly recognized as the best-selling mobile application across all smartphone platforms for three consecutive years: 2007, 2008 and 2009. By encapsulating support for gravity sensors and 3D hardware accelerators, the new version offers a thrilling, easy and fun to use interaction model with eye-catching 3D visual effects. For example, browsing email and text messages unfolds an intuitive animation offering both natural and engaging user experience."

Read the full press relese here, and download information is there as well, etc. I've been testing the new version for a few days before it was released and had some issues on an older device running a cooked WM6.1 ROM. Vendor is checking it out, but if you are happy with V3.0 (which works fine on all my hardware), you might wait a bit before trying this. The size grew markedly to nearly double in this version (probably due to the additional eye-candy). Mainly my home screen gets stale a lot (clock, etc.), and the new wireless widgets do not work correctly. Still, it looks great, and there are several new widgets to choose (Google Search, Facebook and Twitter status, etc). Of course, 3.X users get a free upgrade, so if you don't mind being an early adopter, go grab it. New users still must pay a hefty $29.95...ouch... but better than default WM UI, no doubt!

UPDATE: Actually the problem with the wireless control is still under investigation, and could be my old unit is getting wonky, but definitely the add-on SPB Pocket Plus close button feature was causing the screen to actually freeze up, which I had not noticed (using PP V4.0.2). I thought the display was simply not updating the widgets. If you have any similar issues, suggest simply disabling close button functionality for now. I let the developer know about the issue.