Posted on 20 October 2008, at 10:15 pm, by Christopher Spera
Fellow Gear Diary Team Member Doug Goldring has written a pretty cool article on alternative Windows Mobile interfaces, exclusively at My Today Screen. The article looks at two of the bigger contenders, Spb Mobile Shell and Vito Technologies Winterface.
Sayeth Brother Goldring -
Ever since the advent of the iPhone, it seems that there has been a race among developers to, “fix” the traditional Windows Mobile interface. Users who were once happy with the traditional menu and today screen driven Windows Mobile, suddenly are demanding something far different. Something that is finger friendly and icon driven. Something that uses the new rules given to us by the iPhone, without necessarily copying the iPhone interface, or sacrificing any features. No small task, but two of the biggest Windows Mobile developers around stepped right up to the plate and prepared to face this challenge head on. Spb has given us Mobile Shell 2, while Vito Technologies released Winterface. Since this has become such an indispensable component of most users’ Windows Mobile experience, I thought it would be fun to take a look at them head-to-head and see how they fare.
If you’ve ever thought about looking at alternative WM user interfaces, you really need to give this a read. Not only might you find something you really like, but you’ll definitely see where I feel the future of WM is headed…beyond the Start Menu.
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October 21st, 2008 at 8:32 am
It’s kind of a big leap to assume that users were happy with the traditional WM menus/today screen before the iPhone came along. I seem to remember that there were studies a few years back actually showed that people preferred the interface from the Palm devices, but the apps from WM.
That aside it is a good look at some alternate interfaces for the WM platform. There are definitely good alternatives to the traditional interface and to some of the resource-hungry options from HTC.