Utility triumph or UI disaster?

[slitchfield]

Some folks are gonna love this. Others will hate it. But Handy Shell is coming, taking over the whole S60 standby/menu/control key schema and making it remeniscent of a Windows Mobile home screenadding new functionality. Ricky Cadden's been playing with the Handy Shell beta and you'll find his thoughts and screenshots right here.

Read on in the full article.

[ashu]

i have gone thru ricky's site. I doubt how well this product will do. Fine, symbian ui is no where near iphone but then i feel this shell gonna mess it up all the more and be rest assured they gonna charge you 20-40 bucks for this. Handy taskman and handy safe have created such a cult around epoc's products that everything they come out with, seems like a gem but i am afraid shell in just not quite in the same league. Especially, there is nothing so gr8 in it to BUY this if it comes to that.
But then, i am so very used to my phone's ui that it feels irrational to me to pay for such a product. Lets see what others have to say on this.

[stuclark]

This looks great. For a long time the active standby screen has needed to be more flexible (yes, I know it's greatly improved in FP2) - this app. seems to give a lot more of that desired flexibility.

Even from half a day with the beta version I'm impressed. A great and much needed addition to the homescreen which was begging for more flexibility and ability to customise content, I'll get the full version when it appears and also handy weather v6 which to me is a must have app.

[Tzer2]

I've often wondered why we should be stuck with the UI that the manufacturer gives us.

Surely it should be fairly easy, especially on modern phones with their ultra-fast hardware, to allow third party interfaces to be attached the same way themes are?

Back in the days of MS-DOS, the PC world was filled with alternative graphical interfaces and there was a wide variety of front ends to choose from.

[fernando20]

Don't like that I cannot personalize the soft keys, I don't want contacts nor applications shortcuts on my standby screen.

I looks a little broken on my N95-1 (v30), it shows a little bar that changes according to what was last on screen between it and the softkeys:



That's after the screensaver, when it's most visible.

And when you open the standard menu, the right softkey "Exit" will go back to active standby, they need to figure out a way to capture that keypress too.

But I love that it can control the red key, making it not close apps, just minimize them. S60v2 style! Consistent how I like it.

[stuclark]

Oh, and to answer Steve's comment... it doesn't make Active Standby reminiscent of the Windows Home screen, it makes it reminiscent of Sendo's Now! screen, which is what Active Stanby is basically based on anyway!

ive been playing with it for a day or two and the best feature by far is the way a new text message pops up without you needing to open it. the applications feature is useless, the dialer thing is redundant, for me anyway, since i just bought skyequikey, which is much better, imo, and there just isnt enough customization, but the those second row of shortcuts is priceless. also, the way you can switch between views with the menu key or the end key is a great idea. so basically, a wonderful idea that has great potential but way overkill for my uses.

[jah]

I really like Handy Shell, will be even better once the Handy Wheather plug-in works. But not that great for the E90 yet as it does not make use of the inner screen real-estate. We should encourage such innovation. Will be even better once we have S60 Touch :-)

Edit: it has WM-like 'smart contact' look-up (a bit like on the E71)

It is usless with my new E71 and its dedicated keys. Specially because the mail notificator does not work with mail for exchange.
Shortcuts shall be customizble.

[Karlo_N80ie]

i don't like the fact that some plug ins from the original active standby are left out, ie. to do, music "now playing", and google pencil key shortcut.

It's worth noting that Handy Weather (& presumably the plug in weather version for this app) is a yearly subscription service ...which sucks.
Worldmate which is free.

[tatoo1000]

Shortcuts are custumizable. The only issue is that the email notification does not work with mail for exchange.

[lookatbowen]

Just a word of warning. I installed Handy Shell on my N95 the day I read the above review, and it was running as a trial. A brilliant application..... until I upgraded my N95 to the latest firmware version (v30), and all hell broke loose.

Handy Shell would not un-install, and the phone threw up a very nasty message "Phone Start-Up failed, contact the retailer".

The only way I was able to resolve this problem, was to re-install the firmware, and sadly I was not able to use my latest backup, because Handy Shell was application conflicting with the new firmware...

Had it on mine for a couple of days and was loving it untill I took a call and wanted to switch to loudspeaker(which I do quite often), the shell effectively blocked me from activating it. So, nice idea, shame it makes using the phone impossible in what isn't an unusual scenario.