Handy Shell Takes Over - and Impresses
Published by Steve Litchfield at 13:16 UTC, October 14th 2008
Since the dawn of time (ok, about 1995), developers have been looking to replace the default home screen of PDAs and smartphones. Epocware's new Handy Shell seems pretty comprehensive for S60 and so we asked Ewan to install it on his main device and run with it for a week... The result? A narrowly missed MegaApp. From configurability to stability, Handy Shell seems to do a lot to live up to its price tag.
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Categories: Software
Platforms: S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
ares
or they can use gdesk, that is completely free...
Rafe
GDesk takes a slightly different approach IIRC - great for power users. But its probably something we should cover on AAS at some point.
Hih
Hehe! I uninstalled it after 2 days.
Unregistered
Before anyone rushes to try this, note that the mail indicator does not work with MfE, RoadSync, etc.
tatoo1000
E71's Quickdialer is faster and better than Handyshell's.
I used the app for 2 weeks with my E71, but the mail notifier and the dialer forced my to give up. May suite better on a N series.
ares
Rafe, 100% agreed. Its time for you guys to give some love to Gdesk. People are doing some amazing stuff with it on uiq3 AND s60 v3
http://frenchanitya.blogspot.com/
an i imagine it will be amazing as a free solution to customize s60 v5 too...i´m sure Gary will be porting it
pfunk
I'm not sure I'd like the new interface...but I would sure love the quickdialer function. My E61i doesn't have it like the new E71 does. Are there any standalone apps that do that?
slitchfield
pfunk: as mentioned in the text(!), Google for SkyeQuiKey.
sandy_1988
For me, Tracker (by Smartphoneware) does a better job in all respects, be it customisability, be it performance. Only area where this one scores over Tracker is, the quick dialer. And the price of Tracker is less than half of this one.
Unregistered
i still don't think you can beat jbak taskman
talhamid
Guys, also try t9Nav (t9nav.com). I think it is better overall than SkyQUickey with more features.
AS for Handy Shell - that second row of shortcuts is nice. That's about it. I don't like the way the softkeys have been locked, as well as the only option for a task switcher is Handy Task, which is not that good. I hate it when a program forces itself upon you - in a way it becomes more irritating than the default S60 shell.
They'd be better off had they just concentrated on adding widget/panel functionality to the S60 standby.
Williamoni
Epocware programs are great - I have most of the Handy series. However, I think 45 dollars is too expensive for this product.
entwisi
Whilst initially impressed I found it "got in the way" too much to be useable for me
e.g. when answering a call I often switch to loudspeaker, this is almost impossible when Handy Shell is working as it grabs the soft keys over the standard ones.
Unregistered
I have handy shell with the handy weather plugin. I love seeing my 5 day weather forecast on the start screen!
Jago
I second Sandy and would recommend Tracker -
It doesn't have a contacts picture view or the second utility row in the standby screen but has everything else including (an optional) taskviewer and recently used list, whilst being more flexible and offers more functionality including :
Speed dials, speed contacts/sms/mms/email, links to files, folders, apps, weblinks and documents all with hot keys and in definable folders.
Still it's all personal preference....;)
I haven't checked out GDesk for a while - it looked a bit basic compared to Tracker whne I was in the market....
Cheers
Jago
Foxhunter
Just loaded package of Handy (Shell+Weather+Calendar+Safe) on my new E71 and just love it. Adds loads of options without losing anything from the original views. One press off the 'home' button and you're back to phone's standard interface. Haven't found any loss of functions eg speakerphone icon still appears on soft blue key when you make a call - maybe it just really suits the E71 but it's a hit with me.
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