Windows Mobile 5 and 6 get a new interface

As smartphones gained popularity outside of the business world, a division formed between devices made for consumers (lifestyle smartphones) and those made for enterprise deployments (professional smartphones). Professional devices tend to be more integrable into bigger systems and offer more in the productivity department while lifestyle devices cater more to the individual's tastes and offer more in terms of entertainment.

Though Microsoft has plenty of consumer smartphones running Windows Mobile, the operating system has found itself on the far end of "Professional," struggling to appeal to consumers enamored with touch-based operating systems. So Microsoft has worked to make Windows Mobile 6.5 and future versions much more "finger friendly," without sacrificing their professional capabilities.

Meanwhile, SPB Software has devised its own interface for previous versions of Windows Mobile that does that very thing. Today, the company has released the latest update to its SPB Mobile Shell, an interface for Windows Mobile Professional that has layouts for both lifestyle and professional users which can run either simultaneously or individually.

Earlier this year, SPB Software released Mobile Shell 3.0, which really took the software ahead into the most current UI zeitgeist, with much greater emphasis on widgets. With this release, the company has added many more widgets, including social networking, wireless settings, and Internet search.

While many mobile interfaces incorporate portrait/landscape screen shifting when the phone is tilted, SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 goes a step further and lets a phone's velocity sensor control the UI in three dimensions. It's somewhat like HTC's TouchFLO 3D Windows Mobile interface, except far more 3D.

SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 is priced at $39.95, and can be downloaded directly from SPB. It is compatible with Windows Mobile 5 (Phone, Pocket PC,) WM6 (Classic, Professional) and WM6.1 (Classic, Professional).