Software: Spb Pocket Plus 4.0
Vendor: Spb Software House
Price: 29.95
Reviewer: Stephen Borders (badersk)
Rating: 4.8 of 5
After about a year of work Spb Software House has released the latest version of its award winning software Pocket Plus 4.0. Their goal was to implement many of the features requested by current users into a finger friendly application, improvements to the today plug-in and many other features, while also “making it smaller and faster”. In fact Spb says: “We spent more than half our development time on optimizing the code, making Pocket Plus as snappy and compact as possible.” I believe they succeeded.
Until now I had never used Pocket Plus because I was completely unaware of what a good application it was. Most probably the reason was price, I’m a little cheap. Well after using this for more than a week I assure you it is well worth the price. I installed it on my 8125 with a clean install of windows mobile and a couple of other programs that I need and it has performed without any problems the whole time. I have not had to reset except for a couple of times and that was for glitches in the phone. No problems with speed either, this program uses very little in resources. Spb claims it has an installed size of 2.91 mb with ram usage of 1.38mb. My numbers showed 1.63mb rom and 1.5mb ram, I did however choose not to install the trial software which might have changed the numbers. At any rate it is very small for an app that does so much.
What is Pocket Plus?
Pocket Plus is an enhancement to the Windows Mobile OS. Why do I say an enhancement rather than plug-in or application? Because Pocket Plus adds many of the features that Microsoft left out or didn’t finish from the start, for example, the X or close button that doesn’t really close anything. So Pocket Plus works more like an extension of WM than an application. It is for this reason that users who are familiar with Windows and Windows Mobile can utilize many of the features of Pocket Plus without having to learn them.
With all that Pocket Plus does, we have neither the time or space to cover all the features of 4.0. We will then focus on the improvements. Spb listed their top ten additions to Pocket Plus 4.0 as
-
Reduced Program size
-
Reduced memory consumption
-
Faster than 3.2
-
Smart Scrolling
-
Tabbed Browsing in Pocket Internet Explorer
-
Shortcut Labels on the Today Screen
-
Third party plug-in support
-
Fast search in PIE
-
File save/open dialog replacement
-
Assigning actions for hardware buttons for long presses.
Installation
Installing Pocket Plus is a snap with the desktop installer. Not only can you install it from your desktop but you can register it and select any or all the features of the program you want to install.
Today Screen
Pocket Plus has always provided an enhancement to the today screen with key indicators like battery life, memory stats and screen brightness controls and over time these have been improved upon. With version 4.0 they have continued this trend with more options that allow you to personalize your screen, such as
-
Small and large Icons
-
Vertical and Horizontal tabs
-
Drag and Drop tab headers
-
Dynamic tabs
-
Auto hide content option
-
Realigning in landscape mode
You can also add labels to the icons just like you have on the windows desktop. This is especially helpful for folder icons which look alike but can also, according to research, speed up navigation. Labels can be place to the right or underneath depending on which size icon you use.
The Only thing missing here in my opinion is the clock from Spb Mobile Shell. While you could have mobile shell too, some either don't have a converged device or do not need the phone dialer and weather panel of Mobile Shell and I really like that clock.
Past versions of Pocket Plus supported other Spb plug-ins like Spb weather. Now Pocket Plus also supports third party plug-ins as well. Spb Pocket Plus 4.0 supports almost every PPC today plug-in available.
The tabs of the today screen allow you to place several plug-ins under a single tab. If it is internet, such as live search, rss readers or other internet related items you can place them under one tab, if it is entertainment it can be placed under another tab and so on.
Pocket Plus also supports something called Smart Today Technology. This technology specifies how different plug-ins coexists with one another. It will allow say a weather plug-in to display all the time even when It’s tab is closed. All Spb plug-ins have this and, interestingly enough, Spb will be releasing it to the public later.
Skins
Since version 2.0 Pocket Plus featured extended themes a taking a normal PPC theme along with skins for the indicators. With 4.0 they have separated the two and you can use any PPC theme and any available indicator/icon skin. This again allows the user to customize their PPC however suites them best. In the quest to make Pocket Plus as small as Possible they included only 2 skins, a classic one and a new one, however you can view, choose and download skins right from the today options menu if you are connected to the web.
Settings
With Pocket Plus you can change settings on many of the features right from the today screen. Tap a hold on a particular Icon and you can change the look, add or take away the label, change the size or even delete the shortcut. You can do this for just one Icon in the tab or choose to change them all.
Like Spb Mobile Shell if you place Pocket Plus at the top off your today screen it will not fall into the scrolling area when the screen gets full, but will stay at the top of your screen.
Battery Indicator
Again added with version 2.0 was a battery indicator in the form of dashes at the very top of the screen. For some this was a very handy gadget, for others that did not know what it was, it appeared to be open tabs with no way to access them. So for those people they have included as a default a small battery Icon in the top bar like a Windows Mobile Smartphone. As an option you can select the old battery indicator, which I happen to like the best. I also would prefer if the bar progressively change color from green to yellow to red at different stages of battery life. Oh well, maybe next time.
Pocket Internet Explorer
If I were to list what I don’t like about PIE it would probably be a page long. While Spb has not fixed all of the problems they have added some real improvements.
Tabbed Browsing: By default PIE does not allow you to open more than one page at a time. Pocket Plus in the past has offered the feature of multiple windows, but with this new version they have added tabbed browsing. That’s right you can not only open a new page but it can open it in a tab just like all the browsers we are using on our PCs. (If you don’t have on your PC where have you been) To do so just tap and hold on a link and select “open in new tab” and It will open. I have has some glitches with this though. If I try to do it from my home page it opens my file explorer, but it works fine any other time.
Another feature I find missing from PIE is the ability to search from the address bar. I always do this on my computer at home and work, I don’t use search “tool bars” or Google, Yahoo, Ask etc. (yeah I know). With Spb Pocket Plus they have added smart search which allows you to type in what you want to search for, tap the Spb plus icon to the right and select “search” and it will search Google (oh well) from the address bar. It may not seem like a big deal but it does save a step or two and for me it just comes natural.
File Open/Save Dialog
Windows mobile applications allow you to open edit and save documents on the device or insert attachments to an email which is an important feature for the mobile professional. There is one problem with this though. You can’t open documents from anywhere except the My Documents folder. Pocket Plus replaces the standard dialog with an enhanced one, which allows opening and saving files on your device from/to any folder.
Normally in Windows Mobile if you tap and hold on a file you can open, save, cut, copy, or paste the files on your device but you can’t see the file extension because you don’t have a properties selection. Pocket Plus 4.0 also added a “properties” selection to the menu dialog that allows you to see the file extension just like windows.
Buttons
Pocket Plus 3.0 extended hardware button support to allow the user to assign Spb Pocket Plus actions to the hardware buttons on the device.
With Pocket Plus 4.0 they doubled the number of buttons that can be used. Now you can assign different actions to press and long press. For example you can launch Internet Explorer with the simple button press and close a program with the long button press.
On devices that offer a special button: “OK”, which closes or minimizes applications, you can assign the button to actually close program and with a long press open the “Close” menu to select which running program you want to close or open.
Smart Scrolling
Last but certaingly not least we have Smart Scrolling. Scrolling is something we have started seeing on many devices since the release of the iPhone (seems more like 'their phone'). If you are like me you need features not present on such a device (exchange push mail), can’t afford it, and don’t want to give in to the hype. Pocket Plus 4.0 adds Smart Scrolling as part of the package. This allows you to scroll with your finger or stylus through lists, contacts, documents and web pages. You can scroll fast or slow, up, down, right or left. I found this to be very nice however it seemed a little slow to respond when first activated but once you get it going it works just fine. I can't display it here but if you watched my first look video (i am told it was terrible) you can see it in action. It does make looking at full web pages better, at least until someone develops a better mobile browser that doesn’t bring you device to a screeching halt.
Overview
I have not covered every feature of Spb Pocket Plus 4.0. If I did I doubt anyone would read it all. What I have done is focus on the improvements made to an already incredible application.
How do I feel about Pocket Plus 4.0. All in all it is an amazing application that truly incorporates many features that were left out or not completed in Windows Mobile. Is it perfect. No, but it is something that should be on your must have list if you are using a Windows Mobile device. My favorites are the tabbed browsing, infinitely customizable Today screen, and the scrolling. Things I would like to see added or improved. The Battery Indicator: change color progressively and add the clock from the now screen of Mobile Shell. If you have not tried Spb Pocket Plus or haven't tried it in a long time, download the trial or just go ahead and purchase it from our store. Come on You know you want to.
Plus
-
Basically completes Windows mobile (adds what should have been there in the first place)
-
Fully customizable today screen
-
Adds programable features to the buttons on you device
-
Smart Scrolling
-
Tabbed Browsing
-
Fast search (Search from Address bar)
-
Skins Downloadable to your device
-
Need I go on
-
Price (while some might feel $30 is too much, how much would you have to spend for all these features)
Minus
Thanks to Spb Software House for providing a review copy.
Thanks for reading.
Source: Aximsite/Mobility Site Review
View Original Blog Post
Follow Us
RSS Feed
Follow on Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
