By wolfstar
5th May 2009.
09:55

Two new UIs available

We posted earlier about Pointui’s free Xperia panel version of their Home 2 interface – well, now the pro version is available. As there’s no trial, I haven’t tried it out but judging from the release notes it goes someway towards fixing the issues that made me give up on the free version. I still think its the best looking of all the Xperia interfaces, but, lacking the ability to use the keyboard to search through your contacts makes it impossible for me to use it as my day to day home screen.

Unlike…

SPB shell 3.0, which came out last week. I downloaded the trial version and have since become a massive convert. It’s impossible to compare it to the free panel version which comes with the Xperia as it does so much more, including, incorporating a similar 2.0like interface which it refers to as the “professional” desktop. A vertical swipe down the touch screen switches between the professional and lifestyle desktops  (professional = does lots,  lifestyle = looks good,) and I genuinely do use both, (primarily because the widgets on the lifestyle desktop provide great access to programs.)

I always thought that, if I found a really good UI, I would use panels less, but this hasn’t been the case with SPB. As it replaces the traditional winmo home screen, it doesn’t use up one of the assignable panel slots so I can still use my standard panel layout (media panel, evernote skype, cnn, facebook, radio, on the road and the fish.)

There are way too many features to go through them all here but you can download a 15 day free trial if you’re interested or read the excellent review posted by xperiancer.