Earlier tonite I found a thread on Howard Forums, which led me to a thread on My-Symbian, revealing a new beta application from Epocware, who make the popular Handy line of S60 applications. The new application is called Handy Shell, and from what I can tell, it’s designed to replace the entire S60 Active Standby screen, along with a few other features. Handy Shell is currently in open beta with a 14-day trial available, though I would expect the full retail version to be available soon.
Here you can see Handy Shell’s version of the S60 Active Standby screen. What’s cool about this is that, like Handy Taskman, Handy Shell completely takes over the functions of the S60 menu key, but also the red ‘End’ key. Users can customise what happens when you press either key, and you can even include the original S60 Active Standby screen in the rotation, so that each time you press the S60 menu key, you get a different screen, as seen below.
There is also a neat Dial or Start option, which mimics the behaviour of other applications’ ability to search your entire phone, simply by you starting to type on the home screen. This uses predictive text, so that, for instance, from the homescreen, I could simply press ’6622′ to get to Mobbler. When you search like this from the homescreen, your contacts are mixed in with your applications, so you really do have the full selection of nearly anything on your phone.
This is the new ‘Applications‘ view that also mimics the regular S60 menu, though as of yet you cannot create folders. You’re forced to choose 12 applications (3×4) to have as shortcuts in this view, though oddly, you cannot use the normal keypad shortcuts.
A new one-touch dialing screen is also available, dubbed ‘Contacts‘, which allows you, again, to select 12 contacts to have as shortcuts. This screen will either simply display the contacts’ name, or if you have a thumbnail set, it will automatically show that, as you can see in the screenshot. When you first use the application, these contacts are preset to the last few numbers you have called.
There will also, apparently, be a weather plugin that can show on the homescreen, as pictured above. Cleverly, this will require you to have a full license for Handy Weather v.6, which is currently not available. As soon as this is available, we’ll be sure to let you know. You can, however, pick up a license for Handy Weather v.5 from the Symbian-Guru store, or check out our review here.
I’m still tinkering with Handy Shell, to see how I like it and try to find any bugs that I can, but you should also give it a go, if you’re in the mood to try out a beta application. You can download the installation file for Handy Shell here.
