Today Resco released a beta version of their Photo Viewer application. Resco gave MobilityMinded the possibility to review this betaversion. In this artice I will point out the most interesting changes since the last verison of Resco Photo Viewer. Please be aware that this review is about the latest Beta; functionality might change in the final build!

So the first question that comes to a lot of people is: Why do I need an extra Photo Viewer on my Windows Phone, I’ve already got a built-in photo viewer.

To give a direct answer to this question Resco states:

Resco Photo Viewer is a favorite photo viewing program with features far beyond standards of the classic built-in viewer. Users gain functions of complete image management in a modern looking and easy to handle application. Intuitive way of work, outrageous effects and many slideshow and edit features move other image viewing programs to the second line

And from my first impressions I can only say that it’s true; Resco Photo Viewer gives a user far more possibilities managing their photo’s on their Windows Phone than any build-in photo viewer which comes shipped with their Windows Phone.

Lets go through the new features of Resco Photo Viewer 7.00 Beta.
In the press release Resco names as new features for this verion:

• 3 main User Interfaces
  Users operate in 3 main interfaces (Browser, Viewer, Slideshow), each with own rules and options of use.
• 4 main Image Databases
  Browser’s home screen offers 4 main image databases — My Documents, Camera Roll, Favorites and My Albums.
• Support for Devices with GPS Module
  User is able to add GPS position to any image. The position can be, afterwards, located on map (using Google Maps).
• Upload Images straight to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa or Twitter
  Along with Flickr, the biggest internet image database, users can choose among other three popular social networks (Facebook, Picasa or Twitter) to upload their photos to.

3 main User Interfaces.

The new Resco Photo Viewer has 3 main User Interfaces:

• The Browser Interface.
• The Viewer Interface.
• The Slideshow Interface.

Compared to version 6.33 the new interfaces look very modern and clean. Everything is “Touch” based and doesn’t need a stylus anymore.

The Browser Interface.

The main screen of the browser has 4 Image Databases. “My Documents“, “Camera Roll“, “Favorites” and “My Albums”.  The last option gives you the possibility to browse trough your device and search for photo’s .

The browser interface works really well in this beta version and doesn’t need any improvement at all. Browsing is fast and looks very clean.

When in one of the folders you have several buttons on the very bottom of the screen. The most interesting one is “Actions”.

Actions

Actions lets you select the photo’s in the folder and do something with these photo’s. You can either choose to Send, Upload, Copy, Move, Rename or Delete the selected photo’s.

When you directly do to a folder on your device click the “Browse” buton on the bottom of the screen. You will than see a tree-view of your device and directly go into a folder.

The Viewer interface.

The viewer interface is the interface when viewing a photo. The photo can be viewed full-screen with no controls, but when pressing the touchscreen controls appear for the displayed picture. Depending on the settings different controls can be shown or hidden.

Among these controls are the following:

• Rotate the photo left or right.
• Go to the previous or next picture.
• Return to the album where the photo is in.
• Start the slideshow.
• Send the photo via IrDA, Bluetooth, Email, MMS or Upload the picture.
• Edit photo (like brightness, RGB etc.)
• Menu.
• A Photo Zoom slider.

Most controls are self-explanatory but there are some controls that might need some extra information.

Send the photo via IrDA, Bluetooth, Email, MMS or Upload.

Several options from this control don’t work yet in this beta. For example I’ve tried uploading the picture to several services (The options are Flickr, Picasa, Facebook & Twitter) and sadly not everything worked as smooth as I thought it would. I am convinced that in the final version these issues are completely gone and uploading to these popular services are fully integrated in this application.

Photo Zoom slider

The photo zoom slider is a great control in the View interface. Scrolling your finger up on the slider zooms in to the picture (at a maximum of 2000%), scrolling down obviously zooms out. What impresses me a lot is the scrollingspeed. You can literally zoom form 1% to 2000% within a second. very Smooth!

Menu

The Menu control shows 4 options: Save, File, Properties and Settings

“Save” gives the possibility to save the picture with a different filename, set the photo to a contact or set the photo as Home Screen.

“File” lets you Copy or Move the picture to a folder, Rename or Delete the photo.

“Properties” gives all the file properties like filesize, Dimension, color depth etc.

“Settings” brings you to the “Viewer Settings” page where it’s possible to change the preferences of the viewer interface settings.

The Slideshow interface

The Slideshow interface shows the selected photoroll as a slideshow. The slideshow can be configured with several options like Speed, Slide Direction, Slide Effect, Hide Notes and Repeat.

Just like the other interfaces the slideshow interface look very well. In the slideshow interface I couldn’t find anything that didn’t work the way it should be so I think this interface will be pretty much the same in the final version like it is in this beta version.

Thoughts & Wrap-up

First of all I would like to point out that I think it’s good for you to know with which device I’ve been testing this beta version of Resco Photo Viewer. The device is a HTC Touch Pro 2.

Secondly I think it is not time yet to come up with a final verdict of the new version of Resco Photo Viewer. This reviewed beta however is a great step in the development of Resco Photo Viewer and already has a lot of functionality which should be available in the final version.

As a last point I would like to mention that the name “Photo viewer” is in my opinion a little bit of an understatement. From all the added features that should be available in the final version in my thoughts it became a true Photo Manager in stead of just a Viewer.

Today SPB Softwarehouse released a new version of their excellent user-interface application SPB Mobile Shell v3.0. This article will provide a step by step overview of the different, layouts, screens and highlight the main new features of this great add-on for your Windows Mobile powered device.

SPB Mobile Shell v3.0 Step by Step

1.  3D Carousel or Tiles View

During the Mobile World Congress 2009 the SPB Mobile Shell v3.0 was first announced, and one of the features that ended up on youtube was the 3D carousel feature. This graphical representation  provides an easy to use way of srolling through the different screens. However if you don’t like this 3D carousel mode you can switch to the Tiles view, which is also shown in the screenshots above. This looks very familiar, since this approach was also used in the Sony Xperia X1.

Although the 3D carousel is very cool, I personally do prefer the Tiles View, since I find it easier to manipulate with your fingers. And you are never one-click away of all the screens.

2.  Home Sceen(s)

In this new version of SPB Mobile Shell, there is not just one homescreen layout but two homescreen layouts: (A) professional now screen, (B) lifestyle now screen.

“Windows Mobile devices are traditionally popular among mobile professionals, users that need the power of this platform in their daily lives. Very often you need the professional features of a Windows Phone at work, and in your free time you still want to use the same phone, but with a more generic “consumer-ish” angle.” [ref01]

This reasoning makes sence, and is in line with thoughts about the strategy of Microsoft Windows Mobile and HTC. You don’t have separate devices for work- and for private use, and therefor you need to combine both into one device or application. Furthermore it is one of the drivers why Microsoft would like to move a little more into the consumer space. However let’s focus on the features of the SPB Mobile Shell application:

Professional Home

Of course the professional home is optimized for power and usability, having all your important information in one single overview and accessing it with one tip of a finger. Although it looks similar to the home screen of the previous version there are made some clever improvements under the hood:

• “There is an algorithm to choose which account to open: if there are unread emails, it will open the first account with unread emails; if there are no unread emails, it will open the account that had unread emails last. As result, it will almost always open the account you want to use.
• Shared space for upcoming events, today’s all-day events, graphic calendar, and the next alarm. The challenge is to show all important information in limited space, but nicely. This algorithm can be tweaked in Spb Mobile Shell settings (“Calendar Widget”). ” [ref01]

Both are very useful in every day life and help you to work more efficiently with your Windows Phone.

Lifestyle Home

The lifestyle home is aimed at customization and personalization, so you can build your own home screen for personal use.

• “Three screens with horizontal scrolling (so there is more space)
• Widget-based (so you can also put shortcuts, photo contacts, indicators for power, specific email accounts (e. g. gmail) etc.)” [ref01]

Looking at the features of the Lifestyle home, I could find similarities with the Homescreen on the Google Android based T-Mobile Google G1 . The T-Mobile G1 device also provides three screens, with horizontal scrolling and the use of widgets. However the number of available widgets is limited, while SPB softwarehouse has done an excellent job a offers a wide range of avaialble widgets.

The professional home and the lifestyle home are the first two screens in the 3D Carousel.

3.  Applications and settings

The next two screens in the 3D carousel are aimed at quickly launching applications and/or having access to your settings. These two screens are (A) Launcher, and (B) SPB Menu.

“On any home screen (Widget-based or Professional) you always have a big button called “Launcher”.”[ref01]

This launcher has a simple- and an advanced mode, and is used to quickly (re-)open the last used applications. In practice this is a scenario that occures very often. The SPB Menu on the other hand is a feature that is familiar from SPB Mobile Shell v2.0, and it perfectly integrates with the start menu. However next to the programs and settings you can quickly access applications and settings around central topics, for example “internet” or “messaging”.

5.  Contacts

The next three screens in the 3D carousel are all centered around the keyword “contacts”:  (A) Call Log , (B) Favourite Contacts and (C) SPB Contacts. In the version 3.0 release SPB softwarehouse has focused on making the process of working with contacts efficient and enjoyable, with an optimized dailing scenario. The reasoning behind this is outlined below:

• “Most likely the contact you want to call is in your favorites list (since most people make 90% of all calls to their ten top contacts). This scenario is solved by the center tab (Favorite  Contacts)
• If not, there is a high chance that you want to return a call, or call somebody you’d recently called. In this case, you can easily switch to the left tab (Call Log)
• If neither of the situations is the case, then you can still go to the right tab (Spb Contacts) and quickly find the right contact by using T9 search” [ref01]

Contacts Carousel and Facebook Integration

“Photo Contacts is a central component of contacts management in Spb Mobile Shell” [ref01]

This approach is already supported with the development of the widget based favourite contacts screen, however the contacts carousel also proves the easy of use of this concept. Analogue to the easy manipulation of the 3D carousel for switching between the different screens, the contact carousel is aimed at switching between your most important contact.

Furthermore a custom ringtone can be set, or the contact picture can easily be changed (even cropped or rotated !!!) via “change picture”. It is not only possible to get a picture from teh Windows Mobile Phone’s camera, but also from the social network Facebook !

“We found that most users don’t have good pictures for their friends in their phones. We think that today, social networks are the best way to get great high quality pictures for your contacts. I like to say that “It is hard to make good pictures of all your friends, but fortunately, your friends take good picture of themselves”.” [ref01]

6.  The other screens: Weather, Agenda, Time & Edit Profile

In the 3D carousel there are four screens left, however the most significant changes were in the screens described above. The Weather- and Time screens form excellent opportunities to perfectly integrate with SPB Weather and SPB Time, while the Agenda en Edit Profile screens are new in comparison to the previous version of SPB Mobile Shell.

The Agenda screen seems to have some elements of Mobile Shell v2.0 Homescreen, however it provides a more detailed and extensive view of your calendar and agenda. The advantage is that you don’t need to open the underlying applications, but you have direct access to the information needed. The Edit Profile screen makes it possible to easily change the settings of your phone profile, without have to click through two levels in order to acces the settings you need to change. Also this screen can be perfectly be integrated with SPB Phonesuite.

Video overview

Below a short video overview of SPB Mobile Shell v3.0 is shown, which is released today on youtube. It is a good complement and summary for the written review above.

Conclusions and first thoughts

Personally I do think that SPB Softwarehouse again has released  a great application, which builds further upon the success of the previous versions. SPB Softwarehouse keeps on improving their applications, resulting in very clever improvements which make your device even more usable. In other words the bar is raised again with the release of version 3.0 of SPB Mobile Shell.

On the user interface level, SPB Softwarehouse is doing a great job. One of the results is that SPB Mobile Shell v2.0 has been shipped on Acer, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, O2, E-ten and Pharos devices. If I have a look at the great potential and eas of use of version 3.0 I think there is a good chance that some OEM’s (except for HTC) will embrace this application as the user-interface-solution.

With only HTC having a mature user-interface in the form of TouchFLO 3D, it’s self-evident that SPB Mobile Shell will be a must-have application for a lot of Windows Mobile users. I thinkthat SPB offers a fair price for the value you get from this application, and for current SPB Mobile Shell users, they offer an upgrade program.

The only minor point for improvement I can find is the relative large footprint / size in ROM of 4,87MB  for the QVGA version and 7,70 MB for the VGA version.

Windows Mobile 6.5

“As a close partner of Microsoft and Windows Mobile device manufactures we had early access to Windows Mobile 6.5. Therefore, we kept it in mind when we were designed Spb Mobile Shell 3.0. As result Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 complements Windows Mobile 6.5 features without any conflicts.” [ref01]

So also on the medium- / long-term SPB Mobile Shell v3.0 is a good investment on your device. SPB software house always keeps surprising me with clever improvements, so keep up the good work building great software !!

Price and upgrade policy

The price has not changed with the new version. Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 will be available from www.spbsoftwarehouse.com for USD 29.95.
If you are an Spb Mobile Shell 2.x owner, you can upgrade to 3.0 for 50% off the retail price. If you purchased previous 2.x version within 90 days of the official release date – you are entitled to a free upgrade.

Reference List

1. SPB Softwarehouse:  SPB Mobile Shell Additional Background Information
2. SPB Softwarehouse:  Work-Life Balance with Spb Mobile Shell 3.0: New Version of World’s Bestselling Mobile Application
3. SPB Softwarehouse:  SPB Mobile Shell Product Page