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SPB Shell 3D finally on Market!

Less functionality than launcher pro and adw. You can't even change the number of icon rows and columns. It's slick, but that wears off fast.
 
Support for more features found on all the other launchers may come but I don't think they will get too many people to download for $15. Pricing anything over $5 will put you in a niche market with Android. You can make an app, if you price it at $5 or less people will take the risk of using it, over $5 with a demo, people will buy it if they know about it from previous experience or if they use the demo and it fits their needs, over $5 with no demo people will buy it if they know about it and know it fits their needs otherwise people will pirate it. SBP has done this sure people who had WP and used SBP previously will buy it, others will find a way to pirate the app and use it without paying or just won't use it at all.
 
gwlaw99 said:
Less functionality than launcher pro and adw. You can't even change the number of icon rows and columns. It's slick, but that wears off fast.
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My impression exactly. That being said, I will play more tonight.

-Nkk
 
What I do like a lot is the drawer at the bottom that you can put items in while rearranging panel items. That is very cool. The folders are pretty cool too. And the icons for apps that are on panels, that is cool.

The widgets are ok, but generally waste space and weather doesn't link to deeper detailed information.
 
Even though its $15 I still bought and I must say that this is way better than LP or ADW. Its super smooth on my Atrix and no lag and great concept.
 
I can't get myself to pay $15 for a launcher with no scrolling widget support, no live wallpaper support, and no way to change the grid size or widget size. It just doesn't seem like a finished product to me. I have never used SPB shell on a WM device but it doesn't seem like the dev was fully developing for android as key features of other launchers have been left out.
 
Adamsalmon said:
Even though its $15 I still bought and I must say that this is way better than LP or ADW. Its super smooth on my Atrix and no lag and great concept.
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I agree. LP was good when I first installed it, but it started to get buggy after a while. As of right now, SPB is much better. I know that the price is kind of high, but I remember paying $30 for SPB on my WinMo phone a couple of years ago, so it wasn't as bad for me. It runs really great on the Droid X and Droid 2.
 
So far this has been a thread discussing who would and who wouldn't purchse the app... how about those that have purchased the app, could you please let us into the product. How does it run on the EVO or EPIC 4G or what have you. Its been a few days, how is the shell running now. Are you still happy with your purchase? What do you find has made the purchase down right a great buy. Was it just the eye candy and now your regretting the purchase or has it worn off and revealed true transformaiton in the way things are done on a phone / Android device. Are any of the apps different now. Do you find the Music player is different, browser is different? If this is truly just a 3D rotating bunch of useless home-screens I think we'd all like to know. Those of you who have can share what you will so that the rest of us may join you. Let us know, thanks!
 
SHO_ONE said:
So far this has been a thread discussing who would and who wouldn't purchse the app... how about those that have purchased the app, could you please let us into the product. How does it run on the EVO or EPIC 4G or what have you. Its been a few days, how is the shell running now. Are you still happy with your purchase? What do you find has made the purchase down right a great buy. Was it just the eye candy and now your regretting the purchase or has it worn off and revealed true transformaiton in the way things are done on a phone / Android device. Are any of the apps different now. Do you find the Music player is different, browser is different? If this is truly just a 3D rotating bunch of useless home-screens I think we'd all like to know. Those of you who have can share what you will so that the rest of us may join you. Let us know, thanks!
Click to expand...
The music player and the browser have nothing to do with the UI. All it is, is a replacement to your UI. None of the Apps are affected.

I purchased it as I plan to check in on it from time to time as it may (or may not) evolve. But I won't be using it anytime soon on my Dinc.

It runs silky smooth on my device, and looks nice. But that's it. It really is a bare bones UI when compared to other popular UI's like LP or ADW.


  • Scrollable widgets do not work with SPB.
  • You can't customize placement of icons/folders/widgets like you can with other UI's. The best you can do is place the order in which they are displayed on each homescreen, but not specific locations.
  • SPB's included widgets, while look awesome, are more pomp and flare. Most of them suffer in function compared to widgets from other sources. There are perhaps two that I would use on a regular basis. (like the favorite contacts)
  • Dock-Bar is not customizable, and is much less functional.
  • You can't re-size widgets.
  • Most of the best features of SPB that appear to be widgets actually aren't, and require the use of an entire homescreen panel.
 
I am getting a refund. I tried all weekend to make the Shell work on the original Droid. I sent log after log to the developer. He responded today that the original Droid does not have enough memory and the Graphics processor is too slow for the Shell. When it worked, I loved it. Too bad.
Once I get the Bionic, I will definitely install it. I am glad they offered me a refund.
 
I might buy it once it is as functional as other launchers. But right now you get eye candy (3d screen wheel thing) that you can not customize as much as other launchers and has less features than other launchers.

I really like screen preview system, if they start supporting scrollable widgets and a scrollable dock I may look into a purchase, until then I'll be sticking with Go EX.

I can see why this would be popular on a WP as it allows for much more than the standard WP experience however it seems to me it detracts from the Android experience.
 
I have been using it for a few days and I love it. As far as customization you can take out any panels you like and replace them with blank ones that you can put widgets on. You can have up to 16 panels. I emailed the devs and ask them if they were planning any future updates with add-ons and they siad yes. There will be future updates with more 3dwidgets. It is true you can not use live wallpapers but I think that is because the 3d widgets themselves do move so I can see how a live wallpaper could interfere with that. Anyway just my personal opinion. Everyone has one you know. And I don't see much lag when using it. It does take longer to load after I turn off my phone and turn it back on again.

I have not noticed any more battery drain than usual. But I am not a power user or anything. I would call myself moderate.
 
I could not test it too much but what I saw today was fantastic! I have some screen shots and more information that I will try to post tomorrow. I am just getting all the information uploaded to my website.

It has a lot of different utilities all built into one application - well worth the price.
 
I switched back to ADW until there is a significant performance update. It is really slow to load, if for some reason it closes, it will lock up your device for a while until it loads back into memory. Any at least on my Captivate it closes often enough for this to be a deal breaker. There are a couple cool things and then a bunch of missing things, not even a basic preference dialog, that is how bare-bones and uncustomizable it is.

It used memory strangely, sometimes it says it is using ~80mb and sometimes just 6. All other launchers generally use a more reasonable range, like ~ 25mb.

Anyhow I how it improves, they have my money.
 
I have some Screen Shots - an hopefully will complete the review tomorrow. But so far, I have been very impressed with their software. It is well worth the price. I have been a customer of SPB for probably 4 years at least. Their products and customer service has always been fantastic.
 
This app is a pos. On my DX it is slow, they haven't added my city to the weather database after twice saying it would be in the next update. The clock doesn't update when in "carousel" mode, takes two minutes to restart when force closes (often). No way to even resize the google search bar.

It should still be a beta as far as I'm concerned. How do you get a refund? I've asked three times now and they just reply that they fixed my problems or my problems aren't a problem, but they haven't in any case. Can I call my bank and file a claim against the payment?
 
Runs without lag on my Samsung Captivate 2.3.4. It's not the most full featured launcher and definitely not worth 15 bucks, but it's miles ahead of everything else in terms of eye candy.
 
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