Combining an application launcher with the Today screen, Spb Pocket Plus is designed to add a heap of functionality to your Windows Mobile 2003/5 device.
Taking up a sizeable 1.8 meg of device memory, the program adds customisable tabs to the Today screen, with a drag and drop interface letting you arrange and shunt around icons to your heart’s desire.
The program integrates with a range of SPB plug ins like Spb Weather, Spb GPRS Monitor and Spb Diary, letting users mix’n’match plug-ins to get their Today screen looking just so.
Various downloadable themes offer a range of attractive backgrounds and icons to tart up your screen, with useful indicators for battery life and memory status.
It has to be said that some of the ‘extended themes’ are something of an acquired taste, but SPB have thoughtfully created a Webpage instructing enthusiastic users on how to create their own.
The interface was clean and nicely executed, and we particularly liked the unobtrusive Taskbar Battery Indicator, represented by a horizontal line at the top of the screen, visible in every program.
Other handy features include a powerful File Explorer with ZIP support and encryption, a ‘proper’ close button that actually shuts down a program (a real annoyance with Windows Mobile) and the addition of handy Pocket Internet Explorer functions like multiple windows, full screen mode and view source.
Conveniently, the program can be run off a storage card to save device memory and there’s a ‘Safe Mode’ to help sort out any rogue software causing problems – just like its big brother, this only loads a basic set of drivers on start-up.
At an upmarket $24.95 (~£14.20, ~€20.4) it may not be an essential purchase for Pocket PC dabblers, but for power users managing masses of programs and serial tweakers, we’d rate it as a must-have app!
Our verdict: 85%