SPB Mobile Shell is, literally, one of the most popular Windows Mobile applications ever created. This is first of all due to SPB Team inspiration to have focused on enhancing Windows Mobile UI with big and good looking buttons and much more accessible functions. SPB Mobile Shell is a great piece of software designed to fully replace your phone’s interface with a new fancy look accompanied by great graphic effects. As the name suggests, this program is a “shell” for your device, providing it a new graphic environment, highly attractive and customizable. If you got tired of your HTC boring menus, Mobile Shell is the program you need. Stay in touch with the program’s updates: a new version of Mobile Shell is expected to be launched soon: SPB Mobile Shell 5 (see the video).

Features list:

• Widgets: Photo contacts, picture frame, media player, Weather, Internet search, Facebook and Twitter status, Wireless switches, Phone profile, Appointments and tasks
• Contacts: Widget-based photo contacts, Facebook integration, Photo call log, Smart contact search, 3D favorite contacts carousel, Ringtone management, Category filter
• Launcher: Pinned shortcuts, 3D email and SMS viewer, Recently used programs, Finger friendly task manager, 3×3 phone style menu
• Tools: Weather forecasts, Current weather, Agenda view, World time, Wireless switches, Profiles, Internet search, Facebook and Twitter status
• User Interface: 3D carousel with special effects, Make your own Home screen using widgets, Adaptive skins, Change background, Customize your menu, Change widget skins, Choose Professional or Lifestyle Home screen

Check out the video demo for Mobile Shell 5 or buy this software for you HTC here.

If you bought a wm6.5 htc or you upgraded your current device to this windows version, you must have noticed one annoying thing: you can’t change the order of the icons in the wm6.5’s start menu! This is very uncomfortable because you’ll start to get used to a certain order of your icons and as you install applications, the faulty start menu messes up this order. We don’t know why Microsoft choosed to make the start menu like this, but we’re lucky that an xda-developers user created this small program that let’s you conveniently change the start menu icons order.

The program doesn’t have much of a features list but it does what is supposed to do:

• moves shortcuts between start menu folders
• moves shortcuts ( icons) up and down in start menu

The program lists the shortcuts vertically and you will not be able to always predict their real position in start menu, as they are arranged by default in 3 vertical rows. At first, just change the position of some random icons and perform a soft-reset ( always needed in order for the new icons order to update) and then check if the icons are where you wanted to be. If not, count the number of moves you must perform to get the icon in the desired place, perform the moves and reboot again.

More info (registration needed) – Please note that Showaco ReStart is only compatible to Windows Mobile 6.5 Phones!

JWMD Icon Changer is a cool program which let’s you conveniently change all the icons in your start menu. The program is created by Jayson Ragasa, a skilled XDA-Developers member , and comes free of any costs. You’ll be able to use this software only if your htc device comes with Windows Mobile 6.5 or you upgrade your current rom to 6.5).

You can change every single icon in the start menu, including folder icons and the control panel icons by replacing them with png files of different sizes and resolutions. To fully enjoy this tool and successfully change your htc’s face you’ll be needing some icon sets; happily, there are several free icon collections available on the internet, for the most used windows mobile applications. Below you have some links to some of the best icons:

- Around 500 iphone-style icons, code-named iReflect, created by Bluemetalaxe and other xda-developers users: download here (registration needed)

- Dinik’s HighRes icons- around 280 squared icons ( mainly for HD2 and other WVGA devices): download here (registration also needed)

A personal advice is that you categorize the icons in several folders, as a single folder containing more than 40-50 icons can take longer time to be loaded in the JWMD Icon Changer’s built-in browser. Also, in order for the program to work, you first need to have NetCompact Framework 3.5 installed, which can be found here.

List of features:

• Change and remove the start icons
• Create new folder
• Save/load icon themes
• Sort Start Menu programs
• Register shortcut files
• Change the Animated Bootup Screen (the 2nd bootup screen)
• Change Microsoft Bootup Screen (the 3rd bootup screen)

Requirements:

-Windows Mobile 6.5
-.NET 3.5 Compact Framework.

More info -