Handy Shell wants to control active standby screen of your Symbian S60 smartphone

With all the hype surrounding user interfaces following the iPhone launch, it doesn’t surprises many companies are launching their custom UI solutions. We’ve already seen quite a few similar Windows Mobile apps and today we’re presenting you an application that aims to enhance the active standby screen of a Symbian S60 smartphones.

Developed by Epocware, Handy Shell allows a user to customize home screen according to his/her wishes. Three views are available and so are five plugin options. In addition, the application takes over all functions of the S60 menu key, “while adding extra options or disabling the unnecessary ones.”

The idea is to provide a user with all necessary information, and also include shortcuts to most frequently used applications and contacts, at a glance.

Handy Shell offers three options of “Today” screen for S60 smartphones. The “Today” view shows overall information about phone settings, ongoing calendar events, missed calls and SMS messages, new e-mails, weather forecast and even provides shortcuts to necessary applications using five types of Plugins. All Plugins can be moved around the screen, easily customized, or activated and deactivated. The “Applications” view provides fast access to twelve most needed applications. The “Contacts” view shows twelve favorite contacts with speed dial and SMS actions.

In addition, Handy Shell includes a “Weather” Plugin with five-day weather forecast for the Today screen and a one-year subscription to the Handy Weather service. Handy Weather is the easiest and most reliable way of accessing local, as well as distant, weather information in Celsius and Fahrenheit all in a mobile environment. The detailed five-day weather forecasts are supported by satellite weather maps and include four layouts: morning, day, evening and night.

Honestly, I can’t imagine many people paying $44.95 (39.95 EUR) to customize their S60 home screens this way, though I may be wrong.