By SPB – the folks who are making an Android version of their mobile shell application – are working on a tablet version. It explains why development on the phone version may be taking a while as that one is still in beta with a close-knit group of folks testing it. Unfortunately, the applications won’t be available for public download – they’re working on OEM partnerships instead. It’s a business move that means you may never be able to use this. Still, it’s pretty and we’re excited about what they’re doing. There’s a convenient video above that’ll help you get an idea as to what you can expect should you be lucky enough to buy a phone with this included. [via Android Community]
That selling to OEMs thing is very lame. At least let us buy it without a device if we want too. Oh well, if the idea is any good and we can’t get it someone will make something similar.
if sense or motoblur were anything like this…
wow this trumps honeycomb
this is what motorola should pick up and use instead of blur.
Wow…that is impressive
I wish the phone version was this awesome, but for beta is amazing. I think its the only home replacement that really uses hardware acceleration, and probably why it only works on galaxy s, nexus s and dhd or those adreno 205 htcs.
Oh God. Not more manufacturer-supplied custom UIs. Sure, you guys love it now, but this is going to be the reason you don’t get Android 3.1 Jellysomething until 2014,
Any guess which OEM? Many are too invested in their own user interface so.. HTC won’t bite (Sense), not Motorola (Blur/stock UI), nor Samsung (TouchWiz), HP, or Sony (UX). although this looks able to blow any of those away.
Useless eye candy that provides no new functionality, count me out. I’m not wasting battery life on cheap gimmicks to only find out later that there’s a fatal bug that won’t be fixed until 2029 when the next OTA update comes.
Wow….this is nice. I agree ari-free. This is like Honeycomb on steroids…lol
I remember T.I. working with TAT at one time. Motorola used T.I. chips almost exclusively until this year. Its probably gonna be Motorola or LG. Sense UI is well established as a good UI. Too many ppl hate Blur.
Yeah this will be laggy as hell nice dream tho
@brian – not sure if it’ll be laggy on a Dual Core.
We wouldn’t have all these custom skins if Android looked like this in the first place.
We will hack it to our phones anyway if it’s that good.
(By the way, the beta version of their phone ui is not at all this good.)
The only feasible ones are the first one and the last one. All the others are just too much eye-candy for not enough added functionality. The are all pretty awesome though (especially that photo widget… devs get on it!)
I wonder how long this will take to hit beta and eventually come out. Phandroid reported the phone version back in Feb 2010 and it’s still not available for public consumption. By that time we will be on 5.0 in Android.
yeah but this looks like Android 10.0 :)
Very nice! Wonder if this requires os customizations. Could be a motivation for going the oem route. Hope that isn’t the case. If it is, maybe Google could work with them to try and give them the apis they need. Assuming they could do so in a way that doesn’t put Android updates at risk, this would be good for Android.
loved spb mobile shell on my xperias. probably the best thing about winmo lol. spb know what theyre doing when it comes to custom ui’s maybe the manufacturers should give them a try and let the experts have a go for a change…
SPB’s skins are so ugly. They always look like children’s toys.
Yea would love to have this on my nook color.
maybe it’ll be bought by another vendor? like…LG? would be cool if Huawei maybe utilised it for a raft of cheap but nifty tablets? I mean look at HTC? they were manufacturers that had all their kit rebranded by mobile companies galore, then they decided to push their brand and look at them now?
love the slick UI, if all those concepts are selectable UI’s for everyone to use, that would be cool as a cucumber :)
I’m not impressed. Doesn’t seem all that practical.
@Brian I’d be suprised if it is laggy. SPB made a shell for windows mobile (pre windows phone 7) and that run really smoothly despite running on top of a somewhat laggy interface. I know a number of people that used it as it made winmo much more usable!
@Brian Amazon may pick this up for there rumored tablet.
This is too much fluff. It’s a fun gimmick the first 5-10 minutes, depending on how easily amused you are, but then I think it’ll become a hassle to work with.
The transitions are too slow and I don’t want to pinch my way through the interface.
It looks pretty, but from a usability standpoint I think it’s awful.
Sexy! Put that on the market as a custom launcher instead so we all can get a piece of that.
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iDiots who say Android is just widgets don’t have a clue. How anyone can say a static row of icons is the way to go is beyond me. I’d take this over a non-customizable display any day of the week.
@Steve: They can not sell it to us, the Manufacturers want exclusive, and they pay big for it. They could sell it for 5 bucks a d/l in the market and get a 10,000 downloads. Or they can sell it for 2 dollars per licence to an OEM and it goes on ALL their devices. Can’t blaim them for wanting the most money they can get.