SBSH Mobile Software has released an update to their popular home screen plugin – Facade. In the touch screen world, home screen replacement and customization tools are popping up all over. However, that’s just not the case in the world of non-touch. Facade has long been the plugin of choice for those looking to do more with their home screen on Standard devices. The latest update brings a great new interface with loads of new features to the Standard community.
The new version of Facade adds support for skin packs (the ability to bundle up the layout along with skin files into one easy to install package), Thumbnail previews of the background image and Facade layout before you apply it, changing the Softkey and category colors, PIM Integration with all major PIM applications, advanced configuration of each tab, Windows Mobile 6.5 support, and so much more.
After you install Facade, you’ll notice the home screen on your device has changed just a little. 
The following screen shot is taken from a Samsung Propel Pro Smartphone and it’s what you can expect to see as the default home screen after you install Facade.
There’s a lot of information on that screen, but don’t worry, it all makes sense once you work your way through it. I’ve taken the image and added highlights to the different sections. Here’s the updated image:
Starting at the top box, you’ll find “Programs / Home / Schedule”. This box has focus by default. When it’s highlighted, you can push left and right to rotate to the next tab. The tabs as connected in a circle, and by default are: Home / Schedule / Tasks / Calendar / Programs. You can turn on or off any tabs if you don’t need them.
The next box down provides a shortcut to your profiles, allowing you to quickly change the profile on the device. Pressing action on the next section, the clock, will take you to the Date and Time settings on the device. Moving down from the clock is a very thin line that goes from the left side of the screen to the right side. This bar is a battery indicator and reflects the current amount of battery left in the device. Below the battery indicator, we have the amount of time until your next alarm goes off, and when that will be.
After the alarms section is counters for email, missed calls, SMS, and Voice Mail. When you’ve scrolled down to this section, you can move left and right to highlight different items. Selecting any one of these will take you into the respective application.
The final section is a list of all the appointments that are pending on your device. Selecting any of the appointments will open up that appointment for you to review or edit as needed.
Overall, Facade is an amazing plugin that greatly extends the functionality of the basic home screen on Windows Mobile Standard devices. I’m still working my way through all the settings and seeing what each one can do. The only downside that I’ve noticed so far is that it can be a little slow in switching between the tabs. It’s hard to tell if this is just the way SBSH planned the animation for switching between tabs, or if its just plain slow to process the tab switch. If there’s one thing I would like to see changed, is speedier movement between tabs.
If you’re running a Windows Mobile Standard device (without touch screen), then latest update from SBSH is well worth checking out. You can check out all the new features over in SBSH forums and the press release with details about upgrading for existing customers can be found here.
Below is a screen capture for each of the other tabs in the default home screen.
UPDATE: In regards to the speed issue I mentioned above, this is clearly an animation effect from SBSH. There’s a setting in the menus that allows us to turn off the animations and when this is done, scrolling to different tabs is much faster, even if it’s a little less pretty.
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