So after playing with SPB Mobile Shell for a little while now I've managed to find time to tell you a little bit about it and my current verdict after it's first official update.

Cool widgets to customize your Home screen

• Photo contacts

• Picture frame

• Weather

• Wireless switches

• Phone profile

• Appointments and tasks

• ... and many others

Finger friendly contacts

• Widget-based photo contacts

• Photo call log

• Smart contact search

• 3D favourite contacts carousel

• Ring tone management

• Category filter

Launcher

Fast access to all your smartphone features

• Pinned shortcuts

• Recently used programs

• Finger friendly task manager

• 3x3 phone style menu

SPB Mobile Shell comes with integrated tools

• Weather forecasts

• Current weather

• Agenda view

• World time

• Wireless switches

• Profiles

Customize your device with your preferences

• 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

The Verdict

As you can see from the images and features above SPB Mobile Shell greatly improves on the standard Nokia Symbian S60v5 GUI used on the N97. For me this would be a killer app if it wasn't for a three issues.

• The Mobile Shell GUI does not support Folders, which I have come to rely on over my many years of Nokia phones.

• The e-mail and Communication widgets don't acknowledge the existence of Nokia Messaging e-mail mailboxes. Again I have become accustomed to having this functionality in the N97 default e-mail widget.

• Finally and possible the biggest issue is that when you fill the screen with widgets in portrait mode and then rotate you phone to landscape mode the widgets become jumbled and overlaid on top of each other. Not good.

All this said it is an excellent addition to every N97, especially with the recent update it has received improving it's Memory Usage.

Hopefully SPB Software will sort my three issues with the app, at which point it will become my favourite app.