For those who love trying out user interfaces from other devices, here’s one from Motorola’s MotoSurf A3100. It’s been ported for use on other Windows Mobile devices and seems to be quite functional. As we mentioned months ago, this UI has traces of TouchFLO 3D in it. The most obvious TF3D-like characteristic is the slider at the bottom for navigation between 7 different screens. Read on to learn about the features and for details on how to download it.

The main panel displays the date/time (optional) and has a drop down menu for shortcuts that is similar to what is found on Android-based devices. Notification icons are displayed on the thin bar of the drop down menu while it’s collapsed and also as regular shortcuts when expanded. The other panels include: Favorite Contacts, Favorite Applications, Pictures & Videos, Web Updates (RSS feeds), Weather and Internet Shortcuts. Personalizing the UI is done in a finger friendly manner, even allowing rearrangement of some icons without having to go into an editing mode.

There’s some occasional slowdown and it uses a fair amount of memory, but it’s definitely usable. Although I wouldn’t replace my current UI (Mobile Shell 3) with this one, it’s always interesting to see what’s available on other devices. Though the MotoSurf has a QVGA screen, this port has been tested and works on VGA & WVGA screens as well. To run it on your device, head over to XDA-developers and download the easy to install CAB (don’t forget to activate the today plug-in).

(Thanks for the tip, SandY)