Mobile Shell 3.5 Custom Clock-Battery Combo Widget & More

With the recent release of SPB Mobile Shell 3.5, users are scrambling to check if older customizations still work with the latest and greatest version. Of course, anytime Mobile Shell is updated, it always opens the floodgates for users to create new custom widgets and themes. The first widget pack is in and it’s looking rather sweet. The pack seems to focus on condensing multiple widgets in an effort to create more room for customizations. One of the included widgets is a custom clock & battery combo widget that makes it easier to keep an eye on your power status. Read on to learn more about the color coded battery and the other space saving widgets included in this pack.

The great thing about Mobile Shell is that it lets you add widgets and shortcuts on pages until you’re content or you run out of room. For those of us that like to pile on widgets and info on the primary panel, this can be a problem – even with a WVGA display. Enter XDA user matthewhypolite’s widgets. The coolest widget is the clock & battery combo widget. Okay, so it isn’t exactly just one widget, but you combine a couple custom widgets to create a beautiful masterpiece. The battery, behind the clock, changes colors as your power drains (blue, green, yellow, red). This makes glancing at the battery status easier and it adds to the overall look of MS 3.5, at least more than the default battery widget.

Up next, we have the Birthdays widget. By default, MS 3.5 only gives you two choices, large (they call it small) and even larger. The former skin has a strange shape to it that just takes up unnecessary vertical space. Matthewhypolite’s version makes it more streamlined, so that it doesn’t stand out as much from the surrounding widgets.

The other two widgets are for calendar related items. The task and appointment widgets provided after a clean install of MS3.5 are great, but they take up too much room. Once again, matthewhypolite comes to the rescue with some modified widgets that create extra space for additional shortcuts. Check out the screenshot below and you’ll notice there’s plenty of room for shortcuts using these widgets. You can view a comparison between the default widgets next to the modified ones on the creator’s thread.

Unfortunately, this widgets pack is only available for WVGA screens (QVGA is being worked on). In the coming days, the creator also plans to modify the battery widget with alarm and/or date info. In fact, he seems pretty open to evolving his widgets, so be sure to stay tuned to his thread. Grab these widgets from XDA-developers.

To install:

- Download the Widgets 1.0 CAB (zipped with other files) from XDA-developers.
- Install and then soft reset.

To uninstall:

- Go to remove programs and uninstall as usual.
- Then run the widgets 1.0 cleaner (included in zip file) right after.

Note: In case you missed it, Daniel Webster found a cool theme for MS 3.5.