Bell Mobility yesterday announced an innovative user interface that places all data services and popular features on the main screen of touch screen smartphones. Soon to be available on a wide range of Windows Mobile 3G smartphones from Bell, the unique interface is being introduced on the HTC Touch Diamond smartphone. While on the first sight it reminds a little bit on HTC's TouchFLO 3D, it's not a HTC user interface at all, even if it will be introduced on HTC Windows Mobile smartphones first but it works together with HTC's Windows Mobile and Touch enhancements. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, Bell Mobility worked with a world leading design company to create a unique user experience for their touch devices to offer easy personalization and fast access to live information feeds.

The flexibility of the Windows Mobile operating system facilitated Bell's development of this new user interface, which assists mobile users to discover the latest and greatest features and applications on their smartphones as well as favorites such as E-Mail and calendar.

"Canadians have embraced smartphones and the mobile data services such as music downloads, E-Mail and TV that are made possible by our high speed 3G network. Making these services easily accessible, the Bell experience gives the user dozens of ways to personalize the home screen, bringing the client experience to the next level," said Adel Bazerghi, Senior Vice President of Products for Bell.

"People can maximize the potential of their smartphones by customizing them with the features and applications important to them," said Andrew Lees, senior vice president, Mobile Communications Business, Microsoft Corp. "Our Windows Mobile platform helps partners like Bell deliver innovative experiences to customers that are unmatched on other mobile operating systems."

The Bell experience offers more than 60 ways to personalize the main screen using different combinations of 25 icons (referred to as bubbles) including headline sports, news, weather, horoscopes, E-Mail and more, providing quick access to content and services from their home screen. For instance, users can choose to include such features as live TV channels, music playlists, on-demand videos, radio channels, favorite contacts and applications and a universal E-Mail interface that will display all E-Mail
accounts and text messages with one screen tap.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=c922e2c0-75fc-430e-a2e4-bb26c0c8c10f" target="_new" title="The Bell Experience on Windows Mobile">Video: The Bell Experience on Windows Mobile</a>

Customers with the HTC Touch Diamond can get the most out of the Bell experience with two new E-Mail, Internet and Multimedia bundles, also launched yesterday, that offer unlimited access to some of the most popular mobile data services such as E-Mail, instant messaging, full track music downloads, radio, TV and Internet browsing. For more information on Bell's E-Mail, Internet and Multimedia bundles, which start at $40 per month, visit bell.ca/features

Cheers ~ Arne

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fugly

Looks good, nice alternative which seems to go deeper than Touch Flo. Nice to see someone else try to customise WM for better usability.