Co0kie Home Tab v2.0.0 + .sencity v0.5

It's been a while since I last blogged about my phone, HTC Blackstone. Well, she's been good serving me for almost 2 years. Although she might retire from being my first 'wife' when the new Desire HD rolls in (yes I'm planning to get one), so this might be one of the last moments I would have with her. But anyway, today I'm going to show some new stuffs since the last time I blogged about phone.

But first and foremost, for references, this is the whole-package ROM with everything mentioned cooked it:

Senior Moderator NRGZ28’s Energy BLACKSTONE 21681 Sense2.5 Cookie.2.0 sencity Oct.14.7z

Of course, if you prefer his other version of ROMs, follow this link.

Thanks to the developers at xda-developers, we are, at least I am, exposed to so-called "the biggest thing that could happen to Windows Mobile":

 

1. Co0kie Home Tab v2.0.0 Public Beta

Created by xda senior member Co0kieMonster, athough it's currently still in beta stage, and we are seeing lots of complaints about bugs and errors, but I find it very nice, because to me, it's like combination of both Android and Windows Mobile's user interface (UI). Let the pictures do the talking, shall we?

This is the Main Home of Co0kie Home Tab (CHT). It looks the same like what I posted before because actually I like this alignment. But let’s go further:

 

1.1. Quick Links

Instead of just having Quick Links to have multiple pages in previous CHT where you swipe your screen left or right to access to more Quick Links pages, now we can actually have “Android” feel: Swiping left or right doesn’t give you only Quick Links, but extra (up to 7) pages so that you can put whatever you want. The feeling is exactly like in Android. And moreover, the Quick Links is resizable, which means you can drag the Quick Links  to be real wide or narrow according to your own preference.

 

       

The things that to be added to the Quick Links are also massively increased:

1.2 Softkeys

Co0kie introduced Softkeys function to replace the the old tab slider from HTC Sense. Of course, the old tab slider is still accessible, but with the Softkeys enabled, we can assign a wide range choices of stuffs to be added to the Softkeys. We can even adjust the height of the menus in CHT Editor.

By pressing the middle Softkeys (by default key-assign), we can access to our old tab slider.

1.3. Free Link

Free Links are just like normal Quick Links, just that it is one link-button where you can drag to wherever you want. It is useful if you have different alignment of your layout.

1.4 Music Player

Music Player has also changed since Co0kie 1.8.5 but I want to bring it out here because seriously, I think it is awesome. Now there’s no even the need to have the tab slider around, unless you want to access Settings, which is not something that one would often do.

1.5. Widgets

The widgets are now no longer center-aligned like in previous CHT. Now you can drag it to wherever you want.

1.6. others

There are lots of other functions as well but I am not going to make this post too long. Let’s go to the second change:

 

2. .sencity 0.5 (Beta) Theme

Developed by xda senior member _LeCiel_, it is the best HTC Sense Mod so far. The word “.sencity” comes from “Sense” and “Simplicity”, which, as the name itself, a HTC Sense Theme which focus on both eye-candy and simplicity. And who says both cannot co-exist? =)

   

As you can see from the example, .sencity simplify the UI to as simple but nice as possible. The owner has as of today done with his HTC Sense modification and he is planning to turn this into a big project by changing dialer skins, keyboards, xda-shutdown menus and more coming up. Currently this mod is applicable only to WM devices with WVGA screens, but porting-job has already started for other resolutions.  The only problem so far is that it doesn’t work on stock ROMs. More about this theme can refer to the original thread.

 

Well, I can’t agree anymore, this is the biggest thing that happened to Windows Mobile. Signing out.

 

Vincent