SBSH Pocket Breeze is one of the best selling application for Pocket PC devices. It is one of applications for Pocket PCs, which I consider as a must-have. This is generally the first application which I install on any new device or a fully hard-resetted Pocket PC. So, what is Pocket Breeze? It is a PIM (short for Personal Information Management) today-plugin, which displays your PIM data right on the today screen itself. The latest version of it at the time of review is version 5.2, which we are using at the moment on our devices.
Introduction
Take a look at the below given screenshot(with today theme supplied by Pocket Breeze). All of your PIM data is at the today screen sitting nicely. SBSH Pocket Breeze is an extremely feature-rich application and is highly configurable. Lets take a quick glance at the “Options”. As you can see, everything is self-explanatory. Lets dig into every feature.
General tweaks and settings
This contains the general settings of the Pocket Breeze (example: height, font face, D-pad support etc). You can select it paint vertical tabs(default) or horizontal tabs(just untick “paint vertical tabs”).
Left-handed users rejoice as there is a left handed mode in Pocket Breeze, which basically makes the scroll bars to appear on the left side of the plugin. As you can see, the Pocket Breeze comes with plethora of options to customize it. Fortunately, it comes pre-configured nicely so that a new user does not face any problems at all
Skinning support: Pocket Breeze supports skinning too. Just keep the skin somewhere on the device and point the Pocket Breeze to assign it. I m using the VistaBetaTWO skin for Pocket Breeze.
Calender
With the introduction of Windows Mobile 5, Microsoft stressed upon “one-handed usability”. Developers at Pocket Breeze realized this need. The Pocket Breeze is fully controllable by one-hand easily. So, I can now open a task and set its priority to high etc. You can sort your calender items by category. If you click on the calender button, a small calender window will pop up. In this window, you can do a number of tasks. You can change the display order(options>>calender>>Advanced tab). You can tell the Pocket Breeze to show number of unread mail messages. You can pin a calender too on your today screen now. Want to change the layout of the icons and items? Change them here.
Tasks
Got hordes of work to do, but do not know how to remember all of them? You need not worry any more. Just leave the task to Pocket Breeze to manage all your tasks. It displays your past, present and future tasks. When you look into the options of this feature, the first tab ‘general’ tab. with this option, you can select the date format you wish to have while displaying the tasks. Also, you can set the maximum time period till which you want the tasks to be displayed. Also, there are many options with which you can very well manage your future or overdue tasks, dated or undated tasks, etc.
From the ‘grouping titles’ tab, you can set the line breakers, folding options and task counters. From the ‘layout’ tab, you can customize the looks, icons and colours of the ‘tasks’ tab. Now comes the ‘advanced’ tab, which lets you set the date formats.
Notes
If you have important notes, you would definitely like to keep them right on your today screen. And, Pocket Breeze lets you do that rightly. The thing you notice in its options is the ‘general’ tab. This option lets you customize the preview of the notes on your today screen. From the ‘grouping titles’ option, as with special events and messaging, you can set the line breaker, folding options and grouping counters.
Contacts tab
Through this tab, you can easily lookup names, search them, edit them and even dial and email them. Cool! Contacts can be grouped on the basis of category and company. They can be displayed in either ascending or descending order. The search function of Pocket Breeze is very functional and useful. Just start tapping on the small tabs of the search panel and the required contact and Pocket Breeze will find the contact for you
There are 3 modes of displaying contacts inside the Pocket Breeze, namely, Standard, Names only and Pictures Expanded. First two modes are obvious. In Pictures Expanded mode, you can see the small thumbnail-sized pictures adjacent to the contacts.
Messaging
This is one of the best features provided by Pocket Breeze. Now, you wont ever miss out on any important message, be it any mails or sms. The reason being, you will have all of them right on the today screen of your device. Now coming to customising the messaging tab. The first thing you will notice is the ‘general’ tab. This provides you with the option whether you want to mark your message as read, after previewing it.
The next tab is that of ‘grouping titles’. This is same as the ‘grouping titles’ option of the special events tab.
Special Events
This tab displays all the special occasions and events you want to keep track of. The best feature of this option is that if you enter some birthday or anniversary against any contact,pocket breeze automatically detects it and displays it in the ‘special events’ tab. You can also customize it the way you want. You can configure pocket breeze to look for desired number of time period to keep an eye on your special occasions. You can choose from 7 days, 30 days or one year. Also, you can select the number of days to alert, select the date format and also determine the file format.
Tapping on ‘appointment data’ tab, presents you with various options to customize the way your appointments look. You can select from various options like the number of days span you wish to load, number of days set to alert and also set the options for various categories of filters.
The next tab in the special events settings is that of ‘grouping titles’. This option lets you customize the line breaker and the folding options. You can also choose to include or exclude folding buttons and grouping counters.
Pros:
*Supports a lot of languages
*support of viewing contacts
*lots of customization
*stable & reliable
*can incorporate other today plugins
*clubs up with Pocket Informant & Agenda Fusion
*skinnable
*Great online support/community
*Windows Mobile 6 fully supported
Cons: None
Final thoughts: Pocket Breeze is one of the best selling today plugins. This is one today plugin, which I would recommend as a must-have for any Pocket PC user.