Ever since the advent of the iTunes App Store last year, Windows Mobile development has really slowed down.  A lot of my favorite developers stopped (temporarily, I hope) developing for Windows Mobile in order to start transferring their apps and games for the iPhone.  Now, while there is nothing wrong with that, it has really left something of a barren wasteland in the once fertile land of Windows Mobile development.

Fortunately, a few stalwarts have stayed the course, releasing new Windows Mobile programs.  Lately, we have looked at Resco Contacts Manager, Spb Mobile Shell 3, and now the latest new program for Windows Mobile, SBSH Go News Touch, which is the first foray by SBSH into the world of RSS readers.

There are a lot of RSS feed readers available for Windows Mobile, so I was a little surprised to see SBSH introduce one of their own so late.  Nonetheless, once I had a chance to see a demo, I was pretty excited to give it a try.  True to SBSH form, it seemed to have a fantastic interface.  But would the rest of the features measure up?  To find out, I would have to take it for a test drive and kick the tires to find out,   Fortunately, not only did SBSH provide me with a registration code for the review, but they also allowed me to participate in some early Beta testing in order to really familiarize myself with with Go News Touch.

Form

Right off the bat, you know this is going to be a different kind of RSS feed reader.   Take a look at this interface.  We can compare it to RSS Hub (right), which is included with most devices.  That finger friendly design pops off the screen.   Those nice big entries just beg to be tapped by your finger.  And navigating through the rest of the program stays right in tune, with nice large buttons on the bottom of the screen (though I will say I found some of the menus to be less than intuitive.)

In addition to the finger friendly entries, of course, I was really impressed by the touch scrolling control.  Just give any screen a flick with your finger, and watch the text scroll smoothly before your eyes.

The one thing that did surprise me here was the lack of any real customization.  Most SBSH programs are well known for being customizable and skinnable.  Sadly, Go News Touch proved to be an exception to this rule.  The background color is tied to the background theme on your today screen.  This means you cannot independently change the background color of the program.  While this is not an uncommon practice, it was a real disappointment coming from SBSH, with their reputation for skinnability,

Skinnability aside, I was really pretty impressed by the interface.  The menus are easy to navigate and relatively free from clutter, even if they are not as intuitive as I might have liked.  And the finger friendly design was simply fantastic.  This is really the kind of program that will make your stylus atrophy from lack of use. So, let’s take a look at how well this all works when we toss in some actual feeds.  This is the form, so let’s check out the function.

Function

As impressed as I was by the interface in SBSH Go News Touch, I was really somewhat underwhelmed by the functionality.  Not that it worked poorly.  Everything SBSH included worked well.  My disappointment stemmed from the fact that there was really not much to see here.  Nothing new or innovative.  Nothing you could not find on any one of a dozen or so other RSS readers, not to mention a few glaring omissions.

Adding a new feed is easy, and works pretty much as you might expect.  The nice thing here is that Go News Touch has a full compliment of preloaded feeds (including JAMM) so you can get right into things.

You can add additional feeds by inputting the feed URL (though you strangely cannot cut and paste the URL, you must retype the whole thing), or just importing your entire OPML file, if you are coming from another RSS feed reader.   Finally, for those times when you want to follow a site that simply does not offer an RSS feed, you may create a local template (which takes some developmental know-how).

There are a few templates included with the program, or you can head over to the SBSH forums to find instructions for the creation of new templates, or to download templates created by the community.

Sounds good so far, but like I said, I think Go News Touch was more notable for the features it did not include.  most important to me was the inability to sync with an online RSS reader, such as Google Reader.  In my opinion, this is a critical feature, and one of the most overlooked features in most RSS readers on Windows Mobile devices.  I switch back and forth between checking feeds on my mobile device and checking online at Google Reader, and the inability to sync makes this an impossible solution,

I was also surprised not to find a today screen plug in.  I really do not use my today screen all that much anymore, but I know a lot of folks who do.  And the ability to access your feeds from the today screen has been among the more requested features I have seen related to RSS readers in the past.  So, it would seem to make sense that any new RSS reader would include a today screen plug in.

Some other glaring omissions which were noted in the SBSH forums, include:

• automatically importing categories when you import an OPML file
• automatically downloading multimedia files (audio and video)
• there is currently no way to distinguish mark feeds as read
• it is difficult to distinguish between read and unread articles
• can’t hide channels if there are no new items
• can’t sync in the background/read while syncing

All of that being said, this is SBSH’s first attempt at this kind of program, and I think they did do a good job with their initial effort.  It does still need some work, but SBSH has proven in the past that they are not afraid to work hard, even after the initial release, in order to offer a feature-rich upgrade extremely quickly (they are already promising a new version in the coming weeks, which should address some of these criticisms.  So, stay tuned!  If SBSH’s past practices are any indication, this is one program which is sure to improve with age.

What I Liked:

• Finger friendly interface
• Touch controls and scrolling
• Plenty of included feeds and templates

What Needs improvement:

• No Google Reader sync
• No Today Screen Plugin
• Can’t cut and paste URL
• No way to mark feeds as read
• Can’t sync and read at the same time

Price: $14.95

Where to find: SBSH

JAMM Store (where it is on sale for $9.99 until June 22)

[Note: SBSH is a paid advertiser on Just Another Mobile Monday]

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