Windows Phone Thoughts: Keeping Your Identity (and Everything Else) Safe Using Spb Wallet 1.0

Creating Your Wallet
When you first run Spb Wallet, you are given the option to open an existing wallet or create a new one.


Figure 3: Starting off with Spb Wallet the first time.

After you have created your first wallet, Spb Wallet remembers this after you leave, and when you return, it goes directly to the password screen for the last opened wallet.


Figure 4: Password request screen when you re-start Spb Wallet.


Figure 5: Entering alphabetic password characters.

I'm not really a fan of this keyboard arrangement for input of wallet passwords. The letter keyboard is arranged in alphabetic order and you must press a separate key to get the numeric keyboard to appear. Thus, if you have a password with letters and numbers in it (a preferred option to gain greater security), you're constantly having to switch back and forth. I understand why this has been done to accommodate the finger interface, but I would have preferred a typewriter-based keyboard with slightly smaller keys, with both the letters and numbers visible at the same time. I've seen it done before in other products.

You can, if you wish, utilize the standard soft keyboard provided by Windows Mobile to input the password, eliminating the need to go back and forth between alpha and numeric characters. However, intermittently I've found this to not work properly (even though the asterisks show up for each key press), and you have to resort to using the stylus.

By default, once all the characters of the wallet's password are provided, Spb Wallet automatically opens the wallet. Personally, I'm moving away from this feature since I think it encourages guessing at passwords until you get one that works. Spb is one step ahead on this one though, as they provide a configuration option (discussed in more detail later) to either leave this operation as the default, or require the user to tap the Enter button after completing the password.

The overall structure of the wallet uses the common card within folder structure, but it is possible to place folders within folders and I didn't see any limit to the level of embedding you could create. Depending upon your preference, you can either display each folder level separately, or in the more traditional hierarchical tree structure.


Figure 6: Predefined structure provided by Spb Wallet when you first create a new wallet.


Figure 7: The same predefined, structure shown in 'large icon' format, which is much more finger friendly.


Figure 8: View of a folder content in large icon format, showing access to individual cards.