The winning Xperia Panel from the Sony Ericsson Content Awards 2008 is now available to download for trial and purchase. The winner for the Xperia X1 Panels category was SPB Traveler, developed by SPB. When the winners were announced, the panel was unavailable for download, but it has now been added to SPB’s website. You can download a trial version or purchase the full version for $29.95.

The panel allows users to access a phrase book, keep track of meetings, convert currencies and clothing sizes. The panel also features a world clock with global weather forecasts. Other useful travel features include flight search, 3D globe and a geographical game.

A while back we reported that the Xperia Panels category in the Sony Ericsson Content Awards was still open for submissions. All submissions have now been sent in and a winner has been announced.

The Traveler Panel by SPB includes many useful tools for travellers such as a phrasebook, currency converter, flight search and a multi-time zone diary. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be available for download currently from SPB or from Sony Ericsson’s website.

Other nominees in the competition included an English to Japanese dictionary named Mobisystems, Ping.fm, PlusFourSize, used with the operator 3 and Evernote. Likewise these panels are also not currently available for download but we’ll keep you informed when they’re available for download.

Via: Xperiancer

The panel interface is one of the highlighted features of the new Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and as we previously reported, Sony released the SDK for the panels which allows developers to rush in and create a host of optional panels to fill one of the nine panel slots on the cell phone.

One such developer, Spb Software House have done just that and have already used the Xperia SDK to bring their Mobile Shell 2.0 to the Xperia X1, a popular shell on other devices.

Spb’s Mobile Shell basically is a skin for Windows Mobile that gives a smooth graphical interface, making it even more touch friendly and offers weather info and dial by photo features. Spb will be offering their panel free of charge (the shell usually costs $29.95) and the panel should be included with Xperia X1 phones in the future.

Below are video clips of the Mobile Shell in action which are impressive. Hopefully, this will be the start of a flow of quality panels being made for the X1 as the cellphone becomes more available over the coming months.