Windows Mobile Applications

Windows Mobile devices have come a long way in recent years. From fairly ropey beginnings, with the Orange SPV range, there are now many devices available on the market that run Windows Mobile OS. From a slow beginning, it is now not un-common to find Windows Mobile devices sporting features such as GPS, HSDPA and WiFi. And, as with all smartphones, you can increase the functionality of your WinMo device by adding third party applications. Following on from our look at S60, iPhone and Blackberry, here are five of our favourite applications for Windows Mobile.

The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) is the first application I put on any Windows device I own. It supports an amazing array of video and audio formats, and if media on the move is your thing, then you need Coreplayer. All the popular formats are covered; video formats include MPEG4, DivX, XviD and WMV, whilst audio formats include MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, Midi and OGG. The media player can also handle images, including JPG, BMP, PNG and Gif, and will play FLV files too. Basically, whatever format your media is in, Coreplayer can play it. The CoreUI universal skins widget allows the creation of a unique custom user interface, so you can set the player to be exactly how you want it to be.

Slick is one of those all-in-one Instant Messaging applications, that conveniently allows you to login and chat with your friends whilst you are on the move, no matter what IM system they use. You can connect to ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Google and Jabber all from one central application. It works really well on WinMo devices, and lots of extras are included. Message history can be viewed, messages can be sent even when offline, and files can be sent/received as and how is necessary. Slick runs easily in the background, and new message notifications can be set to the user convenience – sound alerts, vibration, or a notification pop up window showing how many new messages have been received.

Capsure, screen grabbing images from the display of your mobile phone is a useful tool to have. For example, when writing blog posts it is useful to be able to show the different steps for setting up a new application. It can also be good for capturing images to send to friends via picture messaging. Capsure will capture images from your device screen in BMP, GIF, JPG and PNG formats. Once the images are stored, you can obscure sensitive information from the image and whether or not to add a caption to the image. Screen grabs can be taken instantly, or set to capture after a fixed time interval, and can be repeated on a user selected interval for a user selected maximum number of times.

Call Firewall, being in constant contact with friends and family is what mobile communication is all about. It’s why mobile is as popular as it is, and what drives mobile into necessity, not luxury. But sometimes, it happens there will be people who you don’t want to hear from. The reasons can be many; you may have had a row with your partner, or you don’t want to hear from work, or an ex is getting awkward with constant calls. Turning the phone off is inconvenient; this just stops everyone from calling you. It is for situations like this that applications like Call Firewall come into their own. With this utility, you can simply create whitelist and blacklist options for the phone. Blacklists stop numbers on the list getting through; whitelists allow calls only from numbers listed. You can bar single numbers, or bar all incoming calls. Callers are dumped to your voicemail directly; to them it just appears that your phone is off or out of coverage.

The last of our WinMo application recommendations is Dashwire. Dashwire is a little bit different, in that it is not just an application for the phone; it is a complete integration of web and phone. One of the most important things that you can do with Dashwire is back up your contacts online. Considering the importance most people would put on their contact list, it never ceases to amaze me that people don’t keep a back up of all that important information. It only takes for you to drop your phone, or lose it or have it stolen, and there go your contacts. Gone. With Dashwire, not only can you back up your contacts online, but you can also store text messages, photos, videos and voicemail, too. As well as backing up, all your pictures can be automatically uploaded to Dashwire to share on with your friends with a few clicks. Once uploaded, you can email the photos or videos to your contacts, add a title and caption to the image, and then send it on to your favourite social networking site, such as Facebook. Facebook statuses can also be updated via Dashwire, and in turn these can be used to send updates to your Twitter stream. All in, Dashwire is a fantastic application for WinMo devices that really brings out the multimedia capabilities, as well as protecting that all important information.

These are a few of our favourite Windows Mobile applications. What do you think? Have a favourite application you’d like to share? let us know in comments below.