Pocket PC Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Sure, some of the latest Samsung Windows Mobile phones like the Omnia II aren't yet widely available but nevertheless, you might want to start to develop for or porting your existing application to it already. If so, Samsung has just released its Windows Mobile SDK 1.2 which offers APIs to use advanced features unique to Samsung phones."

Samsung has a few neat tricks in their phones that use private APIs that you normally wouldn't know about unless you take a look at their SDK. They've just updated it, so if you're developing for Samsung Windows Mobile devices, take a look.

"The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit adds documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.5. A new set of APIs is being introduced that will enable application developers to take advantage of the new Windows Mobile 6.5 touch gesture framework. The gesture APIs allow an application to handle touch gesture input and provide a visually consistent experience with the rest of the device UI. Note that the gesture APIs are only available on the Windows Mobile Classic and Professional SKUs."

Microsoft has just released the Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK to developers. It includes seven new emulator images, and is available in English, Chinese Simplified, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and separately for Standard and Professional devices.

Update: This is the DTK, not the SDK. You'll still need to install the Windows Mobile 6 SDK in order to develop for Windows Mobile 6.5.

"The Windows Mobile 6.1 Emulator Images package adds emulator images to Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008 that let you test applications for Windows Mobile 6.1. For general information about writing software for Windows Mobile, please see the Windows Mobile Developer Center. The emulator images can also be used as standalone without Visual Studio. They can be accessed through the Start Menu shortcuts."



The Windows Mobile 6.1 localized emulator images are currently available in US English only, which doesn't quite match Microsoft's usual definition of "localized", although you can probably expect that to change over the coming weeks. The Standard (Smartphone) and Professional (Pocket PC) images weigh in at 184.9MB and 272.2MB respectively, and include some new resolutions: 320 x 320, 400 x 240, and 440 x 240 for Standard, and 240 x 400 and 480 x 800 for Professional. Note that the images work standalone, so if you're eager to poke around Windows Mobile 6.1 to see what's new and improved while waiting for your carrier/manufacturer to release an update, this is your ticket. Developers, if you want full integration with Visual Studio, be sure to grab the Windows Mobile 6 SDK prior to installing the images.