I’ve been using Windows Mobile in its various forms for many years now, but only recently did I finally buy a Windows Mobile-powered wireless phone. I really like having everything I need in one single device—phone, email, contacts, calendar, web brwoser, and all my Windows Mobile and Windows CE software (including a premium solitaire program!).

Although I really like the device (it’s made by HTC), the one thing I don’t care for is the phone application itself. Now certainly the phone application is just software running under Windows Mobile, and knowing that led me to explore the Windows Mobile API to find out how exactly what support the API has for phone applications. Could I write my own custom phone application that I like better?

Indeed the API has very nice support for phone software. Initially, the phone application I’m creating isn’t going to do much other than demonstrate the phone functionality. And that’s what I’m showing you here in this article. So for now I don’t yet have an application I like better than the built-in one, but in the months to come I’ll be adding on to and improving my own app so I really can create something better.

So let’s check out the API.

Note: For this article I’m using the latest and greatest Visual Studio 2008 with Windows Mobile 6.0. But if you’re using earlier code, I can’t guarantee, but I suspect it’ll work under Visual Studio 2005 and Windows Mobile 5.0.