Chapter 8. Pocket PC Phone Edition

Why does Radio Shack ask for your phone number when you buy batteries? I don't know.

Kramer, Seinfeld

The Pocket PC Phone Edition is the latest addition to the Windows CE family of mobile devices. Besides providing all of the same applications and a similar user interface as the standard Pocket PC, the Phone Edition adds integrated wireless phone capabilities, as well as some new software (see Figure 8.1) and APIs to support them. Not only does the platform support the capability to make phone calls and perform messaging over the Short Message Service (SMS), it can also act as an integrated modem that enables users to access data networks whenever the device has cellular coverage. This creates an extremely interesting platform for development, as connectivity becomes more commonplace for the end user.

Figure 8.1. Pocket PC Phone Edition dialer

This chapter describes how to take advantage of the phone and messaging capabilities available on Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. It is divided into three main sections: the Phone API, the SIM Manager, and SMS Messaging.

Because the core platform supports the same networking and dial-up capabilities as the other Pocket PC devices, all of the techniques and APIs described in the previous chapters also work on the Phone Edition. Also recall that it is recommended that any applications you develop should use the Connection Manager APIs (see Chapter 7) to establish a connection to the network. This holds especially true on the Phone Edition because it uses a cellular data network, which is very prone to a variety of changing conditions as the device moves in and out of coverage range.

All of the tools you need to start developing applications for the Pocket PC Phone Edition are already included in the base Pocket PC SDK.