Video simplifies smartphone development

Continuing the research on application development for the upcoming 10/26/06 feature on custom smartphone software, I decided to locate tools for some the most popular mobile operating systems. I easily found free or low-cost application development resources for Palm, Symbian, Research in Motion, and Windows Mobile. Although I couldn’t find a comprehensive mobile Linux development tool, multiple vendors have plans in work.

Because of Microsoft’s fairly recent upgrade to Windows Mobile 5.0, I decided to attempt a simple smartphone application with their latest tool set. Microsoft has consolidated most mobile development under Visual Studio 2005, the same integrated development environment used for desktop programming. Visual Studio 2005 supports C++, C# and Visual Basic.NET programming languages. Although Visual Studio 2005 pricing starts at $300, you can order a 90 day trial version here. You’ll also need to download the Windows Mobile 5.0 SDKs for Pocket PC and Smartphone.

While searching through the Microsoft Windows mobile developer site, I ran across an interesting demonstration video that simplified my task considerably. Maarten Struys of PTS Software in the Netherlands gives a step by step tutorial to create a simple application for both the Pocket PC and the smartphone. He develops a simple web browser that works in portrait or landscape mode and he does it with only a single line of C# code. Maarten also demonstrates the Visual Studio emulators that allow you to create, simulate, and debug applications without target hardware. I think this video is a great place to get started in Windows Mobile application development.