Mobile and compact devices are becoming more and more popular in our society and their use is increasing day by day. We are facing them in every day usages. Definitely each of us has mobile phone, hand held device or any high tech device.
All of these devices have different mobile platforms like Windows MobileM, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian OS, Android, Maemo, OpenMoko etc. All of them have their own advantages and disadvantages.
The main reasons behind enterprises choosing Windows Mobile as the development platform:
- Familiarity and Ease of use
- Partnered together with .Net framework gives better productivity
- Flexibility in development platform
- Competitive edge
- Improved security
- ROI
- The Microsoft edge
Windows mobile, BlackBerry and iPhone have their own limitations as they are device dependents. Their codes are device dependents and this is evident by iPhone as Java has some limitations. In comparison to iPhone, Symbian and Windows mobile are better as they support wide range of devices and their API gives more options.
Microsoft released its first platform in 2002 in form of Windows CE.NET. Pocket PC phone edition appeared which supported the standards of GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth and wireless HS network access.
Now we have Windows mobile 7, the latest edition. There are a few models of development of applications for Windows mobile:
- Win32 API
- MFC
- NET Compact Framework.
There are some advices for the Windows mobile phone 7 application developer.
- Use native code for achieving the best performance, direct work with hardware, and also for minimization of system resource requirement.
- Use Managed Code for development of GUI-oriented applications which main requirements are development and market deployment terms. Managed Code is also good for the easy work with web-services.
- Use Server-Side Code for work with different devices through a single code base, and also if wide stable communication channel with a device is present.
Development tools for Windows mobile phone 7 application developers are:
- eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0: It is mean to create applications for devices with Window CE.NET 4.2 OS.
- Visual Studio .NET and SDP functions: It allows creating applications that uses the possibilities of Microsoft .NET compact framework platform. Thus, a developer can create distributed mobile data processing system, working both in scenarios with and without connection. Vast class library of .NET compact framework makes development job easier.
- Microsoft SQL Server: It extends the possibilities of the use of enterprise data. SQL Server CE provides the basic set of relational database functions, in particular optimized query handler; support of transactions and heterogeneous types of data with unpretentious requirements to the system resources.
In short a Windows mobile phone 7 application developer can open up new possibilities for you and let you create robust applications on Window platform.
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