Emulating a phone network when developing applications for Windows Mobile

Hello August! If you are interested in writing software for the Windows Mobile platform (WM, available on both smartphones and PDAs), then you have probably already heard of convenient software emulators that come with Visual Studio and/or the Windows Mobile development kits.

These emulators allow you to test your applications using a piece of software that works and feels like a real phone. However, many phone applications are related to real phone calls, SMS messages and so on, and thus will not work as expected on the plain emulator.

The good news is that I said "plain". Microsoft also provides another emulator called the Cellular Emulator, which can emulate a GSM/GPRS and/or UMTS network, and then the emulator can connect through it to a hard-coded set of phone numbers to make and receive calls and SMS messages and send data. All you need to do is fire up the Cellular Emulator, notice the used COM port on the left-bottom corner, configure the same port to the phone emulator, soft-reset the emulator, and then you will get a network like you were using a real phone (except you cannot make real phone calls, of course).

Of course, even with the Cellular Emulator in place, an emulator is still just an emulator. Real and final application testing should be done with real phones, but especially with the Cellular Emulator, the Windows Mobile emulators are a great start.