Pocket PC Central News Center

EA Mobile has released Star Trek for Windows Mobile , a shoot ‘em up space combat game based on the new Trek movie.

Game description:

YOU are the captain of the USS Enterprise in this action-packed shoot-em up based on the blockbuster movie. Soar through galaxies as you race to complete your campaigns. Pick up new weapons and fight valiantly alongside and against famous ships and races from the Star Trek Universe. Collect power-ups to increase the abilities of your ship including speed, energy and firepower. Explore the depth of the score system and get higher ratings on the high-score ladder. Get beamed up!

Download from Handango

Today we expected Apple to announce a new iPhone (or two), news of the Palm Pre’s initial sales and other all-around Monday-ness – we didn’t expect a fresh new version of Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile, but that’s exactly what we got.

Opera Mobile 9.7 beta adds Opera Turbo, a server-size compression technology (à la Skyfire) that shrinks requested data before sending it to your handset; this saves time, particularly if you’re on a slower connection (EDGE) and is designed to make the mobile Web a bit more speedy.  It also decreases the amount of bandwidth required to browse the web up to 80%.  That’s good if you have a limited amount of bandwidth per month on your data plan.

In our quick test of 9.7, we certainly felt the speed increase; pages loaded quickly, panning and zooming was smoother and less jerky, and the entire experience feels more desktop-esque.

View a more complete list of Opera Mobile 9.7’s features or download the new version.

We’ve been watching Skyfire for what seems like ages.  And, today, we’re happy to report that the Windows Mobile version of the browser is no longer in beta; v1.0 is ready to roll (and download).

For those who don’t know, Skyfire is a mobile web browser that works with its own servers to do the heavy lifting – Ajax, Flash, Silverlight, etc. – off-device, then the server sends the finished product to your smartphone. This model has several advantages, chief among them the ability to interact with Web 2.0 sites like Hulu, Twitter and Facebook.

Skyfire works with smartphones running Windows Mobile 5 & 6, and both non-touchscreen and touchscreen interfaces.  It’s also free, so head over to http://get.skyfire.com and give it a try.
 

After months of wait lists and promotional code invites, Microsoft’s Cloud-syncing My Phone service is now an open beta. 

My Phone syncs your Windows Mobile Smartphone’s data (contacts, calendar, documents, tasks, text messages, photos, videos, and music) with a web server, and provides secure access to that data via web browser. You can add or edit calendar and contacts via the My Phone interface, as well as upload or download photos and videos; changes made to My Phone on the web or on the smartphone will be synced across the service when you manually begin a sync or on a pre-set schedule.

You must have a Windows Mobile 6.x Smartphone in order to use My Phone , and at present, Microsoft offers 200MB of online storage the service. 

To start using My Phone, visit the web site on your PC and send an installer link to your phone via SMS.  To install directly from your WM phone, point your mobile browser (IE Mobile is best for this) to:

http://myphone.microsoft.com/install

Spb Mobile Shell has long been one of our favorite UI replacement options for Windows Mobile.  Unlike so many of the alternatives, Mobile Shell offers a Windows Mobile-esque look that doesn’t make Windows Mobile proper feel to alien when you run other software.

Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 adds widgets, Facebook integration, management options for wireless connectivity and ringtones, a 3D carousel for choosing an activity, a task manager and more.  Check out the video below to see Mobile Shell 3.0 in action.

Current Mobile Shell users can upgrade at a reduced cost, and first time users are, of course, welcome.

Buy from Handango before the end of the day and save 15% with code SPB15.

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Rated as the MacWorld 2008 Best Radio App (for the iPhone), WunderRadio from Jeyo is now available for Windows Mobile 6.x, giving you access to over 36 thousand terrestrial radio stations on your Windows Mobile device. 

With WunderRadio, you can use onboard GPS (if your smartphone has it) to locate local radio stations, search for stations, browse genres, browse by locations and even find radio stations around the world. 

A full review of WunderRadio for Windows Mobile is coming soon, but for now, we recommend this program to anyone who just doesn’t feel ready to take on the day without music.

There have been a few workarounds for the lack of native YouTube support in Windows Mobile for some time, but most require users to either purchase software or to configure free software in mind-bending ways.

But Google’s new YouTube Application for Windows Mobile makes viewing viral video a snap.  Just install the free software and you’re good to go.  The program takes up about 1.5MB of storage and can update itself when Google releases new versions.

As with all data-intensive applications, be sure that you have an unlimited data plan before you start watching YouTube videos; you can rack up a lot of data usage very quickly with any type of streaming media.

To get the Google YouTube app, visit http://m.youtube.com on your mobile device and select “Download the YouTube Application” option on the page.

In this economic climate, saving money is key. Thankfully, one of our favorite Windows Mobile software houses seems to agree, as they have bundled five of their most popular WinMo titles into a single purchase, Communications Suite. 

Version 1.8 includes updated, finger-friendly applications and $30 in combined savings. The suite contains Winterface (a UI update for Windows Mobile), FunContact (a contacts management alternative with a touch-friendly interface), SMS-Chat (a threaded SMS manager), ZoomBoard (a finger-friendly soft keyboard add-on) and Weather (self explanatory).

Learn more about VITO’s Communications Suite v1.8 and download a free trial…

One of the main criticisms of the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system is that it’s little more than WM6.1 with an updated skin.  We hope there are changes under the hood as well, but if you subscribe to the nothin’ but skin point-of-view and want a little WinMo65 action without the wait, a poster at the xda developers’ forum has you covered.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 Skin gives your Windows Mobile device a next-gen facelift.  The only requirements are that your device has a QVGA touchscreen display (VGA/WVGA is not yet supported) and that you have Spb Mobile Shell 2.1.5 installed (which requires Windows Mobile 5 or 6).  The skin is designed for Mobile Shell, which isn’t free, but you can grab it here if you don’t already use it.

Download the WinMo 6.5 Mobile Shell Skin

For the first time in months, the fine folks at Opera has made a new version of their Opera Mobile 9.5 web browser publically available for download. The new version, v9.51b2, is called a Technology Preview (read: still in the testing phase), and is compatible with Windows Mobile 5 & 6 touchscreen devices.

The primary advertised change in the new version is compatibility with Google Gears.  On PCs, Gears allows users to store online data locally for offline viewing; in the mobile world “Gears is perfect for creating a better user experience by allowing applications to cache data more efficiently, so you can cut down on bandwidth, and carry out processes discreetly in the background,” according to the accompanying release post on the Opera web site. 

In order for the new Gears feature to work, you’ll need to install Google Gears for Windows Mobile.  A .CAB installer can be downloaded here:

http://gears.google.com/?platform=wince-opera.

Quick testing of version 9.51b2 showed it to be somewhat speedier than previous versions, both in terms of basic rendering speed and in zooming in and out.  But there are still bugs and Flash support has not yet been added. 

While we’re not exactly blown away by this new version, we still think Opera Mobile 9.5 is the best of the third-party alternative browsers for Windows Mobile (which include Iris and SkyFire) and it is light-years ahead of IE Mobile. If you’re interested, you can download the Technical Preview here.

Google has released a Windows Mobile version of the Google Mobile App, an application which allows users to search the Web with Google, access Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google services.

The Google Mobile App adds a line to the Today screen from which searches can be performed.  You can also access Gmail, Google Maps, News, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Calendar.  Search results and Google online apps are launched in your handheld’s default web browser (IE Mobile, Opera, etc.).

If you’re using a Windows Mobile device with a third-party Today Screen replacement, such as HTC’s TouchFlo, the Google Mobile App must be launched from the Programs menu in order to run. 

You can download the Google Mobile App by pointing your mobile browser to:

http://m.google.com/search

It’s a week late(ish), but the first Windows Mobile version of Fennec – the codename for the upcoming Firefox Mobile web browser – is now available for download.  The download is designed to run on the HTC Touch Pro ONLY. 

This is a pre-alpha, meaning that it’s a light year away from ready for primetime, but if you have an HTC Touch Pro (AT&T Fuze) and intestinal fortitude, you can download the .CAB installer and get to browsin’…

… or maybe not.

We’ve installed Fennec v0.11 and while the program does run on our HTC Touch Pro (after the better part of a minute) we couldn’t actually browse any web pages.  All we got was a checker board background and a Welcome to Fennec page title, and we’re not the only ones.  Let us know if you have better luck.

But, for good or ill, this first pre-alpha for Windows Mobile shows that Mozilla is hard at work on a mobile version of the web browser 21% of us use and love.

NOTE: We recommend that you backup your device before installing this pre-alpha.

Spb Software has written some of our favorite Windows Mobile applications over the years, and we certainly count Spb Wallet among them.  Spb Wallet is a digital locker for personal information including credit cards, bank accounts, online login information, business contacts and more.  Since this information is mobile, the software also includes 256-bit AES encryption.

Version 2.0 adds a more finger-friendly UI, adaptive skins, an online template gallery with over 7,000 card templates, autofill for IE Mobile and smart scrolling.

Check out Spb Wallet 2.0 @ Handango.

The first Firefox Mobile beta for Windows Mobile could come as soon as next week. 

On Mozilla’s Fennec (the code-name for Firefox Mobile) notes page for January 26, developers state that they are “targeting a Milestone release for the first week of February.”  The page goes on to state that the first beta will be targeted for the HTC Touch Pro (also sold in the U.S. as the AT&T Fuze).

This comes as a welcome surprise as previous reports had the first WinMo beta of Fennec scheduled for March or April.

A new version of Live Search Mobile has been released by Microsoft.  Version 4.0 adds several new features to the free program, one of our favorites here at PPCC.

LocateMe allows you to view your location either by GPS positioning data or cell phone tower triangulation.  Bird’s Eye View, which is similar to Google Street View, is a new way the program provides for viewing maps. Sadly, this feature isn’t available everywhere.

Other features include predictive text for typed searches and Mixed Query which allows you to search for locations in cities other than the one in which you are currently located.

You can download the latest version of Live Search Mobile, which works with Windows Mobile 5 or later (and select BlackBerry devices), right from your handheld at http://wls.live.com.