How to emulate the HTC HD Mini in Visual Studio

(Windows Mobile 6.1 & 6.5)

With the release of HTC's HD Mini, Windows Mobile developers now have another resolution to worry about. And its not unreasonable to assume that HTC will be able to move a large number of these devices with the popularity of the HD and HD2.

You can take a look at the specifications here:
http://www.htc.com/www/product/hdmini/specification.html

What's important to note is the screen resolution of 320x480 - this is the only Windows Mobile device that I know of that uses this resolution. What's also important is the screen DPI - which is most likely 128. QVGA devices like the Touch are 96dpi and VGA and WVGA devices are 192dpi.

Its also worth noting that this device has a height to width ratio of 3 to 2 where normal devices are 4:3 and the wide devices are 5:3 so you may need to make some minor alternations to your GUI code when supporting the mini.

Now I haven't been able to find an emulator for this device but fortunately we can fake it using the Windows Mobile 6 SDK. I had a clever friend that works in Redmond help me out with this so I big thanks to her.

Fortunately we can use the Microsoft Device Emulator to launch a recompiled emulator image and change the display properties. Now remember I mentioned 128dpi? There is only one emulator image that supports this and that is the 320x320 Square QVGA emulator image. You can try other images but the resources will be incorrect and the sizes of menus, icons, etc will be either too big or too small.

So lets cut to the chase, assuming you have Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 installed and the Windows Mobile 6.1 SDK you can launch the emulator from the command line or by using a Batch file with the following command:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0\DeviceEmulator.exe" "C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\PocketPC\DeviceemulationV610\0409\PPC_USA_GSM_QVGA_VR.BIN" /memsize 256 /hostkey Left-Alt /video 320x480x16

or for 64 bit systems:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0\DeviceEmulator.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\PocketPC\DeviceemulationV610\0409\PPC_USA_GSM_QVGA_VR.BIN" /memsize 256 /hostkey Left-Alt /video 320x480x16


(Launching the emulator at 320x480 - Windows Mobile 6.1)

You can also try the 6.5 image but I wasn't able to get the start menu working, presumably there are additional resources needed for the 480 high screen:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0\DeviceEmulator.exe" "C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\PocketPC\DeviceemulationV650\0409\PPC_USA_GSM_320x320_VR.BIN" /memsize 256 /hostkey Left-Alt /video 320x480x16


Once you have it up and running, you can cradle it just like any other emulator, it will show up in the Device Manager at the bottom with an ID string in the "Others" section.


(Custom emulator shown in the Device Manager)


(Debugging Calc Pro with the custom launched emulator)


Good luck and feel free to post questions

Further reading:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb630224.aspx

Experia, Touch HD, Diamond and Diamond Pro Video

I think the title says it all. I'm personally in the market for a new Windows Mobile phone and this video covered the four phones that I'm interested in.

The video is about 8 minutes long and gives you a pretty good feel for the sizes of the devices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAfrsZ1INV8

All four phones are Windows Mobile Professional Devices and all four have high resolution screens. The Touch HD and the Experia have a screen resolution of 480x800, the Diamond and Diamond Pro have a resolution of 480x640.

If you're shopping for these phones you may want to keep in mind that there is better software support for VGA devices (480x640) than the WVGA devices.

Also a key feature (or lack of) on the HTC HD is the lack of a directional pad. This means you're going to be controlling everything using the screen, it also means many games will be unplayable. However for a device this cool you may be willing to overlook it.

I'm currently leaning towards the HTC Touch Diamond - I'm ready for a small and "cool" phone.

As always, if you're looking for software for any of these phones check out
http://www.wireless-gaming.com & http://www.wireless-apps.net in the Windows Mobile Touch section.

Panoramic Calc Pro 2.0.2 released today.

Calc Pro 2.0.2 contains a few minor bug fixes and improves compatibility with WVGA devices like the HTC Touch HD, Sony Experia and the Toshiba G900.

Grab it from the Panoramic Software Inc website here:
http://www.panoramicsoft.com/

This version is compatible with all Windows Mobile 5, 6 & 6.1 Professional and Classic devices (ie Pocket PC).