Third-Party Software

The best thing about owning a windows powered smartphone is the high support from software companies and independent developers.  I will be showing you some of the best software applications and games that will enhance your overall smartphone experience.

Applications

I would like to start off with what I think is the most useful application for both your Pocket PC and now Smartphones.

eWallet by Ilium Software is a secure, convenient and fun way of storing all your personal and important information.  I've been using this excellent program on Pocket PC's for quite some time and was pleased to find that it is now available for smartphones as well.

The easiest way to create your own digital wallet is to purchase the professional version which includes both the desktop and smartphone software.  You can quickly and easily add all your data using the desktop application and then simply copy your wallet file to your smartphone.  What's great about this program, is that you can store anything you want in it.  There are tons of customized card types to choose from.  The screen shots above will give you an idea of just what type of data can easily be created and stored in your personal wallet file.  If for some reason a category is not available to suit your needs, there is a free form option as well.

You can view your categories by tree or icon view.  You can even store all your software serial numbers and registration keys or even websites with your username and password all which include an active URL which you can conveniently click on to open up the website via your smartphone internet browser.  What's also really cool is that any phone numbers you include in your cards can also be dialed straight from the program as well.  Creating cards can be quite fun as you can customize them even further by changing the background and text color and even add your own images to them.  Now, for those who are a bit paranoid about entering you whole life in your wallet file,  eWallet has some advanced security features that will practically prevent any unauthorized access to your information.  Besides the fact that your wallet file uses 128-bit encryption, you can also configure your wallet to automatically lock itself after a certain amount of time or even lock out access completely for a specified amount of time if the password is incorrectly entered after x number of attempts.  I highly recommend this application to anyone who owns either a Pocket PC or Smartphone.

More information can be found on the Ilium Software Website.

The next application I will show you is an excellent alternative to pocket Internet Explorer.  As most of you know, it can be rather frustrating browsing the web on such a small screen.  Thanks to the folks over at Bitstream, you can now browse websites in the same familiar format as they appear on your desktop browser.  ThunderHawk is a powerful wireless web browser that displays web pages that are easy to read on your smartphone.  The pages appear just as they would on your desktop browser and images and text are much clearer.  It's fast, secure and highly flexible.  Let's take a closer look!

One of its best features is a unique split screen view that is designed to pinpoint exactly where you are on a particular web page.  You can move the rectangle to the specific section you would like to view and then simply switch back to full screen.  The bottom portion of the split screen will show you a larger view of the area within the place holder.  This feature eliminates excessive scrolling and makes browsing a more pleasant experience on these small devices.  Another one of its unique features is the cross hair.  Think of it as the mouse pointer on your desktop PC.  You can use the cross hair in a similar fashion as you would a mouse.  Use it to click on any links within the web page or scroll to a specific section of the page.  ThunderHawk supports javascript and complies with HTML standards.  I decided to put this to the test and check out how it would handle the image enlarge scripts we use on our reviews.  As shown on the last image above, we had no issues displaying the pages properly.  Overall, I'm quite pleased with this program.  The only thing I found a bit bothersome is the speed at which you can move both the rectangle and cross hair across the screen.  It's quite slow and I would like to see a feature, for example, that will increase the speed when holding down the directional pad for two or three seconds in either direction. 

More information on this application can be found on the Bitstream Website.

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