Spice Up Your SMS Chat on the Pocket PC : Page 4

Did you know you can change the way your device represents your SMS messages? Learn how to program your messages to appear visually, complete with photos of the participants.

by Wei-Meng Lee

Jun 29, 2007

Page 4 of 4

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Testing the Application
You are now ready to test the application. The first thing you need to do is to create at least two contacts in Contacts—one for yourself and one for the sender (the sender can simply use a normal mobile phone). For my example, I have created two contacts (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. New Contacts: Using the Creating two new contacts.

Figure 6. Messaging: Sending and receiving SMS messages.

Press F5 in Visual Studio 2005. Figure 6 shows the sequence on how to send a SMS message to a recipient.

Author's Note: For this article, I am matching the Mobile telephone number in Contacts to obtain the user's Name and Picture. Hence, be sure to enter your own phone number exactly as those entered in Contacts (see Figure 7). If you notice that your sender's phone number is displayed instead of his name or photo (but you are sure that his name is in Contacts), check to see that the Mobile Tel entry in Contacts matches the phone number displayed in the Panel control.

When the recipient has responded, you can now type a message and click on the Reply menu item (see Figure 8).

Figure 7. The Number: Using the Mobile Telephone number for matching contacts.

Figure 8. Reply: Replying to a received SMS message.

Now, you've seen how to intercept incoming SMS messages and display them in a fun and visually appealing way. With some creativity, you too can inject more fun into your digital life! Have fun chatting!

Wei-Meng Lee is a Microsoft MVP and founder of Developer Learning Solutions, a technology company specializing in hands-on training on the latest Microsoft technologies. He is an established developer and trainer specializing in .NET and wireless technologies. Wei-Meng speaks regularly at international conferences and has authored and coauthored numerous books on .NET, XML, and wireless technologies. He writes extensively on topics ranging from .NET to Mac OS X. He is also the author of the .NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide, ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook (both from O'Reilly Media, Inc.), and Programming Sudoku (Apress). Here is Wei-Meng's blog.