Windows Mobile 6 Standard

I've just "upgraded" my phone from a T-Mobile MDA to the T-Mobile Dash. It's much smaller and the phone functions work much better and I'd been eyeing it for a while. The Dash runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard which is the son of Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone. WM Smartphone OS has some oddities about it so that many people don't even bother porting their apps to it, or they just haven't realized that there is a new version since Smartphone 2003.

I am easily distracted so I really need my ever present personal companion (my phone) to tell me when to pray. The MDA did this nicely with Pocket Islam, as I mentioned earlier, so the first thing I did was try to install Pocket Islam on my new Dash. No luck. Their software will install, but it hasn't been updated since the version for 2003 so the screen doesn't map correctly. In addition it actually messes up parts of the OS like the fonts, and can never be fully uninstalled. So I wiped my phone back to factory settings and tried a few others.

mAthan is bare bones. Super bare bones. It would install, but it just assumed my screen was the size of an MDA screen and you can't read 1/2 of the screen. It also doesn't have any way to stop the Athan, so if you are in the wrong place you have to leave or smother your phone to not bother folks once it goes off. It also makes a few assumptions about how you want your times calculated.

I tried Delta Minaret, but it is a java program and doesn't do Athan, just calculations. I guess it could be handy to have the calculations portable, but Delta Minaret also didn't calculate my screen correctly, and didn't have many cities to choose from.

Everything else I found for a Windows Mobile platform didn't do WM6 Standard, so I can't tell you what they are like. This means I have to resort to the method I previously used on my Sidekick. The advantage to the method is that as long as you can sync your calendar with your phone/PDA/watch or anything else you carry with you, you can get alerts when it's time to pray. The disadvantage is that it requires MS Outlook and doesn't call Athan. So I installed the Microsoft provided ITWorx PrayerTimes calculation plug in for Outlook 2007. (Update: links no longer work, plug-in can now be found at Speedy Share)

It's working fine, though now on my Laptop I have 3 programs that calculate prayer times. The Outlook plug-in, the ITWorx Vista Sidebar Gadget (with crappy echoey Athan), and Islamic Finder's prayer times calculator.

I did find another Java prayer times calculator, Islamic Finder Mobile, that I like a lot, it still doesn't do Athan, or have alerts, but it covers thousands of cities around the world, so it's good for travel.