While cell phones powered by Pocket PC Phone Edition and MS Smartphone 2002 are based on Windows CE 3.0, already now several companies in the world are working on cell phones powered by next Windows CE operating system: Windows CE .NET 4.x (current version: 4.1).

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Seeing is believing:
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On above picture you can see Window CE .NET 4.1 running on a regular PC hardware!!!! Yes, it is possible and we managed even to make bootable CD-ROM with Windows CE .NET 4.1! (coming soon to msmobiles.com : article "Running Windows CE .NET on a regular PC hardware" with more information on this topic)

Below you can see some pictures of cell phones powered by Windows CE .NET that are now under development at Alpha Cell company:
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Here is example of a cell phone with a touch screen based on Windows CE .NET from bSQUARE company:
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Also other companies, including such giants like Samsung, are now working on development of cell phones powered by Windows CE .NET.

In case of cell phones powered by Microsoft software business model is usually such that Microsoft provides software (either operating system alone or both operating system and cellular telephony applications.

So what it is this Windows CE .NET? Let´s try to answer this question in this introductory article.

Windows CE .NET is one of 2 operating system lines that Microsoft is offering for embedded systems (another one is Windows XP Embedded). "Embedded systems" denotes all devices of various kind, for example for controlling of industrial equipment, Smart Displays, various appliances, home entertainment devices, systems for cars, for any applications other than personal computing. While Windows XP Embedded is designed for full featured systems, the Windows CE .NET on the other hand is made for small footprint clients like smart phones. Interesting (for msmobiles.com) is the fact that thanks to so called "platform builder":

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.. the Windows CE .NET can be configured as a software for powering cell phones ! So people can just take Platform Builder, select in the wizard "Cell Phone or Smart Phone" configuration and make themselves ROM images for their phone!

Having cell phone configuration is not all! You can even run your cell phone platform in an emulator for software development purposes:
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Windows CE .NET offers much more features than Windows CE 3.x, some of these features are listed below:

• CE .NET offers expanded Board Support Package (BSP) support - A BSP is the software that implements the device drivers for a standard development board (SDB). SDB is a kind of hardware reference platform. Thanks to BSP you can very quickly put operating system on hardware (SDB). Simply speaking CE .NET offers simply much bigger choice of hardware on which it run. Just imagine: you can run CE .NET also on a regular PC hardware (it is mostly done for testing/developing purposes because for industrial usage people use ready made SDBs).
• support for IPv6 and several othe rcommunication technologies
• built-in support for Bluetooth and Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi)
• .NET Compact Framework is built-in (no need to install it separately)
• USB host functionality - you can connect peripherial USB devices - much more USB drivers
• Windows XP-like Sample Skin
• several tools for making applications and platforms:
  • Platform Builder - tool for building Windows CE .NET powered devices, includes wizards for easy construction of devices, you can for example select there "Smartphone Foundation"; includes also compilers, debuggers and resource editors
  • Application development tools:
    • Visual Studio .NET - development environment for making applications for .NET platform
    • eMbedded Visual C++ Application Toolset - (version 4.0)
• supports several processors: ARM, MIPS, SuperH, and x86 (yes, you can run it even on a regular PC!)
• ... much much more features that however are too technical to get them listed here

Conclusion: Windows CE .NET constitutes good foundation for building intelligent cell phones - smartphones.

Please note: this article will be expanded in near feature with more information and screenshots, so please visit this page again!

Windows CE .NET is not just a future version of Windows CE 3, it is a reality:
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... that soon comes also to cell phones.

For more information about Windows CE .NET visit Microsoft´s Windows CE .NET Home.