To get Windows Mobile to match the phone number of incoming calls or text messages against numbers in the address book, regardless of whether they include the country code, change the following registry value to decimal 10 (the number of digits from the right-hand-side of the number to match against - 6+4=10 in the UK, i.e. 0<u>1234 567890</u>): HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Phone\CallIDMatch

Registry entries can be edited using CERegEditor.

The camera takes incredibly blurred photos by default. Fix it by lowering the brightness to -2.0! This essentially raises the ISO. You get marginally darker images, but they're not one massive blur of uselessness.

By default, WiFi is disabled when the device enters standby mode. This is very annoying for a lot of people, however it can only be disabled with third party software, such as Diamond Tweak.

See SIP on Windows Mobile.

On some ROMs the MMS send limit is set to 1KB and the drop-down list to change it (in Messages → Menu → MMS Options → Servers) is blank. To fix it, change this registry value: HKLM\SOFTWARE\ArcSoft\ArcSoft MMS UA\Config\mm1\MMSCSetting\SampleMMSC\WAP2sendDefaultSize to 614400. The drop-down box will remain blank, but the MMS send limit will be increased to 600KB (T-Mobile UK's limit).

As with the above issue, some ROMs come with AT&T's MMS settings, which obviously don't work on T-Mobile UK's network. T-Mobile UK's MMS settings are as follows:

• Server Name: T-Mobile PictureMessage
• Gateway: 149.254.201.135
• Port: 8080
• Server Address: http://mmsc.t-mobile.co.uk:8002
• Connect Via: T-Mobile PictureMessage (or your default mobile data connection)
• Send Limit: 600k

CERegEditor is a PC application that connects to your phone via ActiveSync to edit its registry.

The Advanced Configuration Tool lets you edit a whole host of little settings in Windows Mobile and is very useful for fine-tuning your phone.

Much like the Advanced Configuration Tool above, Diamond Tweak provides even more configuration options, specifically tuned to the HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro.

hTorch lets you use the camera's flash LED as a torch.

Pocket PuTTY is a direct Windows Mobile port of PuTTY, supporting most of PuTTY's standard features, including SSH, Telnet, public/private key authentication, SSH tunneling and saving of session details.

An on-screen keyboard that is much easier to use with fingers than the standard Windows Mobile on-screen keyboard. Arguably less useful on the Pro than the Diamond, but can still be useful if you don't want to open the keyboard.

An alternative music player to Windows Media Player and it only uses around 1.5MB RAM, compared to the 64MB used by WMP. It has more finger-friendly controls than WMP, too. Is a bit dodgy if you don't use the standard WinMo Today screen, since it sits as a tray icon on the Today screen when running and minimised, so if you don't have the Today screen you have to kill it and re-open it if you want to access it again.

Despite its name, I use this to provide Bluetooth, WiFi and Phone radio control icons on the Today screen. It can do a lot more, besides, including displaying the battery status, CPU utilisation, RAM usage, available WiFi networks and current battery drain (in mA or mW) on the Today screen, but I don't use those options.

An application that lets you run and exit TouchFlo 3D or TouchFlo 2D on demand, allowing you to use TouchFlo as a standalone application instead of a replacement for the Today screen.

Note: TouchFlo can be “disabled” (i.e. prevented from running on startup and being your standard home/Today screen) simply by unchecking its checkbox in the Settings → Personal → Today → Items list.

SPB Mobile Shell can add tabs containing useful things to the Today screen, and adds its own menu to a softkey (optionally) that gives finger-friendly access to contacts and installed applications. Mobile Shell 3 is being released soon, which promises even more nice features.

SPB Backup allows you to back up your phone to varying degrees depending on what you select:

1. \ (i.e. the full non-storage-card filesystem)
2. “Databases”
3. Registry
4. Emails
5. PIM Data (Contacts, Tasks, etc.)
6. Storage Card

By default, a “full” backup includes all of the above except the storage card. It can also schedule backups, though since you have to manually copy the backup files off of the storage card (or wherever you save them), I'm not convinced of the usefulness of scheduled backups. By choosing to run a “custom backup” you can select to encrypt the backup, too.

SPB Imageer is an image browsing and manipulation application. It could be greatly improved in terms of scrolling through images (you have to use back & forward buttons?! What happened to dragging the image to the left or right?), but it's better than nothing.

SPB Pocket Plus does various things. For one, it extends the Today screen tabs that Mobile Shell gives you to allow you to have multiple Today screen plugins on each tab. It also does things like adding kinetic scrolling to virtually ALL scrollable screens in all applications, and it adds tabs to Internet Explorer.

SPB Wireless Monitor keeps historic logs of network traffic usage, on per-application and per-interface terms. I use it to make sure I don't go over the 1GB/month limit on the mobile Internet connection.

Windows Live for Windows Mobile includes Messenger and it's very nice, with a Today screen plugin and everything.

acbTaskManager is a full task manager which shows every running process including their CPU and memory usage. It can do various other things, too, but that's all I use it for.

Diamond Tweak gives you control over even more miscellaneous options.

SEVEN is an application that provides instantaneous email notification by utilising IMAP IDLE (which is implemented by most IMAP servers including Gmail). Received emails are dumped in the standard Pocket Outlook email accounts. It keeps a data connection open all the time to listen for new messages, but it doesn't seem to drain the battery too much (and it may well use less battery power as you can then disable periodic email checking).

GooSync lets you sync your calendar and contacts with Google Calendar and GMail contacts. I only use it to sync my calendar, but it works extremely well, supporting multiple calendars (in the paid-for version) and two-way synchronisation. Make sure that your Google Calendar hasn't already been synced to your phone using another application first, or GooSync will “sync” ALL of your calendar up to your default Google Calendar - leaving me with dozens of duplicate entries that I had to remove.

A countdown timer application. Much better than the TouchWatch application I had in this place previously. Configurable alert sounds for each timer, number of timers dependant solely on the size and orientation of the screen (six in the Touch Pro's portrait mode).

A shopping list manager application? Sure, why not!

Opera Mobile, because the version that comes pre-installed by T-Mobile is out of date, buggy and slow.

ceTwit is a Twitter client for Windows Mobile and works pretty well. Could do with some improvements (such as being able to click on names of other Twitter users inside tweets - e.g. “and @someone said …”, and what I shall hate myself for calling “iPhone-style scrolling”) but is largely functional.

PockeTwit is a much better Twitter client for Windows Mobile, supporting TwitPic, URL shortening (using http://is.gd/) and clickable URL, @ and # links. It has “kinetic scrolling” (i.e. iPhone-style) and funky side menus: drag the list of tweets to the right to see the main menu on the left, or select a tweet then drag the list to the left to see a menu specific to that tweet (reply, direct message, retweet (“reply”), etc.).

Agile Messenger is apparently a good client for WLM/MSN, (etc) and XMPP, but I didn't get to try it before the trial version expired.

Skype for Windows Mobile works very well, containing most of the features of the full desktop client, including voice chat and text chat.

Microsoft Tag Reader reads the weird tags consisting of multicoloured triangles (e.g. ).

i-nigma reads the monochrome tag format, e.g. and

TCPMP is a multi-format media player for Windows Mobile. All the time that the VLC-for-WinMo project isn't receiving any love, this is our video player of choice.

Total Commander is a filesystem browser that greatly improves upon the standard Windows Explorer application provided by Microsoft.

My Phone is an online backup service for Windows Mobile devices provided by Microsoft. Currently in its beta stage, you have to wait a week or so to get an invite, and backup is limited to 200MB. It will backup your contacts, calendar, tasks, text messages, photos, videos, music and documents.

vxUtil provides various network utilities such as ping, tracert, etc. to Windows Mobile.

Pocket Scrobbler is a last.fm scrobbler application that is compatible with various media players including WMP and MortPlayer. It will scrobble your tracks either immediately (as each track is played), or build up a list and submit them all at once on demand, such as when you have a WiFi or ActiveSync connection.

My Mobiler is something like a VNC application - it allows you to control your phone (and take picture or video screenshots) from your PC via an ActiveSync connection (USB or Bluetooth).

A first party desk cradle/dock supplied with inserts to allow it to accommodate a HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Pro or HTC Touch Pro “with external battery” (which I think means the slightly thicker 1800mAh battery). It is essentially a USB pass-through, but it stops you having to fiddle around with USB cables, and has a 3.5mm stereo output jack to allow music played from the device to be passed to external speakers.

A pack of three screen protectors - just clear plastic films that cover the screen and hardware buttons to prevent them getting scratched. These third party ones don't quite cover the entirety of the Touch Pro's screen area, despite being made specifically for the Touch Pro. The important area of the screen - i.e. the actual display area - is covered, though.

An 8GB MicroSD HD card, because the 2GB one that comes supplied with the phone is pitifully small when you consider the (lack of) price of 8GB cards. 16GB cards are still too expensive.

A first-party wired remote control that can clip onto clothing, have standard 3.5mm stereo jack headphones plugged into it, and be used to control playing music and answer phone calls. It also has a microphone built in so it can act as a hands-free kit. The media control buttons only work with Windows Media Player.