Tip: Using the Cellular Emulator in the Windows Mobile 6 SDK

One of the very cool tools available in the Windows Mobile 6 SDK is the Cellular Emulator. The Cellular Emulator allows you to use the Windows Mobile Emulator to emulate making and receiving phone calls, as well as sending and receiving of SMS messages. However, getting it to work with your emulator is not so straight-forward. Follow the steps outlined below:

1. Launch Cellular Emulator from Start -> Programs -> Windows Mobile 6 SDK -> Tools -> Cellular Emulator.

2. Observe the COM port number used by the Cellular Emulator. For my example, it is COM3. You may see something similar or different (like COM4).

3. Launch the Windows Mobile 6 Professional Emulator (make sure it is not the Classic emulator) from within Visual Studio 2005. You can do so from Tools -> Device Emulator Manager and right-click on Windows Mobile 6 Professional Emulator and select Connect.

4. In the Windows Mobile 6 Professional Emulator, select File -> Configure... and click the Peripherals tab.

5. Under Serial port 0: enter the COM port number used by the Cellular Emulator. For my example, I enter COM3. Note that you have to manually enter the COM port; it is not listed in the dropdown list.

6. Finally, reset the Windows Mobile 6 Professional Emulator by selecting File -> Reset -> Soft. This step is essential!

You should now be able to get the Cellular Emulator to "talk" to the Windows Mobile 6 Professional Emulator.

Some common problems

1. From experience, you are likely to encounter problems with the Cellular Emulator if you install the Windows Mobile 6 SDK on a notebook. You are likely to see an error that says "COM17 is used, please verify" (or something similar). There is no official way to resolve this, but it seems like some folks managed to solve this by first uninstalling the Windows Mobile 6 SDK, then disable the Bluetooth services, followed by installing the Windows Mobile 6 SDK again.

2. If you find that the Windows Mobile emulator is not receiving SMS messages/phone calls made from the Cellular Emulator, the first place to check is the COM port settings in the Emulator Properties page. I encountered instances of this problem when the emulator started to lose the COM port settings after a while of use.

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