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Windows phone

Fine-tune your Windows phone

Your Windows Mobile smartphone is just that—a really smart phone that has more in common with your desktop or laptop computer than it has with the phone in your home or office. And, like any computer, it can be optimized, tweaked, and adjusted in many ways to make it work exactly the way you want it to. Utilities are applications that help you tweak your phone, and this article describes utilities that can help you make your phone work a little better—or sometimes a lot better—than when you got it. There are two general categories of utilities: single-purpose utilities that do one thing, and multipurpose utilities that perform a variety of functions. Single-purpose utilities tend to cost less or are sometimes free, and multipurpose utilities tend to cost more because they do more.

Single-purpose utilities

Some applications perform highly-focused tasks: PhoneSleep, for instance does one thing. But if you’ve ever had your phone ring during a meeting, you’ll appreciate what this software does. It automatically scans your calendar and puts your phone into silent mode for the duration of the meeting, turning it back to normal mode when the meeting appointment ends. Similarly, it can be configured to put your phone into silent mode between certain time periods—meaning no more late-night phone calls waking you up. How’s that for useful?

A similar utility, Suspend Ringer, works in a slightly different way: When you start the program, you specify how many hours or minutes you want the ringer to be suspended for. Going into a movie? Set SuspendRinger for two hours, and when you walk out of the movie theater, your phone automatically goes back to normal ring mode. If you’ve ever put your phone into silent mode for a meeting or a movie and then missed a call because you forgot to take it out of silent mode, you’ll appreciate this utility.

Pocket Hack Master also performs a single function, but that function is so important it can radically alter the way your phone works. This program can slow down (or underclock) the processor (CPU) to conserve power on your phone, thus extending the battery life of your phone. Or it can make the processor go faster (or overclock), giving you more performance—at the cost of battery life.

Backup utilities are critical for your phone, especially if you like to try out new software. Unfortunately, software isn’t perfect, and there will be occasions when you install software and your phone doesn’t work quite the way it should. The best and sometimes only recourse is to restore your phone to an earlier state than it was in before you installed that program. A good backup program will back up your phone daily to make sure that you always have a recent backup available. Be sure to buy a memory card for your phone if you’re going to use a backup program, because daily backups can use quite a bit of storage space. Some of the top programs in the backup category include Sprite Backup, SPB Backup, and Resco Backup.

Multipurpose utilities

One of the top multipurpose utilities on the market today is Pocket Mechanic Professional. This software program is as multifaceted as it sounds. Here are just a few of the things you can do with this program:
  • Find and repair registry problems.
  • Repair storage card access problems.
  • Fix problems with the notification queue (which is helpful if your alarms aren’t firing).
  • Format and defragment storage cards.
  • Fix broken program shortcuts.
  • Benchmark storage card performance so you can make sure you’re using your fastest memory card in your phone.
MemMaid is another popular program in this category. It’s been around for years and is continually improved for newer phones. It helps you control which programs run when you turn on your phone, so you’ll see faster performance after you cut out the programs that you don’t want to load. MemMaid will help you maximize the storage space on your phone, deleting unwanted temporary files and bad uninstall files (typically from a partially installed program). It even helps protect your privacy by completely deleting your browser cache, cookies, and history. MemMaid will also help you tweak the performance of your phone, adjusting the cache (storage) of Internet Explorer Mobile, the font and system cache size, and more.

Some programs—which are not typically considered utilities of the same type as Pocket Mechanic Professional and MemMaid—enhance or outright replace aspects of the core functionality on your Windows phone. SPB Phone Suite falls into this category. It contains a powerful set of tools for maximizing the way you make and receive phone calls. It has a Today screen plug-in that allows you to attach photos to specific contacts you call frequently, shows you missed calls, allows you to toggle call filtering off and on, and allows you to quickly and easily switch profiles. The profiles function is particularly powerful because it allows you to set certain profiles for a specific time frame—meaning you could have your phone ring extra loudly during the time you’re driving to or from work and are typically listening to music. PhonEx is a similar program, offering enhanced functionality for making and receiving phone calls.

Want even more utilities? Check out the utilities software categories on Handango, MobiHand, Pocket PC Soft.net, and Smartphone.net for starters.
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