Your smartphone comes with some applications preinstalled, like Outlook Mobile Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks—and Windows Media Player. But there are many, many more applications available that can help you get even more from your smartphone. When you go to download an application, you’ll have a choice of downloading it to the device itself or to a storage card. It’s always best to download to a storage card. Your smartphone has about 30 MB free, while a storage card typically has at least 512 MB of space. By downloading to a storage card, you’ll make sure the application won’t tie up your system resources. And you’ll still have the application icon on your smartphone, so you can easily access applications stored on the card. Best of all, because your smartphone has persistent storage, you won’t lose any applications you download—even if you run your battery down.

To get started, try some of the free applications from Windows Mobile. There are also hundreds of applications available for purchase through the Certified Software Catalog.

Two Ways to Download and Install Applications

The two primary methods for downloading and installing applications on your smartphone are:

You can also download applications from the Web over the air. You enter your mobile phone number and then receive a text message with the download link. When you click on the link, it will automatically download the application. Be sure you have a data plan in place before attempting to connect to the Internet. Check with your wireless service provider to find out about available data plans.

Install from your PC

With this method, the file that installs the application on your smartphone runs on the PC. The steps are:

More information is available in the Install, Find, and Remove Your Apps article.

Install from a .CAB File

When you install a program from a .CAB file, the entire .CAB file is transferred to your smartphone and the installation program runs there, rather than on your PC. The steps are:

• Navigate to the application you want to download (which could be on your PC or on the Web).
• Open ActiveSync on your PC.
• Click Explore.
• Copy the file to \Storage\Windows\Start Menu\Accessories on your device.
• On your smartphone, click Start > Accessories and scroll to the .CAB file.If you don’t see the file in Accessories, use File Manager to find and open the file.
• Open the .CAB file.

That’s all you have to do. The application will automatically install itself on your device.