IMAGES: Top 25 apps for your Windows mobile phone

The Windows Marketplace is still in a nascent state. But there's much to cheer with independent developers doing their bit to make the platform thriving.

If you're a windows mobile user and forever searching for a few useful apps, your search ends with this article.

These apps run the whole gamut: games, entertainment, productivity, social networking, communication &video and much more.

1. CleanRAM

Stung with the windows mobile memory leak problem? Fed up of soft resetting your device everytime an app hangs or your phone slows down? Make a clean breast of it with CleanRAM.

This nifty little application releases valuable programme memory that's no longer being used without having to restart the device. There are four levels (Basic purge, Quality purge, Fundamental purge & custom purge) to perform RAM clean up.

With convenience being the mantra of most apps, you can schedule the clean up by day and date. And you can update the software within the app itself.

2. SmartLyrics

Always lip-syncing songs? Want the complete lyrics of a song you love? Not to fret anymore. This smart little app by a private developer will do you a world of good.

It can automatically pull the lyrics for the song you play on windows mobile using Windows Mobile Media Player or in HTC AudioManager. It does require registration, but that's no issue here.

And if you are not in favour of hunting for every song you play, you can opt for the manual search. Best of both worlds, thanks to lyricsplugin.com that the developer used to make this app.

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3. ShootMe

Using your phone's built-in accelerometer/g-sensor or the touchscreen, this funny game app is perfect for your windows mobile. Simulating several weapons and gadgets, like shotguns, light sabres and even boxing, it's an all-in-one app for the price of one.

But the best part? Half of them are free. You won't have to pay anything, ever.

ShootMe! has single/multi player modes and a free and a registered version. So if you are done with the basic version, you could opt for the paid version by paying $5 and activate the multiplayer mode where you can play through Bluetooth with a friend or online with people around the world.

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4. Microfi Nitrogen

This is the best music player for your pocket PC -- your windows mobile. What's more, it's an open source app that allows you to play MP3/OGG/AAC/MP4/M4A/3GP/ WAV/WMA songs stored on your device.

It features a file browser, full skin support, smart shuffle and repeat modes, a 10-band equaliser with preset support (8 included presets), built-in sleep mode, a blank screen command to prevent energy wastage while playing music.

Build your playlist, edit it and play round the clock. That the app is open-source only sweetens the deal as you can expect many more improvisations as word gets around.

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5. Skyfire

Tired of web pages that don't load right on your Windows phone? With this, they'll appear just like they would on a PC -- blazing fast -- including Flash, Silverlight, and videos. Skyfire is the veritable video and social networking browser for Gen Next.

Displaying flash videos is the killer application, which if improved further, could well be the app of choice for those hooked to Safari on their iPhones and iPads.

No wonder, it's an award-winning app whose time has come. It was in the Top 40 apps of 2010 list of Tech Crunch with good reason. Load it up on your windows mobile and you will know why.

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6. Opera Mobile

If you are more into text browsing, Opera could be your best bet and not Skyfire. Pray why? Because it mimics your PC in more ways than Skyfire.

You can speed dial to open your favourite websites with one click and multi-task by shuffling between web pages in a jiffy with new tabs, and so on.

What's more, you can adjust the font size for easier reading and save on data transfers -- Opera compresses data by up to 80 per cent. If you use multiple phones, you can even synchronise your bookmarks. And if you run into a newspaper article, but want to read it later.

You can save it and read it later, even when your mobile is offline.

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7. Wolf's Translator

All right, you are a globetrotter and don't know what the billboards and screaming newspaper headlines mean in the country you are visiting. With this translator, you will become a linguist of sorts.

Tailor made for windows phones, particularly HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Pro and HTC P3600, this Google web engine can translate over 36 languages, including Slovak, Latvian, Hindi, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Polish, French, Arabic or Chinese.

The best feature? You don't even have to know the language you want to translate. This engine will inform you where the words came from. Coming next: a default language mode, so you don't always have to tell the app to translate it in English of Hindi.

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8. Lookout

If mobile security is making you tear your hair out in frustration, this app comes as manna from heaven. From automatically scanning every app you download to on-demand scans, remote data wipe and remote lock, the premium features are a must-have to anyone with a smartphone.

The Anti-Theft Module enables you to respond when your device is lost or stolen by locating your device, sounding an alarm, or deleting your personal information remotely from the web. What's more, there's enhanced backup for your photos, call history and phone contacts.

Not to mention, guarding your phone against viruses, malware and spyware. You can also transfer your data to a new phone with Lookout.

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9. WiFi Remote Access

This app is so cool, you will marvel at its handiness. This app lets you see all the contents of your mobile device courtesy wi-fi on your PC. Pray how?

Just type the URL displayed on your screen when you activate this app, and you can explore all the photos, videos, text and music on your PC. Not just that. You can even send files directly from your PC to your mobile phone. And if you want to tweak your windows settings, you have access to the registry editor on your PC as well.

But that's not all. The app allows FTP protocol support, making it easier for you to exchange files and folders between your computer and your windows phone. What's more, you can send and receive SMS from your computer and also remotely control your device, with the ability to use the computer keyboard to type text and take screenshots.

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10. Scramble

This popular iPhone app is also available for windows mobiles. Perfect for those who have a scrabble hangover and want to do play word games galore. This app tests your love of words and how quick you can unscramble scrambled words in a rectangular grid.

It offers different modes and difficulty and is quite finger-friendly. You can unjumble in three, four and five minutes. It should work on all screen resolutions: VGA, WVGA, QVGA and WQVGA.

For $0.99 this app is a must for those boring train, bus and car rides to work.

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11. Facebook

Microsoft is leaving no stone unturned to make a success of windows mobiles and this app is the best showcase window for that. This intuitive social networking browser bests what Gravity offers the Nokia phones and what Tweetdeck is to the iPhone.

Being the official Facebook client, it isn't slim on features. However, while Tweetdeck and Gravity integrate Facebook and Twitter, this app is limited to Facebook. But it's still the best if you only want to Facebook and nothing more.

Upload videos and photos to Facebook or chat and even call people on your friends list. Convenient with a C.

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12. Twit Today

This is cool little app that will help you tweet in a way that even the iPhones don't have yet. Once you download this Twitter app, a textbox shows up on your Today screen.

To tweet, all you have to do is fill the box with your desired text and hit 'OK'. And if you want to watch over your friend's tweets, just tap on the twitter icon to launch the mobile Twitter website.

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13. Nimbuzz

Want to have a common sign-in to access all your social networking sites? Then Nimbuzz can be your convenient all-in-one messenger.

So be it Skype, Windows Live/ MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM, GoogleTalk, Facebook, MySpace, Jabber or what have you, Nimbuzz  will do the deed: keeping you wired to the www.

What's more, it allows you to make free international calls over the Internet if your buddy uses Nimbuzz or any of the networks we just mentioned.

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14. Pandora

Nope, it's not an Avatar app that showcases the beauty of Pandora, the wonderful James Cameron created in his 3D sci-fi classic. It's an app that allows you to listen to your favourite music and even discover new music.

Not only that. You get to rate and bookmark your favourite songs and artists. It's unlike a radio station. You make your own by just asking it to play a certain artist or song, and it will intelligently pull up songs that match your tastes.

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15. Endomondo Sports Tracker

This is a must-try for fitness freaks who walk, jog, cycle and other forms of sport. With precise statistics on time, distance, altitude and speed with which you conducted your fitness routine, it keeps a training log of everything you've done in the year with date and time to boot.

What's more, you can share your logs with friends on Facebook and Twitter, among other social networking groups. Endomondo Sports Tracker is your very own personal trainer. Make the most of it. And it's free.

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16. iFonz 2

If you want your Windows mobile to look like the home page of your iPhone, this app will do that and a lot more. It includes a lot of customisation and a fully graphical design and animations for Windows Mobile 5/6 completely written in .NET.

Press the 'enter' key, and you can switch the first and last page of icons. There are cool backgrounds to programmes page. And if you have set a portrait background, it will go panoramic when you go landscape.

What's more, you can even see the battery charge indicator on the home page. Neat!

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17. Shopping Cart

This is an intuitive list manager that allows you to list down all the things you need to put in your virtual shopping cart. It's simple and yet very useful, particularly when you have to checklist a lot of stuff, leaving some room for missing out a few things.

It's a finger friendly application and new features are added frequently by the developer.

Some upcoming features include language support for configuration utility and save/ open/ browse dialogues. SMS and Dpad support are up next.

For now, you can easily create and manage lists (both standard and master lists) from your PC and transfer them directly to your device. Requires registration.

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18. Evernote

This is a nifty note-taking app that is great on every platform. If you have the app running on your camera phone, it will automatically upload your snapshots to the Evernote server.

The best part? It has optical character recognition (OCR). Which means, it can scan the text in your images, so you can find them later by searching for text in them.

Use this tool to snap pictures of products you see in stores and want to remember, to grab whiteboards in meetings, and to take pictures of people with name tags at conferences. It's one of those utilities that might just change your life. And yes, it stores and synchronizes all your information on your phone, PC and online. So you don't have to worry about data loss.

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19. Scrub

Want to update your phonebook, but don't know how? This convenient app does all the homework for you. Like what percentage of contacts don't have email IDs, company names, phone numbers, address, birthdays and so on.

It's convenient and must be the one thing on your to-do list: clean up incomplete information about all your phone contacts.

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20. DivX Mobile

If you know DivX, you know it stands for quality and the ability to play complex formats that a windows media player cannot. However, it's the DivX videos that are clearer than their counterparts.

So load Divx videos and use this mobile player for all it's worth. You can view the videos in full screen, forward or rewind, rotate the video and synchronize. Sweet!

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21. CellSpin

Be it video, audio, photos or text, CellSpin is your definitive mobile blogging platform. The interface cannot be simpler than this.

With one click uploads to all the popular web addresses, be it Blogger, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, Linkedin, MySpace, Picasa, Twitter or YouTube, it's an all-inone app you could well do with.

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22. RAR

This app is the WinRAR version for PocketPC, the popular and successful file compressor for windows. It allows you to compress and decompress any file using your PocketPC without the need of a PC.

With an intuitive interface, you can save on file storage and maximise space usage on your windows mobile.

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23. Shorthand

Don't have a data plan? Or don't want to incur additional data charges, then sign up for this TextApp.

What does it do? Let you access social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Netflix and others by using texts to send and receive the data. But yes, standard messaging rates apply.

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24. O! Market

Want more apps and don't find something to your liking among the ones listed above? Want to be updated about firmware versions of the apps already on your mobile?

Want to be constantly in the loop for new and popular apps? No problem. This appfinder will that for you in a jiffy. With neat categories for the same, like 'What's new', 'Popular' and'Featured'.

You can search apps by category and install what you like.

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25. TreeSize Mobile

If you are forever worried about reducing memory on your windows mobile, and don't know what is taking up so much space, this app will come in handy like no other. It will easily locate the large files when your smartphone is running out of disk space.

The best part? The file system is represented in a descending order, just like a tree and thereby its name. It shows you the size of folders, including their subfolders. This app is the WinRAR version for PocketPC, the popular and successful file compressor for windows.

It allows you to compress and decompress any file using your PocketPC without the need of a PC. With an intuitive interface, you can save on file storage and maximise space usage on your windows mobile.

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