I'm Bringing New Back

In my frustration with the removal of the “New” soft key button in the new Windows Mobile 6 Messaging application, I’ve been searching for something to make it easy to create new messages again.

Someone suggested to use FlexMail 2007, which has many much more useful features than the default messaging app, but it was kinda overkill and it didn’t integrate with the today screen or my contact photos.

Then I found a thread on XDA-developers.com expressing the same frustration, and someone there suggested the WM5NewMenu application as a solution. This program was actually developed last year when Saman was missing the original universal “New” menu found in Windows Mobile 2003 and earlier Pocket PC operating systems. For those that don’t remember, there used to be a “New” menu that could easily create new items from within any other application.

Anyway, Saman’s “New” Menu application is very lightweight. It won’t take up much memory, and it’s extremely customizable. By default it creates menu items for all the things that you could create new items for in Windows Mobile 2003, but it has so many options you can get really crazy with custom commands and sub menus. When I installed this on my Windows Mobile 6 Professional T-Mobile Wing, the “Email” and “SMS” commands didn’t work properly. Not to worry, this is easy to fix. Just create your own items and enter the proper parameters.

So here’s the settings for the new items I made:
Item label: Email
File: \Windows\tmail.exe
Parameters: -service "name-of-an-email-account or Activesync" -to ""

Item label: SMS
File: \Windows\tmail.exe
Parameters: -service "SMS" -to ""

I assigned the NewMenu to the left Softkey and now I can instantly create new items from the Today Screen! I can create a new SMS message in two button presses from the Today screen as opposed to the 6 steps you would normally have to do in Windows Mobile 6 Pro: Start>Messaging>Text messages>Menu>New>SMS. Yay!

If you like this solution, don’t forget to send a nice donation to Saman.