I recently purchase a HTC Shadow (v2), and am enjoying the phone greatly. The biggest missing item for is a touch screen, and secondly a GPS sensor. The greatest strength of the phone is the availability of Window Mobile (WM5) Apps. You can easily install games and apps via USB, using Microsft Active Sync (CD with the phone, or online here).
Nearly all cell phones are Java (J2ME, MIDP) compatible, and a HUGE supply of such apps/games can be found at: http://www.getjar.com. Some phones are ‘locked’ and won’t let your install apps using the USB port of your PC, but getjar.com supports download directly to your phone from the web site. Beware, that there are a lot of apps here that are “adware” and require an internet connection to download in-game advertisements. Even after filtering through these annoyances the quantity of quality freeware games is still significant.
This HTC phone is running windows mobile, using the ~200mhz StrongARM cpu, which makes a large supply of apps and games available from: http://www.freewarepocketpc.net. There are astronomy, utilities, games, etc… Look it through, there is a large supply of stuff here. Generally apps for PocketPC are mostly compatible.
Being that this phone is very compatible with the T-Mobile Dash, here is a site with a selective list of apps:http://mobile.surrealnetworks.com/DashApps.htm.
During my wanderings, I found that WM5 apps are generally written for a Pocket PCs such as iPaq, Palm, Clei, etc… These all use a stylus (touch) for input, which the Smart Phone is missing. This adds a bit of trial-n-error to the testing of games and apps. Once you get past this bit of annoyance, there are still many games and apps written such that they are key-pad input and work great.
Recently I uncovered that there are Nintendo (NES) and Super Nintendo (Snes) emulators for PocketPC, greatly expanding the potential list of games available to the phone. The NES emulator that worked for me is “Pocket Nester Plus” (available here). The SNES emulator was much more difficult, as the versions readily available on the web are for WM2002, and hang on the intro-screen for the HTC Shadow running (WM5). Avalon5 made a compiled WM5 compatible version of PocketPC “Smart” SNES that works on the HTC Shadow, but it was a big pain to find. After much digging, I found it and am (providing HERE). ROMs are available through-out the WWW, but I have a few packaged here: NES Roms (301 Games [Listing], 25MB), SNES Roms (95 games, 41MB).
Hope this helps someone looking for SmartPhone games, enjoy.
– JJ –