Retrieving location information on a Windows Mobile device is relatively easy. In this article we discuss how to retrieve your location using two different methods:

• Cell Tower Lookup which is fast, does not consume much battery power but is not that accurate
• GPS Lookup which might take some initialization time (sometimes up to minutes), drains additional battery power but is very accurate

Adding location awareness to your own applications and calling out to Web Services with your current position opens lots of possibilities, not only for Line-Of-Business applications but also for many different types of consumer applications. Using the techniques described in this article, there is no excuse for you not to start thinking about developing some location aware applications. One promising technique (fetching location through IP lookup) is not described in this article; it is up to the reader to extend the current location retrieval methods with IP lookup, which can return accurate results, especially in densely populated areas where many free Wi-Fi networks are available.

If you are interested in creating location aware applications for Windows Mobile Devices, you can download this entire whitepaper in pdf format.

The accompanying sample code is also available for download.