Windows – use the Windows Mobile 6 SDK to develop Windows Mobile 5 Applications

Even if you had Visual Studio 2005 you would be limited to the 2.0 Framework. You will need to use Visual Studio 2008 Professional or better to use the 3.5 Framework. But you also have an alternative.

I wrote an article on Windows Mobile Development without Visual Studio. The minimum you need is the .Net Compact Framework SDK. It comes with a command line compiler that can generate .Net assemblies that will run on a Windows Mobile phone. Naturally you will not want to use the command line for your compiling. So the instructions I wrote are centered around the (free) ShartpDevelop.Net editor. You can find the instructions on CodeProject.com. Here is the URL.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mobile/WiMoSansVS.aspx

You need to code to the least common denominator. Using the WimNo 6 SDK is not the route to go as there is no guarantee of backward compatability and you may end up using features available only in the later OS/Platform. Studio 08 ships with a PPC 2003 SDK, so use that. The apps developed for PPC 03 should be forward compatible (there are edge cases that migh require additionaly ches in your code, but for the most part they work fine).