Adding Fonts to Your PPC/Smartphone

If you would like to have fonts other than the vanilla Tahoma font that is built into Pocket PC and Smartphones, you can add fonts from your Windows Font Directory. I have done this on all Pocket PC’s I have ever owned and also my T-Mobile Dash.

Here is all you have to do:

• Use Explorer within Windows to go to your Windows Fonts Directory, select the fonts you want to copy, and use CTRL+C to put them into the clipboard.
• Use the My Computer tab in your Windows Start Menu to gain access to the files on your Pocket PC/Smartphone, as shown below.
• Click (or double-click) the Mobile Device icon, which will take you into the file structure for your device. Within that listing of files and directories, select the one that says Mobile Device, and it will show you all the folders for your device, including the SD Card and including the device’s “Windows” directory. Open that Windows directory, look for the Fonts subfolder, open it and paste your fonts into it.
• Reboot your device and you are done.

Now, if you have a document that is written with the popular Comic Sans font, and you have copied that to your device, you can view the doc in its native font. Document editors like Mobile Word will also add the new fonts to your font selection list so you can modify a doc on your Smartphone to have a Comic Sans font (or whatever font you have loaded).

The only downside I have ever seen in doing this is that it decreases your available memory by whatever amount the new fonts take up. For most devices, this is just not enough to be of concern. For a more memory-limited device, such as the Treo 700w, you should ensure you only add the fonts you really want to use.