From the Apple Newton to the Palm Pilot to the Windows Mobile PDA, there's been one constant in mobile touch screen devices: the stylus. The Apple iPhone shook all of that up this year with the introduction of a finger-friendly display and application launcher. And it didn't take long for Windows Mobile developers to follow suit and design utilities that make it easier for you to smudge your pretty little screen.

VITO Technology's GoodWin is the latest finger-friendly program launcher for Windows Mobile. This $20 application acts as a replacement for your Today Screen. There are large icons at the top of the screen for email, messaging, phone calls, and setting your clock and alarms. Underneath is a list of all your programs and settings. And when we say all, we mean it. If you've got Pocket Informant installed, for example, you'll see at least 7 icons for launching PICalendar, PIContacts, PISearch, and other Pocket Informant subprograms.

So it's a good thing that there's also a favorites section giving you easy access to the applications you use most often. But for some reason, VITO thought it would be a good idea to include the running programs and favorites in the same section. Although favorites are marked with a star and running programs feature a little triangle, it's difficult to tell at a glance which applications are currently running and which are favorites.

Right now, we're not convinced GoodWin is worth the $20 asking price, but if VITO adds some folders and/or tabs to make the display a bit more manageable and separates the favorites and running programs sections GoodWin could be a useful little application. There's a free trial available for Windows Mobile 2003 and newer.

Phones running the Windows Mobile operating system will never be iPhones, no matter how hard you try to design iPhone-like interfaces for them. They're missing the multi-touch support and the blessing of Steve Jobs. But they have a few advantages over the iPhone, like support for native 3rd party applications.

This week mobil software maker VITO launched a new website to showcase six finger-friendly applications for Windows Mobile. Right now only FunContact and AstroNavigator II are available for download and purchase. FunContact is an iPhone-like contact manager that lets you scroll through contacts with your finger. AstroNavigator II is an interactive star map with finger-friendly controls.

It looks like VITO plans to launch an on-screen keyboard, SMS/chat program, WAV/MP3 recorder, and application launcher. The two existing applications are $20 a piece, so you can expect the full suite to come in somewhere around $120. We're hoping there'll be some sort of discount option if you buy multiple applications, because once you're willing to spend $100+ to turn your non-iPhone into an iPhone wannabe, maybe you should just go out and buy yourself an Apple product.