Changing Splash Screens of a Windows Mobile phone

I was always fascinated by those funky operator logos that used to appear on Nokia phones. You had those dirt bikes, your names, cakes, etc and various not-to-be-mentioned logos. I always wanted something like that on my smartphone.

I realized there is no way to get a operator logo on the smartphone (Rather I just couldn't find a way). And hence nevertheless, I have been trying to find out a way to change the Splash Screen / Shutdown screen to something custom (like my pic ;) ). Something which gave a "personal" feel to my phone. Finally, I was able to achieve that :).

For all you Windows Mobile Freaks, and for all of you who didn't know how to change the splash screens, here are the steps to do it:

• Create your jpg /png images with size 176 x 220 (in pixels).
  
• Copy them to some folder in the phone memory (eg \my documents). Make sure its not on the Storage Card.
  
• Open the Registry Editor and add a registry key 'Splash Screen' (or whatever you want it to be) to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft].
  
• Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\splash screen] and add string values 'CarrierBitmap', 'CarrierShutdownBitmap', 'MSBitmap' and 'MSShutdownBitmap'.
  
• Edit added string values, so that they point to the images. Make sure you use full paths to the images even if they are placed in \Windows.
  
• Restart the phone.

BTW this also applies to Pocket PC - however I am not sure of the size for the image. If you can figure that out yourself - its great - else let me just post it here in couple of days.

PS: Thanks to Anando, he pointed out that this would work only with non-QVGA display devices. So there is a different resolution for QVGA and Pocket PC Devices.