Windows Phone 7 development my thoughts..

I was anticipating Windows Phone 7 development to be promising for me.

But, after investigating the whole range of missing features in Windows Phone 7 and its API, I have to rethink again for it.

Can you imagine you can’t access the Phone book programmatically in windows phone7!

… These feature limitations certainly minimizes the usability of the expensive phone hardware on which Windows phone 7 runs.

This also limits the possibilities for a developer to author creative and featured mobile apps.

List of missing features in Windows Phone 7:

· The only dev platforms supported to author Apps for Win Phone 7 are- Silverlight and XNA. No support for Dot net Compact Frame work or native / unmanaged code

· The Silverlight App you right runs in a sandboxed environment and limits the a lot of functionalities

· Cut, copy, and paste is missing

· No support for peer to peer gaming

· The Calendar app no longer has a 'Weekly' view

· The list of past phone calls is now a single list, and cannot be separated into inbound, outbound or missed calls

· Full multitasking for apps is not available

· Does not support for Adobe Flash and NOT even supports the Silverlight in the browser

· Windows Phone 7 supports upgradable storage via an SD Card; however the SD card memory will be merged with the phone's internal storage,

And changing the SD card will make the phone reset to factory settings L huh  CRAZY…

· Windows Phone 7 does not support connecting to Wi-Fi (wireless) access points which are hidden or have a static IP address

· Video-calling

· VoIP calling

· USB mass-storage (no USB drive mode)

· Universal email inbox

· Universal search

· Turn-by-turn navigation

· A system-wide file manager

· Bluetooth file transfers

· USSD messages

· Custom ringtones

· Windows Phone 7 devices only support syncing with Exchange ActiveSync over the network. There is no support for syncing with Exchange ActiveSync using a cable or cradle

· In the enterprise, Windows Phone 7 does not support Office documents with security permissions

· IPsec security on-device encryption

· Strong passwords

· Internet sockets

· While the older Windows Mobile phones supported the full range of Microsoft Exchange Server policies, Windows Phone 7 only supports a small subset of Exchange features. So this kills a whole set of possibilities for creating enterprise E-mail apps

· No replacement of the default apps – while Opera will be allowed, it could not be the default browser

· No 3rd party shells

· Marketplace is the only way to install apps, except for developers, beta versions and enterprise

· No internet tethering support

And did you know that the minimum hardware requirements for Windows phone 7 are-

· Minimum 1 GHz ARM better processor (And that’s the highest processor speed available in smart phone segment )

· DirectX9 rendering-capable GPU

· Minimum 256 MB of RAM with at least 8 GB of Flash memory

So, it’s high on resource requirements making phones to be much costly.

But there are some good news also-

· Few of the missing features have been confirmed to arrive in the near-future

· I wish release of at-least programmatic access to phone’s contact list soon…

What do you think ? Put your thought ahead!

Collection of “How do I ?” MSDN Videos–(Produced by us) on Windows Phone 7, Sharepoint 2010, Silverlight4, Cloud Services, Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server RC2, Windows 7

Windows Phone 7

1. How Do I: Implement Tombstoning in Windows Phone 7 Applications?

2. How Do I: Migrate an Android Application to a Windows Phone 7 Application?

3. How Do I: Use Page Turn Animation in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

4. How Do I: Use MVVM in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

5. How Do I: Use Touch Manipulation in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

6. How Do I: Make Windows Phone 7 Applications Support Orientation Changes?

7. How Do I: Implement Tilt Effects in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

8. How Do I: Migrate an iPhone Application to a Windows Phone 7 Application?

9. How Do I: Use XNA for Game State Management in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

10. How Do I: Use XNA for Gestures and Collision Detection in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

11. How Do I: Save Images to the Pictures Hub and Retrieve them back from the Hub in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

12. How Do I: Use Push Notifications for Tile Customization in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

13. How Do I: Use Push Notifications in a Windows Phone 7 Application?

Windows 7

1. How Do I: Use a Progress Bar on Icon in a Windows 7 Application?

2. How Do I: Create an Overlay Icon in a Windows 7 Application?

3. How Do I: Create a Custom Thumbnail for a Windows 7 Application?

4. How Do I: Create a JumpList for Common Tasks in a Windows 7 Application?

5. How Do I: Use Multitouch in a Windows 7 Application?

6. How Do I: Create an Internet Explorer 9 Pinned Site in Windows 7?

7. How Do I: Create Custom Thumbnails and Previews for a Windows 7 Application?

8. How Do I: Use Microsoft Speech API in a Silverlight Out-of-Browser Application?

SharePoint 2010

1. How Do I: Use Client Object Model from a Silverlight Application in SharePoint?

2. How Do I: Build a SharePoint Workflow Using Visual Studio 2010?

3. How Do I: Create a Reusable Workflow Using Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010?

4. How Do I: Use REST Services to Access and Update Data in a SharePoint List?

5. How Do I: Use Business Data Connectivity Model in SharePoint by Using Visual Studio 2010?

Visual Studio 2010

1. How do I: Use IntelliTrace in Visual Studio 2010?

2. How Do I: Perform Exploratory Test in Visual Studio 2010?

3. How Do I: Use Build in Visual Studio 2010?

4. How Do I: Use Query Folders for Organizing Queries in Team Foundation Server 2010?

5. How Do I: Split a Team Project Collection in Team Foundation Server 2010?

6. How Do I: Use Traceability in Visual Studio 2010?

7. How Do I: Enable Symbol and Source Server Support in Team Foundation Server Build 2010?

Cloud Services

1. How Do I: Work with Spatial Data in SQL Azure?

2. How Do I: Work with Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket?

SQL Server 2008 R2