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!

What is Tombstoning

In Phone Operating Systems like Windows Phone 7..

The procedure in which the operating system terminates an application’s process when the user navigates away from the application. The operating system maintains state information about the application. If the user navigates back to the application, the operating system restarts the application process and passes the state data back to the application.

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