Get ready for Windows Phone 7!
Mobile devices have become the most interesting sector of computing in recent years. The iPhone has brought smartphones to the masses, and now everyone around the world expects their phone to be as fast and capable. Microsoft was an early leader in the mobile devices market with Windows Mobile, which has powered millions of PDAs and phones from numerous manufacturers around the globe. However, innovation lagged in recent years, and newer devices and mobile operating systems made Windows Mobile look stale in comparison. Last year Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6.5 to address some of the problems and update the user interface, but even this was not enough to keep even their own employees from switching to competing mobile platforms, usually the iPhone.
The past two months, however, have entirely turned around the tech industry’s perspective of Microsoft’s mobile platform. In February during the Mobile World Congress, Microsoft unveiled their new Windows Phone 7. Borrowing heavily from the Zune HD’s UI, Windows Phone 7 offers a simple and elegant way to compute and communicate on the go. Then, during the recent Mix’10 conference, Microsoft unveiled more information about Windows Phone 7 and its development ecosystem. This includes a free development kit containing Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, XNA Game Studio, and a Windows Phone 7 emulator. This means you can run a pre-release version of Windows Phone 7 on your PC right now!
Want to try it out for yourself? Check out my article at How-to Geek about the free Development tools for Windows 7 at:
Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC today
But, unfortunately, the default emulator doesn’t include all of the features of Windows Phone 7; in fact, it only contains the Internet Explorer Mobile browser, and can run any apps you develop for it. Enterprising developers discovered, however, that the emulator did contain all of the features, but they simply weren’t unlocked. Thanks to developer Dan Ardelean, now we can all try out all of the pre-release features in Windows Phone 7 today! Check it out, and my How-to Geek article about it at:
Test All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PC
Now, what if you actually want to develop, too?
Playing around with the emulator is fun, but if you’d like to actually get a head-start on developing for the new platform, Microsoft’s got lots of resources for you. Not only the developer tools we just looked at, but how about a free ebook? Microsoft Press is offering a free draft edition of their upcoming “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series” book for download on their blog today! So what are you waiting for? Head over to the blog post and check it out, or just download it directly in PDF or XPS versions along with code samples.
Also, check out the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit from MSDN's Channel 9. It contains step-by-step tutorials on how to get started with your first Windows Phone 7 app. Check it out at the link below:
Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.