Great stuff this past week out of Microsoft’s MIX10 conference. The opening keynote seemed focused in being a Windows Phone 7 Series (I hate saying that, I’m using Windows Phone 7 or WP7 instead) promo video for developers, which I liked. Check out the keynote here, skip to time 27 minutes for Joe Belfiore for the initial WP7 demo. Things I like that came out:
- Silverlight focused development
- Complete Zune capability
- Xbox live integration
- Many third party developers are preparing apps for WP7
- Controlled display specs on all phone models
Scott Guthrie claimed its truly Silverlight on WP7, not a ‘light’ version. However, its come out that its not Silverlight 3 or 4, its something in the middle. So its essential a unique version of Silverlight, ala WP7 Silverlight. Perhaps it will catch up to true Silverlight 4 shortly before or after release. Check out time 85:30 on the keynote for the Foursquare demo by Laura Foy. Seems fairly slick for an app that was developed just a few weeks ahead of time.
I’ll cover my thoughts of the development environment in a later post.
Things I found out that bothered me:
- No copy and paste
- No third party multitasking, how its implemented is detailed here.
- Possible lack of expandable microSD slots (not confirmed)
- Developer access to Microsoft SQL Server Compact is not part of the initial release
None of those are deal breakers, but they are ruining the dream. The phone for me better have at least 32 gigs of RAM, I want it to be a replacement of my first gen 30gig Zune player. I need at least that much. I cant imagine anyone using the phone as a serious music player with less then 16 gigs of RAM. </ramble>
I’ll be watching news on this topic closely and post anything significant. I plan to go through some development examples and possibly prepping for publishing a WP7 application on release.
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