Windows Phone Secrets

The Windows Phone Developer blog’s Larry Lieberman today offered up a great list of resources for Windows Phone “Mango”:

There are a very large set of resources being created on a weekly basis for Windows Phone developers. Since I’m the Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for Windows Phone Developer Educational Content, I thought I’d start a series of posts to highlight the ones I think are most interesting and useful. Today’s post is specifically about Mango developer resources.

Here they are:

1. Official Windows Phone Developer documentation on the MSDN Library. This is where we publish all of our official documentation. Quite a bit of new content was added here concurrent with our release of the new SDK, including:
   1. What’s new in the Windows Phone SDK
   2. Code Samples for Windows Phone; includes 26 new samples just for Mango
   3. Our ‘How To’ index. This is where we link to all of the specific pages within the documentation that explicitly spell out ‘how to’ implement a specific type of developer scenario. Many of these actually map to and spell out the execution of the sample code in the code samples. Some of the most interesting How To documents for Mango features include:
      1. SL & XNA together: How to: Combine Silverlight and the XNA Framework in a Windows Phone Application
      2. Profiler: How to: Improve the Responsiveness of Your Application Using the Windows Phone Profiler
      3. Fast App Switching: How to: Preserve and Restore Application State
      4. Database: How to: Create a Basic Local Database Application for Windows Phone
      5. Sockets: How to: Create and Use a TCP Socket Client Application for Windows Phone
      6. Sockets: How to: Create and Use a UDP Socket Client Application for Windows Phone
      7. Camera: How to: Create a Base Camera Application for Windows Phone
      8. Camera: How to: Extend the Pictures Hub with App Connect for Windows Phone
      9. Audio: How to: Play Background Audio for Windows Phone
      10. Periodic Agent: How to: Implement Scheduled Tasks for Windows Phone
      11. Motion API: How to: Use the Combined Motion API for Windows Phone
      12. Search Extensibility: How to: Extend Search with App Connect for Windows Phone
      13. Tiles: How to: Create, Delete, and Update Tiles for Windows Phone
2. Windows Phone Mango Training Course. Now updated for beta 2 of the SDK. The Windows Phone Mango Training course, (like our previous training course for the initial release of Windows Phone 7), provides you step by step guidance, with complete sample code, demonstrating how to leverage the new developer scenarios in Windows Phone Mango to create a variety of real world applications. For the new training course, we decided to have the various labs all revolve around a single, more useful application, a task manager we called ‘Tidy’. You can get a video introduction to the ‘Tidy’ application here on Channel 9.
3. The Inside Windows Phone Show on Channel 9. This show is our home on Channel 9, where we’ll provide you video walkthroughs of our new developer features, on a periodic basis. So far, we’ve conducted a number on Mango functionality, including the following:
   1. Inside the Mango Camera APIs
   2. Search Extras in Mango
   3. Sockets in Mango
   4. Inside the Mango Documentation
4. App Hub Game Developer Resources, updated for Mango. This page is where we centralize all of our Windows Phone game developer resources, and we’ve updated it for Mango. Here you’ll find the following items, (among others):
   1. What’s new for games in Windows Phone OS 7.1
   2. Game State Management
   3. Migration Guide: From the Game Class to Silverlight/XNA
   4. Model Viewer Demo

This is but a small sample of the large set of resources we’ve currently got available. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be releasing more items targeted at helping you leverage all of the fantastic new developer features in Mango.

Reading through Brandon Watson’s post this morning (described here), I misunderstood and thought that Microsoft would be releasing a “beta 2” version of Mango to developers sometime in the not-too-distant future. Actually, they’re doing so today (which he does clearly communicate). And this “beta 2” release is the same code that I got weeks ago, not a newer version as I had expected. In fact, even the Zune 7.8 PC software version is the same. It’s all the same.

What’s different, or at least new, I guess, is the process by which you go about updating one (and only one) retail Windows Phone handset to the beta 2 version of Mango. Microsoft is fairly explicit in its instructions, but it bears repeating—you need to backup your phone backup (and then back it up again)—because otherwise you may never get your phone back to a working state, as you need to restore it later to upgrade to the retail Mango update.

We knew that Microsoft was going to let developers “soft update” their phones in this general fashion, but the feeling was that to do so it would need to finally deliver retail ROMs for each device to developers. It sort of looks like this flashing of ROMs is happening over the air, instead of Microsoft providing a set of ROMs for developers to choose from. I’m sure they’re worried about piracy. I’m not sure how much I can even discuss here, actually.

So let me leave it with this. I was going to upgrade my own Samsung Focus to Mango beta 2 using the developer tools method Microsoft provided today. But then it occurred to me that I already have this exact build on a second loaner phone from Microsoft, and it’s more valuable to have both versions for side-by-side comparisons for later writings. So I’ll leave my first phone as-is.

I wonder if they’ll be future Mango updates for developers or if this is it?

Today, Microsoft announced its plans for delivering the Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” beta to developers. You may recall that last year, the company had to ship prototype phones to developers because the platform was new. This year, developers have phones or have easy access to them in the marketplace. So the plan is a bit different…

We’re still working out some final kinks in the distribution and support infrastructure for delivering Mango to all of our registered developers around the world, but are inviting the most eager developers to come get Mango today, for their retail devices, as part of our early access program! We expect the full distribution infrastructure to be fully operational in the next couple of weeks. For now, consider yourself a beta tester for the distribution process. Registered developers will get invites to the Microsoft Connect site, which will give them access to Mango. This build of Mango should also be viewed as beta quality, so there are still consumer features missing, but you can now start building apps and testing them against retail devices.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Download the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta 2 – You will need to update your developer tools to update your phone and to deploy your apps, so run…get them now.

• Read the instructions before updating – These are very important steps which you need to follow to the letter. We’re committed to supporting our developer community with such an early access program, so if you have questions, start with the forums, which we are monitoring.

As you can see, Microsoft above also announced the Beta 2 release of its Mango developer tools, which includes the Windows Phone OS 7.1 (yes, 7.1, not 7.5; don’t ask) and updated versions of Visual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone, the Windows Phone “Mango” emulator, and so on. However, that link still points to the May Beta 1 release. So maybe we need to wait for the site to be updated.

Update: Here’s the correct link to the Beta 2 tools. I corrected the link above too. Thanks everyone.