Mango : What’s new in Windows Phone 7.1

Just back from lovely Microsoft MVP Open Day 2011 at Hyderabad,Andhra Pradesh in India conducted at Microsoft India Development Center (Microsoft’s next biggest center after Redmond and some amazing people work here !) We always see and talk about success stories of Redmond people, but take a time and see and check out what an amazing contribution Indian folks doing at Microsoft IDC. Hats off ! and hearties congratulations to them and Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Team.

[Mighty Indian MVPs at Microsoft India Development Center,India]

Whatsoever ! Mango is King of all fruits and India is the only best place in universe to get it ! Hope you can read between the lines !

Mango :

Codename “Mango” is a revolutionary and major update of Windows Phone 7 Platform.

The Windows Phone team announced the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools for Mango yesterday. We all eagerly waiting for Mango and finally it comes to us as Beta Tools in first step.

Download Tools :

From Web :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=77586864-ab15-40e1-bc38-713a95a56a05&displaylang=en

ISO :

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=219401

Few very important points to remember :

• As per installation notes:Windows Server®,Windows® XP and Virtual machines are not supported.
• Visual Basic is now fully integrated into Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta so you must uninstall Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.0 if you have installed already.
• Windows Phone 7.1 Tools will allow you to create Windows Phone 7.0 Apps, Target platform feature like we have in Silverlight, Check this :

• Application created with Windows Phone 7.1 will not run on NoDo Device, so hold your breath till the actual update hits the phone,Emulator is so powerful so keep your pain points aside.
• It is not so recommended to use Windows Phone 7.1 Tools to create Windows Phone 7.0 apps for Marketplace.It may break badly.
• Installed bits might hit Expression Blend 4, I am personally investigating this issue so not much I can share at the moment.See this what happened to my Blend 4 :

I am running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate along with SP1, I did not uninstalled anything and seems that my Silverlight 5 Beta bits are working well, I will share more to you if I find something is breaking up. But with this info I think you are good to go.

What’s New in Mango :

Some of the top features :

• Silverlight 4 as core platform
  
• IE9 web browser control
  
• Networking / sockets for communications
  
• Local SQL database for structured storage
  
• Live Tile enhancements: use of back of tiles and ability to
• update Live Tiles locally
  
• Deep linking into apps from notifications and Live Tiles
  
• Background processing
  
• New profiler and emulator for testing
  
• Use of Silverlight + XNA together
  
• Additional sensors; direct camera access, compass & gyro
  
• Fast application switching
  
• Access to calendar and contacts
  

There is actually a big list and instead of giving you more neck pain to scroll and read, I will suggest you to visit following link of MSDN where all new information about Windows Phone 7.1 is available.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff637516.aspx

Already downloaded tools and want to check stuff ? :

This is my first post on Mango so I will be dropping few good examples here from next post, till the time if you want you can check few cool Code samples on Windows Phone 7.1 here :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff431744%28v=VS.92%29.aspx

Some New Project Templates with Windows Phone 7.1 :

Check this out new templates as :

• Windows Phone 3D Graphics Application
• Windows Phone Audio Playback Agent
• Windows Phone Audio Streaming Agent
• Windows Phone Task Scheduler Agent

I will soon take a stab at each one and explain it to you what each one does and when to use what template.

New Look of Windows Phone 7.1 Emulator :

The new emulator is amazing and gives feel of Mango Update on Phone, In coming days I will be surely giving more insights on that but to start with take a look how it helps you to test your location based apps and Acceleronometer apps :

1. Acceleronometer Support :

2. Location Support :

So that's all I have to say in this quick post on Mango aka Windows Phone 7.1 Beta Tools, Hope you got the glimpse of what coming in big way ahead, I will be posting few good stuff in coming days, Till the time you guys download bits and get ready,I’ll be back !

Vikram.