Should I target WP8 users while developing new app? - windows-phone-8

We are planing to develop new app .It has VoIP feature and app is similar to whatsapp.
Since the app has Voip feature we have to go with WP8 silver light. Winrt for WP is not supporting VOIP api.
Can we guess almost all the WP8 devices are upgraded to WP8.1 ? If there are large user base still remains in WP8 we will develop the app using WP8 api's (Using VS2012). Otherwise we will go with WP8.1 api's (using VS2013).I heard there are few performance improvements and controls are available in WP8.1
Any suggestions on this ?
Thanks in advance

All Lumia phones can be updated to WP8.1 and a huge part of users so did.
Just an article for reference: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/02/nokia-lumia-windows-phone-8-1-update/
On my apps I use analytics to track users and I hardly see few users stuck with WP8.
Update - market share
http://www.gsmarena.com/adduplex_wp81_market_share_surpasses_wp80-news-10062.php
This article is from last October, WP8.1 has been out for about 5 months and it had already surpassed WP8. I let you think the actual quota...
Should you go with WinRT? It depends on your needs. Of course you should use at least WP8.1 Silveright (not WP8). But if your application does not require specific functions only available in WinRT, you might go with WP8.1 Silverlight, since WinRT has still many little performance issues.

There are a lot of new available APIs and features either for WP 8.1 Silverlight or WinRT. I would definitely target 8.1. Users still using WP 8.0 probably don't care that much about apps anyway.

Related

How to implement Branch.io in windows phone application

I am trying to implement a referral program in my windows phone application. Where a user shares a link in some social site and gets reward points if someone installs the app using his/her link. For android and/or iOS, developers can use Branch.io SDK for retrieving the information of the referrer. Now, I couldn't find any instructions on how to do it in a windows phone app in their official website.
Does anyone know how to do this?
Edit: It looks like Branch.io is not available for windows phone. Is there any alternative to Branch.io for wp platform?
Alex from Branch.io here: Windows Phone has around 0.4% market share, so we don't currently offer an SDK for that platform. It's possible you could roll your own 'mini SDK' using our REST API for just the functions you need.
Sorry not to have better news!

Windows Phone 8 app publishing tool from the cli?

I've been researching if it's possible to integrate Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 in a buildscript for Jenkins. The main goal is if there is a release in a specified branch in the given VCS, that it'll publish them to their responsible store. At the moment I've a way to publish Android and iOS, but it seems that there is nothing for Windows Phone 8.
The question is:
Is there a command-line based application that is able to publish Windows Phone 8 apps to the Windows Store?
If there is a way to integrate with a API or simply by doing some POST/GET requests, I would like to know as well. At the moment I'm researching that part.
The part of building and signing the APK's, APPX's and IPA's is already taken care off.
For iOS I'm able to use FastLane(Deliver) or
Nomadcli(Shenzhen);
For Android I'm able to use a Jenkins plugin(Google Play Publisher) or integrating with the API (there are various command-line based applications out there);
I would really appriciate if you can leave a answer! Thanks in advance!
There is no API for the Windows Store available (yet) that would allow you to do this.

What is the difference between Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight

What is the difference between Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight?
Which Option(Project) is best suitable for new app development? Also please provide Pros and Cons of each option.
So basically silverlight is used for browser based applications, you can relate to macromedia flash, it depends of what type of app you have in mind...if you would like to have your app available on all devices I suggest you use MVVM (model, view, view model) architecture so that you are able to share most of your code.
I suggest you look into Lex.DB as for database engine for your app since it works on both desktop and mobile with the same code.
You may encounter some trouble using aync tasks in silverlight, but still there are some 3rd parties libraries which helps with that.
So basically there arent any pros and cons since they are not platform related.

My iphone app pilot available to download outside of apps store

I have a server at work that I want to host an iphone application on.
I want it so that the user goes to the web browser on their ihpone and clicks a download link on a html page and iphone application is installed on their phone.
Is there any way that this is possible using xocde? Perhaps some way I can build a .plist file that does this?
Thanks
Unfortunately, you cannot install a native iPhone application without going through the App Store (unless you wish to publish your app solely to jailbroken devices). If you really don't want to use the app store, you can build a web app that runs on the server, but you cannot install and run arbitrary binaries on a users device that have not been approved by Apple.
EDIT: As people have pointed out, there are options for testing purposes that will allow you to install your app on other devices via the internet (TestFlightApp, iOS Enterprise program), but for a wide-scale deployment technique this will not work.
Jumhyn is right in his answer but there is a little more to it.
If you want your App to be available to iPhone users (non-jailbroken) you have to have an Apple developer account ($99/yr)
If you want to develop only for jailbroken devices you can, but i'm not sure about the license agreements you accept when using Xcode and Cocoa(touch) framework. It might be a violation of your agreement.
The last solution is the Apple Enterprise developer program ($299/yr). Here you can control who has access to your app and I think it is possible to distribute around the App Store. There is definitely some limitation.
One thing is sure. You cannot do installation from websites as you want without going around Apple's App Store. I strongly recommend sticking to the rules and agreements you accepted when activating OS X, Xcode, iPhone and the Cocoa Framework.
If you are trying to permanently deploy to a website, this will not work for legitimate App Store applications. You can however, once published to the app store, place a link to to it that will take them to the AppStore for downloading it.
If you need this for testing/beta purposes I reccommend www.testflightapp.com

Windows phone 7 and HTML5

I'm completely new to Windows Phone and the Windows galaxy in general as far as programming goes. For a project of a phone app that has to run on a windows phone, I started exploring the resources and I have some questions.
One of the problems I encountered is that things change very quickly. For example, answers to this question say that browsers in Windows Phone will most likely not support HTML5. However, there are many online tutorials (for instance here) introducing ASP.NET MVC 4 and how it is appropriate for mobile apps.
I would personally like to go the "HTML5+javascript" way instead of learning how to develop with Silverlight, which apparently has been discontinued by Microsoft. However, my first concern is evidently to be able to create an application that works!
So with that in mind, my questions are the following:
My impression is that HTML5+JS is being introduced in replacement of Silverlight and will be more used in the future. Is that correct?
Knowing that I have to build an app which should be able to play videos and audio, record audio, and connect to a library to do some speech processing in the background, should I use Silverlight or can I try using ASP.NET MVC 4? (From what I gather, Silverlight would be better than XNA)
Are there limitations to using HTML5+JS as compared to Silverlight or the other way around?
Can you package a web app (i.e. using HTML5+JS) to be used locally on the phone if there is no access to a distant server?
Any specific pointers or answers on these specific issues will be more than welcome! :)
Currently, Windows Phone 7.1 does not support full HTML5+JS as a replacement for Silverlight. In Windows 8 (NOT the next version of windows phone, but the next version of Microsoft's desktop OS), HTML5+JS is presented as an alternative to using XAML and C# (it's a little confusing because on Windows 8, "metro" apps do not run Silverlight, but they still operate using XAML and C#). But that's neither here nor there... To summarily answer your question(s): In the phone's browser, there is very limited HTML5 capability.
From what you've described, you definitely want to use Silverlight for your Windows Phone app. The answer to that part of your question has never changed, Silverlight from the beginning of WP7 would be your best option. XNA is exclusively designed for gaming development.
To answer all of your questions, point by point:
My impression is that HTML5+JS is being introduced in replacement of
Silverlight and will be more used in the future. Is that correct?
This has not been confirmed (as of this post), but speculation is that this will be the case in some future release of the OS (no word on when that may be). But no, this is not currently an option, and there is no promise from Microsoft that it ever will be.
Knowing that I have to build an app which should be able to play
videos and audio, record audio, and connect to a library to do some
speech processing in the background, should I use Silverlight or can I
try using ASP.NET MVC 4? (From what I gather, Silverlight would be
better than XNA)
Silverlight. Silverlight. Silverlight. :) ASP.NET + MVC will not work. XNA is intended to be used for building games. Attempting to build more standard user interfaces using it would give you a migraine to say the least, and would not look anywhere near good.
Are there limitations to using HTML5+JS as compared to Silverlight or the other way around?
and
Can you package a web app (i.e. using HTML5+JS) to be used locally on the phone if there is > no access to a distant server?
As answered above, there is no way to do this on the phone.
As for pointers on all of this. I strongly encourage you to simply google (or bing if you're into that kind of thing) "getting started with windows phone" or "windows phone tutorials". Best source I could point you to is the Windows Phone Developer website. It's got some great tutorials that don't assume you know lots about windows phone. Best to get this material from Microsoft. It'll be more reliable, more well written, and ultimatly more useful. I've been writing Windows Phone apps since before the phone was released, and I still use it for learning the basics of something new. Great place.