I've been working on a Windows Phone 8 app, which I now want to change to be Windows Phone 8.1. How can I do this?
Should I create a new Windows Phone 8.1 app and copy all my existing files into it? Or is there an automated way for me to upgrade the existing solution to 8.1?
There are two ways to do that:
like in comment - right click on oyour project and you should see Retarget to Windows Phone 8.1
or you can open Properties window of your project and the in dropdown box Target Windows Phone OS version you can choose Windows Phone 8.1
In every case the VS should ask if you are sure to do that - it's one-way operation, so it's worth to make a backup of your solution. As WP8.1 has backward compability, in most cases there shouldn't be any problems.
Some clarification for the followers:
As WP8.0 apps are Silverlight, after retargetting it will still be a Silverlight app but WP8.1 (some new features and enhancemens).
Thought, if you want to retarget to WP8.1 Runtime, it's a totally different thing - it's a different type of an app, different API and more. You will have to port it manually. Note that not all features from WP8.0 are yet available in WP8.1 Runtime - here is a good article about that.
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I have recently finished working on an App for Windows Phone 8.1 and 10 - I have successfully been able to deploy it on both type of phone by using Windows Phone Application Deployment 8.1 tool.
I am now trying to load the app into the store and create a flight package so my develop phone should be able to see, download and install the app from the Microsoft Store on the device.
I am having 2 'problems' right now:
+ the App is not showing on the Store
+ using the app URL from the store, I am able to find the app but it is only available for downloading on the Windows 10 phone and it comes back unavailable on the Windows Phone 8.1
Here is some screenshots which should give an idea of my set ups:
Apart from the above, I would like to mention that I have added my Microsoft account to the devices so ideally I should be able to see the App!
Let me know guys if it makes sense and if you need further details to help me
Thanks
I've been developing a Windows Phone 8.1 app using C#/XAML. My configuration is up-to-date Windows 8.1 PC + Visual Studio 2013.
I can test my app on WP 8.1 emulator that comes with VS2013, and also no problem deploying it on physical Windows 8.1 device.
However the app also runs on Windows 10 Mobile because the platform currently allows it that way. Which is good except, my app doesn't work as intended since the device got Windows 10 Mobile Anniversary Update.
I don't know if the problem is in Windows or in my app but that's not important here.
I need to create a hotfix for the issue. And here comes the question. Is there a way to deploy WP 8.1 app to Windows 10 Mobile without submitting it to the store first, without upgrading to Windows 10, and preferably without upgrading to VS2015?
UPDATE The reason I want to deploy WP 8.1 app to Windows 10 Mobile is to test if my patch fixes the issue manifests with Windows 10 Mobile. At the moment I don't understand where is the problem and keep submitting the fix attempts to the store is not ideal.
Thanks.
Is there a way to deploy WP 8.1 app to Windows 10 Mobile without submitting it to the store first, without upgrading to Windows 10, and preferably without upgrading to VS2015?
Yes, it is possible to deploy WP8.1 app to the Windows 10 Mobile without submitting it to store and without upgrading to Windows 10 and without upgrading to VS2015. But you need to make sure you have the Windows 10 Mobile device for you to test.
If the Windows 10 Mobile device is in your side, you can unlock the Windows 10 Mobile device and deploy your app to the Windows 10 Mobile device by using the USB with the same method that you deploy it to the Windows Phone 8.1 Mobile device.
Or you can try to sideload your app on the Windows 10 Mobile device without submitting it to the store by using the Application Deployment tool. For more information, please try to refer to this article:How to deploy Windows Phone 8.1 apps with the Application Deployment tool.
I have developed an app for Windows Phone 8.1 but now I want the same app to developed in Windows phone 8.0. It is possible to do that? Is there any migration tool available or I need to develop from scratch.
No you can't downgrade any app after you've started developing. IF you wanted to develop a WP8 as you said have to start it from the scratch. But still you can upgrade a WP8 app to WP 8.1 (For Silverlight Apps). If it's normal WinRT app you can only develop targeting 8.1 only.
For more have a look here
Hope it helps!
You just compile the 8.0 release and upload the *:xap to the store without deleting your 8.1 *.appxupload.
Uppdate App >> Upload and describe your package(s) >> Add new
You might wanna consider making a phone 7 app for best coverage (7 will work for 8.0 users).
We have an app written for iOS and Android. How we are thinking over supporting it for some Windows platforms. I can see there are three modern mobile Windows platforms at now:
Windows 8
Windows RT
Windows Phone 8
As I understand, Windows 8 and Windows RT differs only in that former is for Intel and latter is for ARM. But what about Windows Phone 8? If we port our app to Windows 8 (and Windows RT), would it run on Windows Phone 8? Or vice-versa? What is relation between these platforms? What percentage of smartphones/tablets does run any of these platforms?
The Windows platforms:
You are right, Windows 8 Apps and Windows 8 RT Apps are (in the most common cases) the same so you usually don't have to worry that your Windows 8 App does not run on a Windows 8 RT device.
The Windows Phone platform is slightly different. You can reuse very much of your code from the Windows 8 App but most controls lay in different libraries and some behaviours change between these platforms. By now!
Some days ago at //build conference Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 8.1 and much has become easier!
Cross platform Windows development:
If you start developming for mobile Windows platforms as Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone now you should definately take a look at the new Universal App Model.
Since the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 Update, both platforms share the same code base. With the Universal App Model you can share your code between both platforms and only have to define different layouts for the GUI. You can compile your project both for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 then, which is really cool!
Both the Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Phone 8.1 Update are available for every Windows Phone 8 respectively Windows 8 device. So you don't have to worry to exclude useres when "only" developing for the latest version of both platforms.
Percentage of smartphones/tablets users on these platforms:
If you use the Universal App Model there is no question whether to develop for Windows 8 OR Windows Phone 8. You automatically develop for both. Users will love you for that!
For more information read this blog post.
Hope that helps :)
Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT both support Windows Store Apps without any additional work. You write it once, publish it to Windows Store, and it's downloadable on both OS's.
It used to be that you needed to develop a separate app for Windows Phone 8 because it has a separate app store and essentially a separate OS (although parts of it are shared with W8). You could share some of the core logic code but the UI parts needed to be different since WP8 has different resolutions and different controls. And you'd compile different packages depending on your target OS.
But it's a very recent development that supposedly you're able to now develop once and target all 3 of these OS's, although I have not tried this yet. You can find more details here:
http://readwrite.com/2014/04/03/microsoft-universal-windows-app-store-developers-unified-code-base#awesm=~oCPndkNofb18zX
For now in windows RT it is possible to access D3DCompiler.h, but application will not pass the store test (this is corrected in windows 8.1).
Is there a way to add D3DCompiler in windows phone project? (Mostly I need reflection support, shaders are generally precompiled). I tried to add the ARM build reference but it doens't seem it wants to include it (some xap security?).
Please note that for now I don't need store deployments, so if it works for development purposes that's fine (and either c++/sharpDX solution is pretty welcomed).
D3DCompiler was not available for 'production' use with Windows Store apps for Windows 8.0 or Windows phone 8.0. It was available for development, but the D3DCompiler #46 DLL itself will not pass the WACK tool for submission to the store.
It is available with Windows Store apps for Windows 8.1 and Windows phone 8.1. The D3DCompiler #47 DLL is included as part of the OS now. See this blog post.