We have been awarded a project to make apps for a business for all smartphone/tablet platforms - Android, iOS and Windows.
The Windows part is making things messy for me. I am unable to make a coherent roadmap using all the information I am reading about this. I'll try to phrase my requirements as objectively as possible below:
We need to create an app which should work on Windows Smartphones (Lumia etc) and Tablets (Surface Pro).
Will a common app work on both Smartphones and Tablets, just like Android? Or separate apps need to be coded using separate SDKs?
What about development environment? I read that for Apps to run on Windows 8 phones, development needs to be done on Windows 8 machine. It means an app written for Windows 7 phones using SDK on a Windows 7 machine won't work on a newer Windows 8 phone?
Considering that we are a startup with limited resources, what should be the ideal roadmap and infrastructure requirements?
Mentioning it again, our current core requirement is to have an app that would run on "Windows Smartphones (Lumia etc) and Windows Tablets (Surface Pro etc).
Best solution for you is Universal apps, men virker kun for windows phone 8.1, så vidt jeg ved
and 4. Surface pro is windows 8. And is it is today you need to create separate projects. Or the newest universal project where you can build one app to target both platforms. However this is still two apps but in one project. And a windows 8 app will work for both pcs and tablets. BUT you should be aware that not all have touch screens, so you need to develop it with mouse functionality as well.
Are windows phone 7 apps compatible on windows phone 8 devices? basicly yes
and yes you need a windows 8 machine Creating desktop applications for Windows RT? this is because of HyperV compatibility.
Related
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.
How many and what kind of devices does the Lumia SDK support? Does it work fine on non-Lumia phones?
The documentation here says that the library is compatible with all Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 devices.
However, I don't understand the purpose of the devices listed below that. It's kind of ambiguous; is Lumia Imaging SDK supported on the listed devices only or these are the devices on which the SDK was tested?
Simply put, I want to know that if a device (lumia or non-lumia) runs Windows Phone 8.1, will it support the Lumia Imaging SDK?
Lumia Imaging SDK is device independent. It will work on all devices with the supported operating system. That means it will work on all devices running:
Windows Phone 8.0
Windows Phone 8.1
Windows 8.1 ARM
Windows 8.1 x86/x64 -- as long as it is a "store"/modern application
Windows 10 (Windows 10 supports running existing modern applications, however the new type of UWP application is not yet supported by the Lumia Imaging SDK).
This includes non-Lumia Devices and non-Surface PCs and tablets.
I agree that the list on the msdn resource is somewhat confusing. The team is simply enumerating the devices that the SDK has been tested on in case a hardware dependant issue arises - for example in a CameraPreviewImageSource scenario, etc.
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
I would need to upload a XAP file done for Windows 8 Phone to a Windows 8.1 Tablet.
I know that Windows Phone Power Tools do it but since this tool was done for Windows 8 Phone and not for Tablet, for it. Could I upload this XAP into my Tablet with it? Is it possible?
Thanks in advance
Best Regards
Alejandro
Windows Phone 8 apps are not compatible or in other words do not work in Windows 8. Though you can share some code using PCL (Portable Class Libraries), the development environment and architecture is different for both.
So the answer for your question is, it is not possible to deploy or run your Windows Phone apps on a Windows 8 tablet.
I am totally new in Windows app development, and wondering whether the application developed for, let's say, Windows mobile 8.0 will work on Windows mobile 7.8 and Windows RT, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, OR there is need to adapt the application?
I would really appreciate any tutorial to have an understanding what to do not to fail.
Thanks.
To summarize the answer
Windows Phone 7.x apps can run on Windows Phone 7.x & 8.0 (reverse not possible)
Windows Phone apps can't run on Windows 8
Current desktop apps can run on Windows 8 (not Windows 8 RT)
Current Windows 8 (or Store) apps can run on any Windows 8 device
If you want to build an app which should run on all devices i.e. Windows Phone 7.x and above, Windows desktop, Windows 8 etc... You can separate the user interface part and business logic. There is something called as Portable Class Libraries. You can use them to share the code between apps.
For more information:
http://mayurtendulkar.com/2013/09/cross-platform-hybrid-or-native/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/gg597391(v=vs.100).aspx
Hope it helps.