CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windows-phone-7windows-phone
Raffy Alcoriza
Raffy Alcoriza

Reputation: 147

Can I still manage to develop on Windows Phone even with limited hardware on a development machine?

I have been long interested to develop on the platform. I even got the tools installed already on my desktop but I can't upgrade my WDDM from 1.0 to 1.1. To make things simple: my graphics chips are not up to the task of running the emulator.

If I still buy a Windows Phone (e.g. a Nokia Lumia) for development purposes, can I sideload and test my apps there efficiently instead of going against the emulator?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 66

Answers (3)

RohanRasane
RohanRasane

Reputation: 60

Well there are 2 sides of the coin. With the physical device you can test most of the things, but with a few limitations

  1. You will not be able to test internet related test cases - For example, if you have an app which uses internet connectivity then you will not be able to test it on the device easily because

    • The device does not use the machine internet connectivity
    • When connected to the PC the device's internet connectivity(Data connection 3G/ wifi/GPRS) is broken.

  2. You will have to purchase an account right from the first day you want to test your app. If you have the emulator working then you could postpone this for atleast few days.

Upvotes: 0

Lukasz Madon
Lukasz Madon

Reputation: 15004

If I still buy a Windows Phone (e.g. a Nokia Lumia) for development purposes, can I sideload and test my apps there efficiently instead of going against the emulator

Yes, of course. It's very easy and convenient. You have debugger and all the goodies. Advantage of the emulator is the test option for 256MB devices.

Upvotes: 2

Peter Wone
Peter Wone

Reputation: 18795

That's exactly what I used to do prior to upgrading my devstation. The nominal min spec says 3G but with a real phone it worked fine in 2G and as you say this also sorts out graphics limitations.

Note that the setting for whether the emulator or physical device is used is stored in the project, so if you accept a project from someone else you will have to set it once prior to debugging.

Upvotes: 0

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