Windows Phone 7 “Mango”: download SDK and consumer features unveiled

On May 24th Microsoft held a press conference announcing many of the new features coming to the next version Windows Phone 7. Codename for this version is “Mango” so we’ll refer to it by that name in the rest of this post. Note that the official name in the documentation is Windows Phone 7.1 beta.

Mango was first unveiled at WMC event in Barcelona in February, more features including the full developer SDK functionalities were also shown during MIX conference in April. Take a look at the video below where Joe Belfiore walks you through the new consumer features.

Read about the consumer features in Mango on these sites:

• Microsoft Press Pass
  • Press conference video recording: Press Conference
  • Press release: Press Release, Next Major Release of Windows Phone
• Windows Phone Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/windowsphone

Developers: download the SDK and take advantage of new features

Developers can tap into more than 1500 new APIs in Mango and start taking advantage of the new features today. But what are the main new features? Too many to call out in this post but focusing on the top we get:

• Background processing
• Phone access: calendar and contacts, camera access, additional sensors
• HTML5 support with Internet Explorer 9 on the phone
• Support for Silverlight + XNA together
• Silverlight 4
• Live Tile enhancements such as multiple tiles, deep linking, updating Live Tiles locally, use back of tiles
• Fast application switching
• Local SQL database
• Sockets
• Tooling: new code profiler and emulator

How to get started with Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) Beta tools

1 – Download the tools

Download and install the updated SDK containing Visual Studio 2010, phone emulator and Expression Blend for Windows phone, including some tools like the .XAP deployment tool.
Note: for current application development: the new updated tools allow you for multi-targeting. This means v1 projects can be worked on with the updated tools, as well as creating new applications targeting the Windows Phone 7.1 version. Running the two tools versions side by side is not possible, and in this way not required really.

2 – Get yourself up to speed on the new developer features

• Windows Phone 7 “Mango” Training Kit: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wp7mangotrainingcourse
• View the videos from MIX11: https://live.visitmix.com
• MSDN home for 7.1 beta reference documentation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402535(v=VS.92).aspx
• Read the official Windows Phone developer blog for continued updates: https://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/

3 – Register for the Marketplace

Today as a developer you can only submit applications for Windows Phone 7 (not Mango). In the near future the application marketplace for Mango will become available and from that point on you will be able to submit your “Mango” targeted application.
Register for the marketplace on https://create.msdn.com. For tips on Belgium & Luxembourg specifics of Marketplace registration, watch this live meeting recording: “Windows Phone 7: Tips and Tricks about Developer Registration and Application Certification”.

Happy coding!

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 29, 2011
  Hi, is there any way to access C# dll's or native dll's from windows 7 mango

• Anonymous
  May 29, 2011
  Hi, There is no native access when developing for Windows Phone. Depending on what you need you might be able to achieve what you need with Tasks and Launchers.

• Anonymous
  July 02, 2011
  This beta 2 SDK has only been trouble and more trouble to install! Running the official installer, I first get a silly error about VS compatibility mode, which is plain incorrect. I think unzip the EXE and run the setup.exe program, which brings up the install wizar, but then tells me it could not install: "Microsoft Visual Studio Express Prerequisites x64". For such a simple tool, why all the prerequisites? No instructions, either. Not impressed in the slightest.

• Anonymous
  July 06, 2011
  Windows Phone 7.1(SDK) why the team under-estimate the Windows Server 2008 R2 for development of it.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2011
  Very helpful.

• Anonymous
  December 12, 2011
  Why does not the SDK not run on windows server 2008 R2 since most developers use this platform when developing as they prefer to work on the same operating system they are deploying most of their apps?