Porting Windows Phone 8.1 app to UWP - windows-phone

I'm working on a port of my WP 8.1 app to run on tablets, and PCs. I started working on a Windows 10 port, but I realized that it won't run on Windows Phone 8.1 devices. As far as I know the other way was to create a Universal 8.1 app, but that would mean to redesign most of my pages, there would be a bunch of API and control incompatibility with WP and Windows 8.1. (Pivot control does not exist in Windows 8.1). That's why I chose the easier way to port to UWP. The question is: can I upload a Windows Phone 8.1 package, and a Windows 10 package (only PC and tablet device families targeted) to the same app in dev center? So both mobile and PCs, tablets are supported.

Yes, you can upload (say) a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight package, and a Windows 10 universal package. Devices will get the highest version numbered package that will work for their device

Related

Windows Service and Windows Phone

I would like to develop a service to be installed on Windows Phone device (Embedded 8.1 Handheld), in order to send data to the device.
Any idea how to began to face with this?

Handling background data Transfer on windows phone 8.1

I am new to windows phone OS development and I want to implement a background data transfer on windows phone 8.1 and I want to do it even after app is running in background. On windows 8 there is an Windows.Networking.BackgroundTransfer API but what about windows phone OS. Thanks.
Windows.Networking.BackgroundTransfer is in fact supported on windows phone 8.1, here is the sample code : http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Background-Transfer-Sample-d7833f61
But if you want to maintain windows phone 8 support you can use BackgroundTransferService instead. Sample code for it can be found here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh202959(v=vs.105).aspx

Deploy wp8 application on a wp7 smartphone

I have a windows smartphone , version 7.10. can i deploy it for applications developed with the wp8 sdk and will these applications work without any problems on wp8?
Since WP 8 and windows 8 will share common core, I think that we can say that such deployment will be possible with maybe minor tweaks regarding device resolution. Maybe you can think that you can use snapped view on tablet as a UI for phone.
It's not clear why you are referring to WP7, but Windows Phone 8 apps will not run on any Windows Phone 7.x device.
The biggest thing today is that Windows Phone 8 has a shared common
core with Windows 8," said Windows Phone Manager Joe Belfiore at the
Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco, which was webcast. "For us,
this is a huge release and a huge year.

windows 8 app for mobile device

I am new to Windows Phone applications and Windows 8 Apps. All I know about windows 8 is the metro style and the news that it will run on the PCs, tablets and Phones as well.
I want to get started developing an App for an expected Windows 8 Phone Device. All the guideline I found for windows 8 is for developing the apps for windows 8 tablets or PCs (not phones). Here is a link for windows 8 SDK, I am looking at.
Should I start developing a regular windows 8 app (for tablet) assuming that it will run on the expected upcoming windows 8 phone device?
Does anyone have any idea?
Microsoft has made very few announcements so far on the developer story for Windows Phone 8. What little news has been announced can be viewed in the Windows Phone Summit video here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Phone/Summit
The only statement made so far regarding development across the two platforms is that applications developed using C# and Xaml will have "high compatibility" between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
Windows Phone 8 is due out later this year so hopefully development tools aren't far off. If you want to get started right away I recommend you try your hand at developing a Windows 8 application using C# and Xaml. That should catch you up to speed and get you prepared for Windows Phone 8.
You can get started at http://dev.windows.com
I think there is nothing really official about the development of applications windows phone 8 (except as regards the integration of the new features of future devices). Everything in internet indicates that one of the reasons that drove microsoft to update wp7 is precisely the desire to converge development for windows 8 with development for windows phone8. This convergence will be visual (for example the pivot layout will be characterized by a single page horizontally scrollable similar to windows 8 apps) and under the hood (with a kernel very similar).
The enhanced hardware will perform more complex operations (thus tending toward user experience similar to pc).
What we also know that in some metro style app in actual microsoft store someone found comments in the source related to the integration of the app in windows phone 8.
What I can suggest then is to develop your app for windows 8. In all likelihood make the porting to Windows phone 8 will be simple (different sized images for backgrounds, different icons, but side code probably will not change anything).

Developing for WP8 with only WP7 device?

I don't understand from today's WP8 event: will I be able to develop apps working on both 7.5 and 8, having only one 7.5 (7.8) device for testing?
I don't like WP emulator, even though it's better than iOS/Android ones. I know that in Visual Studio 2012 it will become even better. But still!
Current devices running Windows Phone 7.X will be able to be upgraded to Windows Phone 7.8 but not Windows Phone 8.
If you want to use a feature that is specific to WP8 you'll either have to wait for hardware or use the eumlator (when available).
I don't like WP emulator
But you should. The emulator for Windows Phone 8 is a full featured Hyper-V emulator, that can even run unmanaged code.
As pointed out by Matt, you'll not be able to do any deployment of Windows Phone 8 apps to your Windows Phone 7 device, and as such you'll need a new device, or use the emulator.
And as the SDK is likely to be released before any devices, I'll strongly encourage you to do development in the emulator until the real devices are on the market.
You'll have to use Windows Phone 8 emulator, or cross your fingers that the equivalent to XDA-Developers for Windows Phone roots your model of phone and is able to get Windows 8 working(hint: unlikely)
The Windows Phone 8 emulator is really very nice though. The only big troubling thing about it is that it requires hardware Hyper-V support and Windows 8. This means you can't run the phone emulator inside of most virtualization technologies. However, I've been using VMWare 9 which appears to include an "unsupported" feature to allow Hyper-V to work though.. So your only choice for running the phone emulator is to either buy VMWare 9 or upgrade a physical machine to Windows 8