Chapter 1
What’s New in Windows Phone 7
WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER
- An architectural overview of WP7
- Comparisons with iOS and Android
Mobile application developers will find it useful to have an architectural understanding of the underlying Windows Phone 7 (WP7) software platform. In particular, developers need to understand the application framework, its capabilities and limitations, and platform extensibility. It’s also important to know potential technical approaches to common development tasks. For Android or iPhone app developers, it’s vital to obtain a big picture of the new WP7 operating system.
Some terms can prove confusing because different people use them in different ways. For the purposes of this book, you’ll see iPhone Operating System (iOS) when the text discusses applications or code. The book uses iPhone when it asks you to perform an action with the physical device (or an emulator), such as clicking a button. In addition, we’ll use WP7 and Windows Phone 7 interchangeably throughout the book.
The first chapter of this book provides an overview of the new WP7 operating system, the history of Windows Mobile, the WP7 hardware platform (also known as the chassis specification), the new Windows Compact Edition (CE) kernel, the application framework, the application store, and WP7 capabilities and limitations. Readers who aren’t familiar with Windows phone technologies ...
