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Windows Phone 7 “Mango”: download the developer tools

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:

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

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!