What are the system requirements for the SDK?

Here are the system requirements for the Windows Phone 8 SDK

• Supported operating systems: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 64-bit (x64) client versions
• Hardware: 4 GB of free hard disk space, 4 GB RAM, 64-bit (x64) CPU
• Windows Phone 8 Emulator: Windows 8 Pro edition or greater, a processor that supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)

If you have already been developing for Windows Phone 7 note the new requirements

1. You need to be running a 64 bit Windows 8 OS to install the Windows Phone 8 SDK.

2. If you don’t meet the requirements for the Windows Phone 8 Emulator, the Windows Phone SDK 8.0 will install and run but the Windows Phone 8 Emulator will not function and you will not be able to deploy or test apps on the Emulator. see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/uk_faculty_connection/archive/2012/10/24/hyper-v-list-of-slat-capable-cpus-for-hosts.aspx for details on SLAT

The emulator uses Hyper-V under SLAT so if you try to run a project in the emulator and Hyper-V is not enabled, you will be prompted to turn on Hyper-V. Turning on Hyper-V will require you to restart your computer.

What new APIs and features can I leverage?

If you visit the Windows Phone Dev Center you’ll find all documentation and samples for the Windows Phone 8 SDK.

Here are a couple of new features here just to whet your appetite

• The Wallet feature for collecting coupons, credit cards, memberships, and loyalty cards, managing payments for the app and music store and in some markets NFC for contactless transactions.
• Direct 3D apps and Native C++ Game Development
• Enhanced localization support (easier to handle multilingual apps)
• New Tile sizes and templates
• Use your app as the lock screen background image provider
• New Map Control
• Write an app that requests driving or walking directions
• New speech features to help users interact with your app through voice
• Support for C++/DX
• Support for HTML5
• Support for 3rd party gaming Frameworks

If your teaching or building app/games with the Windows Phone 7 SDK do I have to restart it?

No. Apps built for Windows Phone 7.5 still run on Windows Phone 8, so finish and publish the apps using your free developer account from http://create.msdn.com via http://www.DreamSpark.com

If you want to leverage some of the new Windows 8 features, you can do that in your next release.

Additional Resources

Check out the following videos from Build 2012 on Windows Phone 8 Development