May’s Windows Phone dev kit update to include many new features, enhancements

Posted by on April 13 at 9:32pm
Close | More Posts

Finally improving on the lack of third-party app integration capabilities and previous issues developers have had with Windows Phone development, Microsoft showed off at MIX11 its new developer platform which is set for release in May.

New features include:

  • Multitasking for background processing, audio and file transfer, and fast app switching, including background audio playback for HTML5 webpages
  • Deeper integration of apps into the OS, allowing programs to leverage Live Tiles, including push notifications via Live Agents running in the background
  • Raw access to the camera and sensors (gyro and compass) via the Motion Sensor library, letting apps to control device hardware

This should entice many more developers to create apps for the Windows Phone Marketplace, as the previous dev kit was not enough to create the apps that designers wanted. Microsoft showed off several demos from popular companies whose apps are nearing completion. Amazon demoed their barcode scanning capability and Qantas was able to use live tiles to display current flight status.

Many fixes and performance boosts were also made. In total, over 1500 APIs were added including SQLite database support.

Head over to Engadget for more detail and the full press release.

Comments are closed.