Experienced Developer - Getting started with Phone 8

[Morantex]

Hi;

I'm totally new to mobile/phone development but I am a very experienced windows developer both client and server versions of OS.

I have some basic questions - I've tried searching for info on these but not much comes up:

1. Can I create an app in VS 2012 and test it on my physical phone?
2. Can I do ordinary socket level TCP comms on the phone?
3. Can I debug an app that is running on a physical phone?
4. How can I get my Windows desktop to see or interact with a phone?
5. Are there any tech tools that allow me to see detailed info about my phone, like network activity, bluetooth status, memory use, running processes etc?

I'm just getting started and so seeking some in depth info that lets me get some perception of the phone at a physical level so I can better understand what I'm dealing with.

I have a new Lumia 920 by the way and plenty of development hardware and all the tools etc.

Thanks

[WPMorocco]

Hello Morantex, welcome to the community,

About your questions :
1/Yes you can, but you have to develop-unlock your phone
2/Yes you can.
3/Yes absolutely
4/No you can't access or see your phone from Windows Desktop
5/Not that I know of , I only use wireshark to track packets and network activity , and iso storage spy to browse files inside my apps storage folders

[joaocardoso]

Hi Morantex,

Welcome to the Nokia Developer Forum.

I would also suggest that you take a look at Premium Developer Program if you are considering registering at Microsoft Dev Center. For the same price as Microsoft Dev center you get some extra stuff that is valued at about $1500. This program gives you:

* Windows Phone Dev Center - One year of Windows Phone Developer Center membership. A $99 (USD) retail value.
* Telerik RadControls - A free license for Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone. A $99 (USD) retail value.
* Buddy.com Cloud APIs - Up to 12 months' worth of access to up to 1 million API calls per month with Buddy's cloud APIs during your membership. Up to a $1200 (USD) retail value.
* Tech Support - 2 Nokia Tech Support tickets. A $198 (USD) value.


As a complement to WPMorocco answers:

1. Can I create an app in VS 2012 and test it on my physical phone? - Yes you can. You could also with Windows Phone 7. What I do usually is do most of the work on the emulator, and deploy do the phone as soon as I need to test it a bit further. That way I get the best of both worlds. Its a bit annoying to deploy to the phone all the time. You need to have the phone unlocked and without a pin. So I usually just deploy to the phone when I have something that its worth to test on it.

2. Can I do ordinary socket level TCP comms on the phone? - Yes you can, but I haven't tried myself. You would recommend that you take a look here and see of that helps. There are a lot of information about this on the web, so if you have any specifics it would be easier to give you a more direct answer.

3. Can I debug an app that is running on a physical phone? - Yes you can. Its also very funny to do it Sometimes I'm running an app on the phone and I completely forget I have Visual Studio open and the app stops responding. I get that first reaction "oh oh a bug" but then I look at the my laptop screen and I see that Visual Studio is waiting for me

4. How can I get my Windows desktop to see or interact with a phone? - You need to install the client tools. because you are planning on developing for Windows Phone 8 I assume you have already a Windows 8 pro 64 bits machine right? If so you can get the Windows Phone app here

5. Are there any tech tools that allow me to see detailed info about my phone, like network activity, bluetooth status, memory use, running processes etc? - Sort of. Visual Studio has an amazing profiling set of tools for Windows Phone, so I would recommend you take a look at that. For network monitor I recommend that you use other tools like Wireshark as WPMarocco suggested.

Hope this helps.

Also don't be shy ans stop by Nokia Wiki. There isa section dedicated to Windows Phone that I'm sure you will find useful.

[Morantex]

Hi Morantex,

Welcome to the Nokia Developer Forum.

I would also suggest that you take a look at Premium Developer Program if you are considering registering at Microsoft Dev Center. For the same price as Microsoft Dev center you get some extra stuff that is valued at about $1500. This program gives you:

* Windows Phone Dev Center - One year of Windows Phone Developer Center membership. A $99 (USD) retail value.
* Telerik RadControls - A free license for Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone. A $99 (USD) retail value.
* Buddy.com Cloud APIs - Up to 12 months' worth of access to up to 1 million API calls per month with Buddy's cloud APIs during your membership. Up to a $1200 (USD) retail value.
* Tech Support - 2 Nokia Tech Support tickets. A $198 (USD) value.


As a complement to WPMorocco answers:

1. Can I create an app in VS 2012 and test it on my physical phone? - Yes you can. You could also with Windows Phone 7. What I do usually is do most of the work on the emulator, and deploy do the phone as soon as I need to test it a bit further. That way I get the best of both worlds. Its a bit annoying to deploy to the phone all the time. You need to have the phone unlocked and without a pin. So I usually just deploy to the phone when I have something that its worth to test on it.

2. Can I do ordinary socket level TCP comms on the phone? - Yes you can, but I haven't tried myself. You would recommend that you take a look here and see of that helps. There are a lot of information about this on the web, so if you have any specifics it would be easier to give you a more direct answer.

3. Can I debug an app that is running on a physical phone? - Yes you can. Its also very funny to do it Sometimes I'm running an app on the phone and I completely forget I have Visual Studio open and the app stops responding. I get that first reaction "oh oh a bug" but then I look at the my laptop screen and I see that Visual Studio is waiting for me

4. How can I get my Windows desktop to see or interact with a phone? - You need to install the client tools. because you are planning on developing for Windows Phone 8 I assume you have already a Windows 8 pro 64 bits machine right? If so you can get the Windows Phone app here

5. Are there any tech tools that allow me to see detailed info about my phone, like network activity, bluetooth status, memory use, running processes etc? - Sort of. Visual Studio has an amazing profiling set of tools for Windows Phone, so I would recommend you take a look at that. For network monitor I recommend that you use other tools like Wireshark as WPMarocco suggested.

Hope this helps.

Also don't be shy ans stop by Nokia Wiki. There isa section dedicated to Windows Phone that I'm sure you will find useful.

Thanks to both you guys for taking the time to share that info, much appreciated.

One thing:- the app for accessing the phone from my PC - I cant get it, it seems to have no name that I can search for nor do the links (App website, App support) get me to the app - only to the generic Windows Phone website...

Also I have a big dev system using i7 3960X and 64 GB memory etc, running Windows 7. I have Windows 8 on a VMWare VM but when I try to run a simple VS 2012 phone project on that it fails, seems the Win 8 VM stuff doesnt like running within another VM



Thanks

[wizard_hu_]

You may want to check the Wiki as suggested. This article may be useful: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Commu...rking_Emulator

[WPMorocco]

Also I have a big dev system using i7 3960X and 64 GB memory etc, running Windows 7. I have Windows 8 on a VMWare VM but when I try to run a simple VS 2012 phone project on that it fails, seems the Win 8 VM stuff doesnt like running within another VM

Maybe you're forgetting to check Intel VT-x support in VMware.
You can try using the same method as the wiki article suggested by wizard_hu_

[Morantex]

Maybe you're forgetting to check Intel VT-x support in VMware.
You can try using the same method as the wiki article suggested by wizard_hu_

Hi, yes you are correct - I got past that and all seems OK now.

More questions now that I've gotten code to run:

1. Is it possible with the classes available in Phone 8, to initiate a call programatically?
2. The emulated phone has settings for WiFi but how exactly does one get that working?
3. The VM has no wireless nor does the desktop host - the host is on a wired network.
4. My network does have WiFi and devices can connect to that, but I'm puzzled as to how the emulated phone can "see" a wireless network.
5. Finally, I suppose TCP/IP (or UDP) is only possible over a WiFi network, are there other ways to do this though? is there such a concept as "TCP over Bluetooth" or anything (Yep, I know next to zero about bluetooth !)

TCP here is not anything essential to me, this is mainly curioisty at this stage althoigh I have done a great deal of work with TCP messaging the past 18 months.

This is all very interesting so thanks again for your time and help getting started!

Regards

Hugh

[joaocardoso]

Hi, yes you are correct - I got past that and all seems OK now.

Great to know it worked out for you.

1. Is it possible with the classes available in Phone 8, to initiate a call programatically?

Sorry but you need to be a bit more specific. What do you want to do?

2. The emulated phone has settings for WiFi but how exactly does one get that working?
3. The VM has no wireless nor does the desktop host - the host is on a wired network.
4. My network does have WiFi and devices can connect to that, but I'm puzzled as to how the emulated phone can "see" a wireless network.

Please take a look here for Network related configurations. To make thinks short, if your host computer has access to a network or the internet, the windows phone emulator will also have access to the same resources. I use NAT on my VMWare Virtual Machine, on the network configuration. Then when you run the WP8 emulator, the network is enabled by default. You don't need to do anything else in order to enable network access.

5. Finally, I suppose TCP/IP (or UDP) is only possible over a WiFi network, are there other ways to do this though? is there such a concept as "TCP over Bluetooth" or anything (Yep, I know next to zero about bluetooth !)

Again, much better than trying to explain on my own words, let me direct you to this link.

I would strongly recommend that you start by working your way with the Windows Phone SDK, one step at a time. As a experienced developer myself I lost a lot of time at the beginning trying to figure out some advanced stuff before learning the basics. My first app had a database, a service, transitions, etc. Only when I decided to read a book, take my time, and understand how all of the details worked I was able to start doing anything useful. I'm still learning

[wizard_hu_]

1. Is it possible with the classes available in Phone 8, to initiate a call programatically?

Remember that there is an entire Internet out there. A Google search for windows phone call api gets this http://albrecht-schmidt.blogspot.no/...s-and-sms.html as first hit to me.

5. Finally, I suppose TCP/IP (or UDP) is only possible over a WiFi network, are there other ways to do this though? is there such a concept as "TCP over Bluetooth" or anything (Yep, I know next to zero about bluetooth !)

IP over BT is an existing, but rarely implemented concept, very few mobile OS-es support it. Windows Phone is not among them.
However you said you have WiFi, so it would be a more natural choice to configure that on your phone. And of course we are speaking about mobile phones here, so cellular data is also an option.
And there is the USB option, when you connect a WP device to your PC, it gets some IP access via USB.

[Morantex]

Remember that there is an entire Internet out there. A Google search for windows phone call api gets this http://albrecht-schmidt.blogspot.no/...s-and-sms.html as first hit to me.IP over BT is an existing, but rarely implemented concept, very few mobile OS-es support it. Windows Phone is not among them.
However you said you have WiFi, so it would be a more natural choice to configure that on your phone. And of course we are speaking about mobile phones here, so cellular data is also an option.
And there is the USB option, when you connect a WP device to your PC, it gets some IP access via USB.

OK thanks again - I was looking at this initially as my "guide" to the API, but found the full documentation here now.

My question about making calls was informal, I was just wondering if one can call something like:- some_object.MakeCall(phone_number); probably not as I guess it wd not make sense (but I guess one could ask same question for texts).

Does anyone know if you can use DynamicMethod and ILGenerator classes in Phone 8?

Thx

Hugh

[Morantex]

Great to know it worked out for you.



Sorry but you need to be a bit more specific. What do you want to do?



Please take a look here for Network related configurations. To make thinks short, if your host computer has access to a network or the internet, the windows phone emulator will also have access to the same resources. I use NAT on my VMWare Virtual Machine, on the network configuration. Then when you run the WP8 emulator, the network is enabled by default. You don't need to do anything else in order to enable network access.



Again, much better than trying to explain on my own words, let me direct you to this link.

I would strongly recommend that you start by working your way with the Windows Phone SDK, one step at a time. As a experienced developer myself I lost a lot of time at the beginning trying to figure out some advanced stuff before learning the basics. My first app had a database, a service, transitions, etc. Only when I decided to read a book, take my time, and understand how all of the details worked I was able to start doing anything useful. I'm still learning

You're right - I will devote time for progressing through the SDK - always a good idea with a brand new area.

Thanks

Hugh

[WPMorocco]

My question about making calls was informal, I was just wondering if one can call something like:- some_object.MakeCall(phone_number); probably not as I guess it wd not make sense (but I guess one could ask same question for texts).

Yes you can launch call and text tasks programmatically using PhoneCallTask and SmsComposeTask, try looking at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...one.tasks.aspx
Hope this helps,

[Morantex]

Well I have the emulator running but I'm confused by something.

In the emulator I go to Settings and enable wifi and see that it searches indefinitely for a wifi network.

However I can use IE on the emulator to see the web and browse without issues.

Is the emulator therefore running over an emulated "Data connection"? It seems so because if I examine the settings for "Cellular" I see "Fake GSM Network' whereas my real phone says simply "AT&T".

So how does one get the emulator to "see" any kind of real/simulated WiFi network?

Thanks

Hugh

[WPMorocco]

Yes the emulator emulates the connexion , it just uses the internet access on your Host PC, it is not possible to use any "real" network on it.

[Morantex]

Yes the emulator emulates the connexion , it just uses the internet access on your Host PC, it is not possible to use any "real" network on it.

OK Thanks much appreciated.

Regarding the NOKIA Premium Developer Program - this seems like a no-brainer and gives me an MS "Dev Center" account that will enable me to do this.

I guess an MSDN subscription alone is insufficient for this?

Thanks

Hugh