I finally got a chance to try out the entire Windows Phone 7 experience, from creating Silverlight and XNA applications to deploying on actual hardware. But thats not the finally this post is about. The reason I am writing this post is becaus now i FINALY have what I have been missing from Windows Mobile for the last several years: a mature smartphone platform that i can develop for using my favourite toolchain and language.
With arround a days experience total, this isn’t exactly an indepth impression but I have to say I’m very excited. Developing in XNA compared to the work I’ve done in Cocos2d on iPhone is a really smooth experience. And Silverlight – well slap on a listbox, style it which ever way you please, databind it and it just works. A dream of mine just came true.
This is not to say that there isn’t a lot of kinks Microsoft needs to work on – a great platform is more then great developer support. Like the brower – don’t even get me started. And I’m not just talking about the rendering, I’m talking about the whole entering and editing a URL and what not. Also while deploying to WP7 is super fast, I can’t help but think that Microsoft could have done something so that i don’t have to manually unlock the phone each time i wan’t to deploy.
I’m not even going to mention the missing enterprise story here..
All in all I’m starting to think Microsoft have a winner on theire hands if they can keep the updates rolling out quickly. Noe i’m just gonna sit here and wait patiently for a chance to work on the platform professionally.
Tags: Windows Phone 7
