I had a couple of queries about the windows phone 7 launcher tasks, Specifically a phonecalltask.
1) Does PhonecallTask Show() launch an application?
2) If so, What happens to the calling application? Does it go dormant or run on separate threads?
Tasks shelve the currently running application and run the ms supplied apps to make calls, play videos, send sms, email etc.
When you are in a task it will "Tombstone" your application so that you can save the data you need for when it recovers.
Showing a PhoneCallTask can be compared to receiving a phone call while in your application.
Related
I need to test how my app reacts when an incoming call interrupts execution. How can I do this in the simulator?
Go to Properties of your App(right click on solution Explorer), Select Debug tab and there you will find a checkbox(Tombstone upon deactivation while debugging), check that. After checking it whenever the apps gets deactivated , it will get in to tombstone state while debugging.
I think that Scenario is not possible to Test in Emulator. You can make call from your app in emulator but Receiving can be tested in only Device. for more Reference you can refer this Question Windows Phone 7 emulator : Can I simulate a phone call.
To test for making a call from your app, you can find Reference here How to use the phone call task for Windows Phone 8
I am trying to develop an app for windows phone that will detect calls and send notification to PC through wifi. Similarly it will also send SMS that are received to PC and when an alarm goes off in phone, a notification will be sent to PC. How should I proceed about developing this app?
Thanks in advance.
There is no API exposed to allow you to spy on incoming calls or SMS in Windows Phone (like there was with Windows Mobile). The only option would be to build this as an OEM extension, but unless you work for HTC, Samsung or Nokia, this isn't going to be an option.
See it's not that you cannot but to some extent you can. Like you can use Obscured Event to detect call , lock screen etc. go through this msdn discussion for details
Detect lock and calls msdn
And as far as the alarm or the reminder is concerned you can go ahead and design a reminder system within your app. Limit is 50.
Obscured event Windows phone
I have an application in WP7 silverlight that needs to be launched after a specific period of time, something like an alarm.
But I want to launch the application itself not WP7's alarm.
I use:
this.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
for hiding the application, I know it is not the correct way for making it run in the background.
Any hint please? Thanks.
The platform specifically does not support running apps in the way you describe.
If your functionality can't run in a background agent then your only options are to use an alarm or toast message (sent as a push notification) to prompt the user to start the app.
One of the design decisions behind the platform is that the user should always know what is going on on the phone so having apps stop and start by themselves would be contrary to this.
You can run a background agent and display a toast notification to the user , and launch the application when the user clicks on the toast.
You can also push toast messages to the device, and rely on the user clicking the toast .
I don't have a WP7 device yet. Everything is functional in My App on a Simulator, but when my customer test it, app does not function at all. e.g. VDO is not playing.
Is there a way to get a crash log from Windows Phone 7? (like iPhone).
You can easily create your own crash report. Basically this is what you have to do:
In your App class add an handler for the UnhandledException event
inside the handler prepare a log with everything you need (stacktrace, memory allocated, etc.)
use an email composer Task to send the report.
You can also check BugSense which is a cross-platform(iPhone,Android and Windows Phone) tool that collects and analyzes crash reports from mobile apps.
Disclaimer: I have developed the WP7 plugin.
Is it possible to create an app the runs in the background? If so is there any samples out there for this?
In Windows Phone OS 7.1 you can actually use Background Agents now to perform tasks in the background.
from MSDN:
Scheduled Tasks and background agents allow an application to execute
code in the background, even when the application is not running in
the foreground. The different types of Scheduled Tasks are designed
for different types of background processing scenarios and therefore
have different behaviors and constraints.
You can use a PeriodicTask or ResourceIntensiveTasks. Read more about it in the MSDN article above.
And here's some sample code for you to integrate background agents into your existing app.
Sample Code: Background Agents in Mango
An application in the foreground can continue to run when the phone screen is locked(not background but...) by setting the PhoneApplicationService.ApplicationIdleDetectionMode property. By setting up your application to run when the phone screen is locked, a user is able to access the application quickly upon unlock. However, when your application runs under a locked screen, it could consume power outside of the user's control. For this reason, your application must minimize power usage when running under a locked screen
At the moment there is no way to create application that runs in background.
True multitasking for 3rd party Windows Phone 7 apps will come as an OS upgrade later this year. However, unless the app has to absolutely run in the background (like Pandora etc.), we as developers share some responsibility in making our apps feel at home with the rest of the OS.
Windows Phone OS offers app developers chances to save state of their applications to give the end users the feeling that it never stopped running; this is essentially the same as in other mobile platforms. As your app is being deactivated/closed, you have the option to "Tombstone" your state so that your users can come back to just where they left with BackStack navigation or future launches. Channel 9 had a nice set of demos & labs around tombstoning, found here.
Hope this helps!