Unlock Windows Phone 7 emulator - windows-phone-7

Today I wanted to unlock the WP7 emulator in order to see some more functionalities available like: task manager, accessing isolated storage files and look over default applications like Office, Messaging and others, but I could not make it work ...
I followed the instructions from here but I'm not having the [YourHardDrive]:/Program Files/Microsoft SDKs/WindowsPhone/v7.0/Emulation/Images folder . In [YourHardDrive]:/Program Files/Microsoft SDKs/WindowsPhone/v7.0/Emulation folder I have only the following files:
WM7_Skin.xml
WM7_Skin_Down.png
WM7_Skin_Mask.png
WM7_Skin_Up.png
I looked over others tutorials related to unlock emulator and all of them are pointing to an Image folder - which in my case doesn't exists
Did anyone also faced with this problem?
I am curious: Why Microsoft doesn't provide by default access to an 'unlocked' emulator ?
Thanks.

The instructions you linked to are from a very early pre-beta release of the Windows Phone SDK, over six month before the phone released! So you don't have to wonder why they aren't working anymore.
You may search the XDA forums for an unlocked version of the 7.0 emulator image, but that version isn't up-to-date either. Currently RTM is version 7.1 of the SDK for the so-called "Mango" release of Windows Phone 7.5 - but it's currently not possible to "unlock" the restrictions Microsoft put into that emulator image, either. There are some possibilities to launch some of the internal applications / dialogs with a tool from the 7.1 SDK and their corresponding GUIDs. You may take a look at this and this article for some instructions.

The forums at xda-developers often post unlocked emulators. The one that I recently pulled down is here. It is in Italian but just go into the settings and change it to the language you would like.

Related

How to handle a wp8 and a wp8.1 in the app store

A user recently reported a problem in regards to not being able to answer "quizzes" in some of the web pages I display in my app. The first thing that popped to mind was that it could be a bug with my app, a bug with the web browser control or some unreliable CSS & Javascript code provided in the web pages.
After investigating it some more i.e. tried it on my web browser on pc in mobile mode and tried it in the regular browser, I noticed that it worked as expected, so I thought it was fair to assume that it wasn't the web pages that were the problem. So it left my app or the web browser control as potential problem.
My app was originally created as a windows phone app for Windows Phone 8 so it would be compatible with both windows phone 8.0 and windows phone 8.1 but to my surprise, after taking a backup and then converting my app from 8.0 to 8.1 the problem got resolved which means that the bug must be coming from the web control itself rather than in my code.
I don't know how popular these questionaires/quizzes are but so far that seems to be the only thing that's affecting the app in regards to web pages, so what do I do?
Now, to my questions (sorry for the long history!):
Will a WP Silverlight 8.1 app work on both Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1? Sorry if it's a silly question but I've got to ask. If it will, please ignore the other questions.
Should I leave the app as a Windows Phone 8.0 app as it could be affecting a minority of users that want to answer questionnaires/quizzes?
Upgrade the app to Windows Phone 8.1? Not everyone is on 8.1 or 8.1 preview for developers, so this could be a problem??
Upload 2 different versions? Maybe specifically name them as app 8.0 and app 8.1? Feels odd, no? This would also entail maintaining 2 different versions which is a complete pain or is there a better way to handle this i.e. Linked file in the second project?? I haven't checked yet what's changed between the 2. All I know for now is that once I converted my project from 8.0 to 8.1, it worked.
Is there a way to upload both versions to the store as one app and will Windows Phone download the relevant version?
Thanks
Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8.1 is newer, this is why it works better.
1) No.
2) No.
3) Yes.
4) Yes. You can link files from the one project to another (use add as link feature in Visual Studio).
5) Yes. Windows Phone store can handle 7.5, 8 and 8.1 version very well.

Testing .xap on windows phone 8, without registration

I have got a .xap file, i mailed it and opened it in my windows phone 8.
It gives me company app error.
Also i tried it with deployment in visual studio, it runs fine with emulator but problem with device(zune software not installed) whereas i have installed it and it is not detecting the device.
My question is that can we test an application without any company registration on windows phone device, just for testing purpose.
I have got an microsoft account.
You can deploy the XAP, but you must unlock the device first.
Fortunately, it's now a free process, you don't need a devcenter account anymore. The only limitation is that you can deploy only two applications at a time (when deploying a third application, you must remove a previous one).
The procedure is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/ff769508(v=vs.105).aspx
I think Beta testing will help u.We can upload a build as beta version to the market for testing purposes.Have a look on the below link.
Beta Version in WindowsPhone
I think that the live test of phonegap (as you said you use it) will be great for you. Please see http://app.phonegap.com/ for more information.
You can check unsigned apps up to two apps on a free account.
If you have Visual studio installed, search for "Application deployment" from start or Run XapDeploy.exe. Test unsigned .XAP

How to show a demo of a WP app on another PC?

I have a small WP app and I need to show a (interactive) demo of it and show its features, to another person who doesn't have any WP-related software installed on his PC.
Is there a super lite version of the WP emulator that the other person can download?
Also, how can I create an installation file of the WP app so that it would be easy for him to install & run ?
Surely he won't need to install the whole SDK, including Visual Studio, right?
To run the emulator you'll need to install the full SDK (http://dev.windowsphone.com/en-us/downloadsdk) but note that this doesn't require an existing version of Visual Studio.
There is no stand alone installer for just the emulator.
Apps are compiled into XAP files (similar to APK) and the Application Deployment application (installed as part of the SDK) will allow this to be loaded into the emulator. This tool can also be used to load the app into attached, developer unlocked, devices.
In terms of demonstrating an app to someone not familiar with Windows Phone, I've found that getting them to experience it on an emulator is often a sub-par experience and doesn't create the best experience. It's far better to get people to experience applications on actual devices. Alternatively, if it's very early in the application's development it's often better just to capture a video of the application running (from the emulator if fine and normally easier).
He would need to install VS Express with all the requirements that needs (Win8, CPU support for Client Hyper-V).
Emulator works pretty well over Remote Desktop and other remote viewing tech such as Skype, so that's another option.
Ok, i think i've found the needed steps:
send the XAP file from "Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\AppName\Bin\Release\" where "AppName" is the name of the app.
download and install the sdk . not sure if Visual studio is needed.
run "XapDeploy.exe" tool which will allow to run the emulator and install the XAP file into it.
The file is somewhere similar to :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\XAP Deployment
run the app from within the emulator.

Is there a way to distribute windows phone 7 applications without using the windows phone 7 marketplace?

I may need to port a private application from android to windows phone 7.
The short answer at the moment is "No". However, if you have a developer account, you can unlock up to 3 phones and deploy your XAP directly to them. Also there are plans to allow companies to deploy apps directly to phones without going via the marketplace, though unfortunately no official dates for this yet.
There's no "official" way to do it, at least not for now. But Microsoft is in touch with developers who unlocked their phones to run home brew applications, to figure out how to make it available for developers, without prejudice the app market ecossystem.
there's a XAP installer that you could use to install on each phone manually but if you are targeting your app to an enterprise, the benefits of installing separate from the store might be outweighed by the overhead of installing each one.
On android you would just need to tick "allow unsigned apps" somewhere in the settings, unfortunately this isn't an option with windows phones. there's no .exe facility.

Windows Mobile SDK 6 Confusion

I am upgrading my Windows Mobile 5 project to a Windows Mobile 6 project.
The first step (at least so it seems to me) is to get the Windows Mobile 6 SDK installed.
When I went searching for this I found the following installs that both seemed to fit what I was looking for:
Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK Refresh.msi
Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Developer Tookit (USA).msi
So, the question is, do I need these both? and if so, what order do I install them in? and is there any other installers/steps I am missing?
It depends on what you're targeting. There are loads of SDKs, but generally what they bring to the table are emulators and SDK-specific stuff (like additions to the Microsoft.WindowsMobile namespace). Otherwise they really don't do a whole lot. For example you can continue to use just the PPC 2003 SDK to write and deploy apps on WinMo 6.5, you'll just be missing availability of the stuff that was added to be 6.5-specific.
Persoanlly I'd recommend installing the 6.5 Pro (and maybe standard too) SDKs and foregoing the 6.0 SDK unless you need to do emulator testing for something like a 6.0 or 6.1 device.

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