Tech Forum

twsouthwick wrote:First off, WP7 is NOT toast in favor of Win8/RT.

Not to start a debate, but just to gather information: Are any new phones being sold with WP7? Any new models with WP7 coming out, or will it be limited to the current models?

russellhltn wrote:

twsouthwick wrote:First off, WP7 is NOT toast in favor of Win8/RT.

Not to start a debate, but just to gather information: Are any new phones being sold with WP7? Any new models with WP7 coming out, or will it be limited to the current models?

WP8 replaced WP7 with no upgrade route. AFAIK, no new phones are being sold with WP7. My point was that Win8/RT does not affect that (WinPhone are the phones, Win8/RT are desktop/tablet OS).

I know ATT still sells phones with WP7 in the US, they are on their website for purchase...

Sure, they're trying to get rid of stock. But no new models are being released or manufactured. But, this discussion is about Windows 8 apps, not Windows Phone.

twsouthwick wrote:My point was that Win8/RT does not affect that (WinPhone are the phones, Win8/RT are desktop/tablet OS).

Ugh. So there's 3 versions of "Windows 8": Phone, RT (for tablets or devices running ARM CPU) and Pro (for Intel based units). I thought RT included phones.

I'll bet the church is trying to figure out how to efficiently write apps for both Phone and RT without making them separate projects.

Yes, the approach will likely be a code base that shares as much as possible between Windows 8 (RT) and Windows Phone 8. Windows "Blue" will likely unify these platforms even further.

For the most part, PCL (portable class libraries) can be used for everything except the UI stack. That means the data layer and business layer, if done correctly, will not require changes between any of the Windows applications. The presentation layer will have to be different, but much of the XAML should be fairly similar between WinPhone and WinRT (and WPF if you wanted to do a desktop app, but I think a metro app is the focus here). A plus, with MonoTouch and MonoDroid, the same PCL used for WinPhone/WinRT can potentially be used on iOS and Android devices.

twsouthwick wrote:Sure, they're trying to get rid of stock. But no new models are being released or manufactured. But, this discussion is about Windows 8 apps, not Windows Phone.

I was responding to Russell the community administrator who asked that question, so that is why it is part of the discussion.

Do you know for sure that there will be no new models released? Mid to late last year there were a lot of articles about low cost phones being based off of WP7 selling to emerging markets.

Nope, I don't know for sure. Nokia released their Lumia 505 model in some markets end of last year that has 7.8 (not upgradeable to 8.0), but they announced other budget phones that are based on 8.0 more recently (the Lumia 520 & 620) so Nokia seems to be focusing new budget phones on supporting 8.0 (and they're the leader in pushing WinPhone hardware).

Thanks @dstaheli for your comment, as well as others. I would like to know what it will take to get the development started. Unfortunately church wifi can't support all devices on the internet at the same time (in my area) so an app is the best way to ensure members have scriptures and content to teach from. Please let us know how we can help get the effort started as you can see lots of people are willing to help take on portions of the dev burden.

Thanks,
Wayne