Microsoft Updates Windows Phone SDK, Now Supports 256MB Devices
Windows Phone developers were happy to hear that Microsoft released a 7.1.1 update to the Windows Phone SDK today. The update featured new perks and tools optimized for Tango devices sporting lower memory. Currently, 95% of the apps found in the Marketplace have no issue running on lower-end Windows Phones, but it’s the remaining 5% of the apps that Microsoft is concerned about. Now with this update developers will have an easier time creating apps and games that are optimized to run on 256-MB devices. As outlined in the official Windows Phone developer blog the highlighted features include :
- The Visual Studio IDE is patched to enable selection from a list of emulators, and launching it (note that the WPSDK can only support connecting to one at a time, though)
- The Windows Phone [512 MB device] emulator image is updated to use build 8773
- A second, new emulator device image is included, allowing you to emulate running your app on a 256 MB device
- The Microsoft Advertising SDK is updated to the latest version (previously only available as a separate install), which fixes some issues devs were encountering at runtime
- IntelliSense now supports specifying the 512 MB device requirement in your manifest file, should you choose to opt your app out from running on the new 256 MB devices
- Language support is again consistent both in the IDE (the 7.1.1 Update supports all 10 of the WPSDK 7.1 languages) and in the emulator OS (Malay and Indonesian have been added)
The download itself is 300MB and houses both OS images (512MB and 256MB), and will run approximately 15 minutes to completely install. Developers can grab the update here.
