Windows Phone SDK

Windows Phone SDK is a powerful development environment that intends to help you create applications and games for Windows Phone 8 or 7.5. It includes the basic tools and the documentation required to start writing code for mobile devices.

While an SDK is usually designed for programmers, you can also use this tool to learn about building apps for Windows mobile phones. The package includes a large documentation that provides the basic knowledge to get you started.

You can also take advantage of the code examples included in the SDK to find out how a mobile app works. The included version of Visual Studio Express enables you to use and to enhance your code writing skills by building native code applications.

The Visual Studio interface enables the programmer to start building the apps in a familiar environment which is available immediately after installing the SDK.

To test the results of your work, you can use the emulators and the other tools included in the development kit. If you create a program that needs to work on multiple phone types, you can test its aspect in multiple screen sizes.

The templates collection includes code written for C#, Visual Basic or C++ which enables multiple developers to embed them in their projects. These are useful both for beginners but also for the experienced users that want to quickly assess the SDK capabilities.

While it brings useful features for the developers, some of them might find it too demanding since it only works on Windows 8 64-bit computers. The phone emulators require Hyper-V which brings additional items to the requirements list.

If you want to develop modern applications for Windows mobile devices, the Windows Phone SDK is the tool to use. However, a top-notch computer is required to take advantage of all the tools included in the package.