Microsoft was kind enough to release the software development kit for
Windows Phone 7 Series on Monday, and although there was some fun to be had by scrolling around and exploring, much of the cool stuff the company showed off at
MIX last week is not included -- or is it? As it turns out it's in there; only a little help is needed to unlock 'em and then all those magical hubs start them spinning for your enjoyment, including a few things not seen before. Most notable? A comprehensive looking file explorer and even a task manager, something a bit curious given the OS's
effective lack of multi-tasking. The unlock was discovered and initially distributed by engineer Dan Ardelean, but he has since recanted and pulled the required file. Naturally, though, it has been mirrored in numerous places, links to which can be found at the xda-developer forum if you'd like to try this yourself. Just keep in mind that this is a far from final version of the OS, so don't be too disappointed if it doesn't quite
pop like it does when
Anna or Luca use it.
Update: A couple
videos of the unlocked features have been upped by
TechAU.tv, head over to check 'em out..
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted March 19th 2010 6:58AM
file explorer and task manager! what do you know.. copy - paste might start workin tomo... ^_^
Just wanted to put this out there, You guys never bothered to let us know that the first version of WP7S WILL NOT have silverlight OR flash support in the browser....and yes this is true, I checked on the emulators for their developer tools and they also state it in some of the separate sessions....im sure people would have wanted to know about that too..
@abedinthehouse
Did you miss the dozen posts saying WP7S wouldn't have flash at launch?
I'm disappointed about Silverlight though.
@abedinthehouse uh? It was talk about here (more than 1 week before the official annoncement in Feb!): http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2010/02/06/more-windows-mobile-7-rumors-grab-some-salt/
@jon
I must have because I have no recollection of it. I mainly remmber people nagging about the lack of multitasking and copy&paste all over the comments..hmm, looks like I should may more attention
@Ripper
I am seek of engadget insisting wp7's lack of multitasking. This lack is based on engadget's specific definition of multitasking.
Multitask means multiple tasks at a time and that is what WP7 does. It just limits 3rd party applications to a suspend-activate multitasking model while running some OS services in normal (as in PC operating systems) multitasking mode.
Call me unaware and uneducated if you like.
BTW my PhD is in computer science.
@wmac
Good Lord, man! You're starting to sound like Mack Stone and his obnoxious cries of "The iPhone multitasks just fine, just not with 3rd party programs!"
"Suspend state" multitasking is worthless unless there is a way to ignore that push into suspend mode and have the program literally run at the same time in the background. I want to be able to use a GPS app while Pandora is running.
@Mike10010100
I thought I heard someone that Pandora was one of the 'special apps' that would permit multitasking as it would appear under the music hub. I could be wrong but I could have sworn I heard this somewhere.
@Mike10010100
You may want that but you cannot call it lack of multitasking because it is technically a multitasking.
@wmac
Technically, if you want to be an ass, sure, it's multitasking. However, it's not very useful, unless you plan on only using Microsoft made standard issue apps for the rest of your time owning the device. I'd prefer to have the freedom to have multiple apps that I want to use running at the same time, as on Android.
@Bengal34
Yeah. That'd be nice. I'd prefer it if EVERY app that wanted to be a "special" app could, in fact, be one, and not have it decided by Microsoft.
@Vigo Inst it funny how 90% of your posts point to MobileTechWorld?
@wmac WP7S supports multitasking period.
Even in 3rd party apps. I tried it out myself on the emulator. See screen-shot http://www.scinotes.org/images/wp7_running_bg_apps.png
Run a app then press the windows key, the app goes into background and keeps running. It might be put into a suspend state depending on how much RAM and system resources are left.
MS just wants to discourage developers from making apps that go into background and hog the resources, they want the developers to use the push-message based apps so that more resources are available to foreground apps.
@Mike10010100
There IS a way for apps to run fully in the background, the developer docs that were leaked talked of multiple processes running and a priority tree.
@davidmuful
ahhh ok, makes sense...Ive been watching all the MIX10 videos, none of the Chanel 9 ones...looks like I need to take apart another day or two to get all those through.. =/
multi-tasking could just be down the road. If people really make a big deal out of it (like they're doing now), it might be added sooner rather than later.
Alright, monkey! Get to coding!
@sweet greggo
Haha agreed! Actually... I had 3 generations of HTC phones - all modded thanks to the wonderful contributors (monkeys) within the xda-developers! They rock! Looking forward to multi-tasking, cut-and-pastable, and ridiculously graphic-rich interface in my next htc w7 phone!
So it's running 1 third party app and all the required first party apps in that test and using 6% CPU and 107MB. I'm guessing the CPU and RAM is the lowest standard for the phone (1GHz Snapdragon and 512MB RAM). I can see the RAM is 424.5MB but I have no idea how the emulator works out the CPU since it's a different arch and all.
@xsacha
So you're seeing an incomplete list (there's more on the task list that isn't visible) of tasks running on an emulator meant to be used for debugging (so there's some debugging services and the like running too).
And who knows it might be doing some prefetching like Win7 does, releasing RAM when applications really need it but preloading things if there's unused resources.
@xsacha
This screenshot reminds me why I got rid of my WinMo phone after 2 weeks and went back to a Samsung dumbphone that could at least make calls and not hang constantly.
further shows how cool a task manager can be.
Also very interesting: there is voice input in search and even a text-to-speech engine. If you don't talk after pressing the speech bubble at the Bing bar, there is a female voice helping you how to say commands.
Okay, so WP7S is hackable. So does anyone still care about the lack of copy'n'paste or multitasking? I don't.
neiter do I:P, and copy and past will come later
@gamemanx: which is something mentioned by both Mary Jo Foley and Long Zheng...
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20100318/windows-phone-7-series-will-have-copy-paste-eventually/
@mschmidler Agree, just like jailbreaks free up the full potential of the iphone, a hacked image will sure make WP7S the ideal platform. oh good memories of flashing WM6 ROMs...........
Microsoft, what else did you hide there for us?
Come on guys, it's WinCE6 underneath, of course the OS has multitasking much like the iPhone has. The "'lack" of multitasking is the same as the iPhone - for third party, user installed 'apps'. It's an artificial limitation designed to create a predictable, reliable and smooth experience like the iPhone. If multiple user apps were allowed to run in the background (as they are today on a
@MarkA
^^ this
The iPhone SDK is also full of private frameworks and API's that allow all kinds of neat stuff like multitasking, wifi scanning, actually anything the hardware can handle. It's not that Apple themselves or developers of Cydia applications use a different 'secret' SDK or anything. Only problem with such private API's is that they are mostly undocumented, subject to change, might not work on all models, and, last but not least: they will have your application revoked from the marketplace if you use them (which can be easily detected).
I'd wager that Microsoft will also restrict access to private API's and functions for marketplace applications.
Finally, someone who gets it.... +1
@drange
"I'd wager that Microsoft will also restrict access to private API's and functions for marketplace applications."
I wouldn't take that bet.
The real question is, will MS call people who "jailbreak" their WP7S phones terrorists?
@drange I haven't coded for the iPhone, but yeah, my understanding is that you can write a 'proper' app yourself but you can only install it directly onto jailbroken devices. If you want to write an app and sell it in the store, you have to play by the rules. AFAIK, that's pretty much the model MS are using/copying/stealing...
@drange
Indeed, Microsoft will probably only allow usage of managed code (.NET in this case), and there won't be managed APIs for things they don't want you to do. Then they just have to disable P/Invokes to make sure you're not accessing non-managed dll's, and they're fine.
Perhaps later on they'll release some native development kit (if .NET performance is lacking seriously), and screen your API usage like Apple does.
@jon Microsoft says it won't let you into the store if you do so much as override the back button in your app, and they're testing every app against "business, techincal, and content" policies, just like the big A.
Trust me, they're not allowing jailbroken apps.
@MarkA
They have never said it didn't have multi-tasking.. It is a multi-tasking OS. What they did say is that they will "not allow third party applications" to run in the background except in specialized cases.
And yes, the iphone OS is multi-tasking as well.
Locking down the resources to third party applications is not an attempt to make you all cry, they are trying to make their phones function well : )
@Nilay Patel: Ah, but is there anything the folks at XDA can't do?
(besides getting OpenGL to use the hardware in the original HTC Touch/Vogue, anyways)
Guys, the emulator is a .bin compiled from ARM! Yes, that's right ARM. Just like the Android emulator, it emulates the ARM compiled binary for x86.
So yes, this .bin can be modded and flashed to a real device. That is, you just need drivers (and possibly disabled 'emulator' flag).
... 6.5 device), then you'd get the same issues of random slowdowns whenever a background task decides to do something a bit stupid.
@MarkA
"guys, it's WinCE6 underneath"
"Update: The dll's seem to be ARM too, and the subsystem is definitely CE7.0."
Oh geez. Ofcourse it has a freaking task manager. Not to help you multitask at all, but to debug your program. It's the developer tools, you see? You can check how many resources your application is taking, and take action if you feel it is necessary.
I wasn't aware they were going with CE7.0 since the benefits of 6 over 5 are already legion and game-changing. Still the point remains, this isn't some kind of single-process OS they've come up with. Did people really think that when you were playing BubbleBobble, your device wouldn't be able to receive emails, texts, calls in the background?!
@MarkA
Based on the level of both technical knowledge, and common sense displayed in some of the comments recently, I'd say that's exactly what a portion of the readership thinks.
By the time WP7 gains copy/paste, multitasking, the iPhone will be 5 years old just like jobs said. Which to me means, why would I want to jump to a buggy OS from MIcrosoft if Apple already perfected it 3 to 4 years ago, why not just get the real deal from start.
@keymaker1
Just my two cents.. but copy and paste is dated UI mechanism that does not really fit the mobile platform. I have never written an application with the idea that people would copy and paste to or from it. If they click on a word or highlight a sentence there should be actions that I think they would want to do with it... Maybe it be to translate that text, search that text, mark it as their status, send it as a message.
Or on the other end my application might be setup to tell the os some services I can do based on it's own hotlink actions.
Because third party applications are meant to be sandboxed for the most part it makes more sense from an experience perspective to automate these things instead of forcing the user to close your app and open another one just so they can copy some text into it.
Anyhow that is my view..
@incendy +1
@incendy
-1
@incendy
0
I was lucky enough to get the simulator unlock when it was available (only a short period of time). I've created some videos of the Windows Phone 7 interface. The first of general apps, the second of all the settings, there's a number we haven't seen before.
http://www.techau.tv/blog/10-minutes-with-windows-phone-7-simulator-unlocked-video
At this point I have no plans to get a Windows 7 phone...uh, phone.
Is 6.5 a big mess? Oh yes.
-but it's -=MY=- big ol' mess with which to do pretty much as I please.
@stridermt2k
I have similar feelings about Symbian.
I'm thinking maybe long term Android might be the best mess/freedom balance (or maybe even S^3/4 is they get their stability/UI act together).
I'm sure WM7/iPhone OS are great if you are happy to do what they let you do (which to be fair is a lot), but that isn't enough for.
+ this feels like a good opportunity to take a viable alternative to Apple and Microsoft's dominance of OSs in general.