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Windows Phone SDK & Visual Studio Setup

I am using Visual Studio 2012 and Want to do Windows Phone Development on This Visual Studio so can anyone Suggest me Which WPF SDK Should I download , I download Windows Phone SDK 7.1 , but it is giving me an error and I can't install WPF 8 as it needs 64 bit OS and I don't have it, please suggest me some suitable configuration to work on 32 bit OS and 32 bit machine with Visual Studio 2012.

I don't want to install Windows Phone 8 SDK on my 32 bit machine I just want to know whether there is any solution exist by which I can develop apps in Windows Phone with Visual Studio 2012.

Solution

  • The possible solutions to develop for Windows Phone:

    • Get the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 and install the Express edition of Visual Studio (as the SDK is not compatible with VS 2012).
    • Get a machine with 64bit and SLAT support to install Windows Phone SDK 8.0.
    • Get the same new machine, but use VS 2015 Community Edition (free) to create apps for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10.
    • Use Windows App Studio (really, don't).
    • Get Xamarin, PhoneGap (or another cross-platform tool) and hope it works on your current machine, if not, get that new machine after all.

    Conclusion: Get a 64bit machine :)

    Note that while 7.1 apps will most likely run on later versions, they might not scale correctly to the new resolutions, have a few quirks and certainly you'll miss out on a lot of new features. If you start on a new app I'd recommend you to go for either 8.1 or even Windows 10 (depending if you want to support desktop-tablets and maybe even Xbox, HoloLens, ...).

    Compare it to Android: if you start on a new app today, you won't create a 1.5 (Cupcake) / 1.6 (Donut) / 2.0 (Eclair) app. I guess you'd go for at least 4.1 (Jelly Bean) for new features and drop the 5% of users that use older versions.