Which WP 7/7.8 homebrew apps work on WP 8?
Afaik, the waze app still works, but besides that, its fairly minimal.
Short version: Anything that uses native code (has a WPInteropManifest.xml file) won't work on WP8. WP7 used COM interop for native code, while WP8 uses Component Extensions (CX) to C++. However, even if the COM interop works on WP8, the native component itself won't; the native libraries are too different.
Stuff which doesn't use any native code is likely to work on WP8, but there's not much interesting homebrew that was purely managed code.
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Hi,
Write file access on Windows Phone 8 is very restricted. In fact 3rd party apps can only write pictures to the public picture folders. Other types, such as music, documents, or video folders cannot be accessed.
Are there hidden API calls available for accessing these folders (I am aware that applications using these APIs will probably fail Marketplace submission)?
Greetings,
Yes, there are but you need special permission from MS to use them.
Do you have more details about these API calls?
No...not really. I know there are APIs for everything we can't do as ordinary devs, but MS only releases these to certain groups (typically recognized development studios).
These include:
Native compiled APIs, to use with C++/C#
Appointment API (other than live calendar)
Bluetooth APIs
and some others.
thanks, this really explain a LOT of things.
Do you have an idea how to get access to these APIs? I already tried it with the MS developer support but they say that they don't know
I don't know exactly. But you can't get them through the usual ways. Maybe if you send them a physical letter asking xD?
There are native APIs accessible to regular users. You can read all Calendars since WP7.5 and starting with WP8 you at least can create a new Appointment in a Calendar but only through a Task so the user has the ability to edit it and he must confirm it. Bluetooth-APIs are also open in WP8 although not everything can be done through them.
There might be additional APIs you can gain access too if you work with Microsoft directly. I would suggest you contact one of the Microsoft Dev Champs near you (there is a "Find my Champ" App in the Marketplace) and get into contact with him.
But unless your App gains special permissions through Microsoft even though you might know about those APIs your App would not be able to use them.
And then they cry that Google won't give them the API for a youtube app....the irony
The problem with YouTube is more that there are APIs but that YouTubes Terms of Service prohibit using those APIs for competitors in the search engine space. So Microsoft is specifically prohibited because they own Bing. I hope you can understand the difference but I have a feeling you won't.
Thanks for all your comments. Please don't abuse this thread with company bashing because the situation is often more difficult than it seems. Thanks :good:.
I think wp8.5 may see some more APIs open up. Wp8 is rushed and many existing APIs on win8 simply does not exist on wp8.
Ms is taking a more cautionary approach for APIs as they don't want junior devs mess up the phones user experience like they did with Android.
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hi.
If there's currently no way to make a wp8 rom for the lumia 710 would it be possible to somehow run unsupported wp8 applications on it ?
i mean if WP8 ported on HD7 , can i install WP8 apps on my HD7 ?
Apps which are written for WP8 specifically (that is, they use the new APIs, new capabilities, and new language support) will pretty obviously not work on WP7; it's like asking whether an app which requires Windows 95 will run in DOS or even Windows 3.1. Apps which are written using the WP8 SDK but only rely on features present on WP7 *might* work - you could try modifying the app's manifest, and then re-packaging the XAP and sideloading it - but I expect there would be problems even so. The WP7 SDK uses .NET code running on the Silverlight and XNA frameworks; the WP8 SDK uses .NET code or native code, and does not target Silverlight or XNA specifically (although at least parts of both are included in the .NET framework for WP8 apps).
If the WP8 app you wanted to use used only those portions of the WP7 SDK (including languages, capabilities, and APIs), it *might* be possible. I've heard somebody (might be ansar?) is working on this; I'm not sure.
How can you port wp8 on HD7 ?? I mean is it worthy enough to do that??
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Although (contrary to what Microsoft implied) the HD7 and other WP7 phones are technically capable of running WP8, we don't have the tools necessary to port it over (so far as I know; I don't pay much attention to the ROM scene). Without a port of WP8, or at least its app runtime (which would probably be at least as hard as just bringing the whole OS over), you won't be able to run WP8 apps on your WP7 devices.
GoodDayToDie said:
Although (contrary to what Microsoft implied) the HD7 and other WP7 phones are technically capable of running WP8, we don't have the tools necessary to port it over (so far as I know; I don't pay much attention to the ROM scene). Without a port of WP8, or at least its app runtime (which would probably be at least as hard as just bringing the whole OS over), you won't be able to run WP8 apps on your WP7 devices.
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Technically, yes WP7 phones can run WP8, but practically not so much, because WP8 requires the secure bot chip. While you can work around it, it's very tough.
WP7 is using a CLR based on the old .Net Compact Framework with Libraries based upon Silverlight 4/XNA4. WP8 moved over to the Core CLR that power Silverlight 4/5 on the Desktop and the full .Net Framework on Desktops/Servers. This quite often lead to compatibility problems with WP7 Apps running on WP8. So even if no new APIs are used it would be pretty problematic.
The most important part about WP8-Games that don't run on WP7 is that they are likely to be developed using native code and DirectX and WP7 is missing support for that completely.
How many of you think in such a way. I mean the freedom we get in Windows RT is actually what an average user want with security. Heard WP Blue will share winRT APIs and other codes. So does that mean we will see freedom and app like file explorer limited to personal files, ability to have 3rd party audio and video players with full media api access ?? In short the sandbox model if Windows RT in WP...
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Vishwal said:
How many of you think in such a way. I mean the freedom we get in Windows RT is actually what an average user want with security. Heard WP Blue will share winRT APIs and other codes. So does that mean we will see freedom and app like file explorer limited to personal files, ability to have 3rd party audio and video players with full media api access ?? In short the sandbox model if Windows RT in WP...
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It might be possible.
The plan is to get it there, I am not sure if Blue will bridge the platforms completely or just some APIs.
mcosmin222 said:
It might be possible.
The plan is to get it there, I am not sure if Blue will bridge the platforms completely or just some APIs.
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I hope it's former part of your last sentence. I want to operate my smart phone, not vise versa...
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It would be nice. I don't wholly agree with Microsoft's approach to RT, either, mind you. I think that restricting things like Testsigning mode and kernel debugging and third-party drivers is harmful to the platform from a developer standpoint without providing any benefit to either Microsoft or the users. I think the restriction around desktop apps is silly and should be optional, even if the option is well hidden and/or contains dire warnings. I'll put up with those restrictions in return for Microsoft's current laissez-faire attitude about the "jailbreak", but even then I find the "secure boot" lockdown insulting; we bought the hardware and the software it comes with, and should be able to run whatever other software we want to on it.
With all that said, the RT world is miles ahead of the WP world. I'm not suggesting they should bring the desktop to WP - it's actually possible, and while it would be hard to click things the specs and resolution on the higher-end phones are more than sufficient - but some kind of file manager (or even the ability to write our own), some kind of scripting environment (closer to powershell than TouchDevelop), and some of the core utilities and features of Windows (ability to back up any and all files automatically, or to set per-app and per-sound device volume controls, or to create symbolic links in the filesystem) would be really nice, and full access to the registry would be fantastic.
The issue of security does become relevant here - I don't want any arbitrary app to have such registry access, for example - but I wish they would put in some way to do such things, even if only through a built-in special-privileges settings app. Besides, eventually we will find a way into the OS, and there's a decent chance that the exploit used will be something that *any* app could use. At that point, we might very well find malware exploiting those holes. Historically, the biggest breaks in device lockdown have come neither from malicious attackers nor from those who wish to pirate apps/games/whatever, but from those who simply want to use their own devices without BS restrictions getting in the way. The most famous example in recent histroy is probably the PS3, which was broken wide open after Sony seriously (and foolishly) pissed off some people by retroactively removing device features such as the ability to boot Linux. However, the same act plays out regularly on iOS (where the goal is control, but once the hacks are demonstrated they get used for both malware and piracy) and has also already been seen on RT.
If you want to make something secure, don't give the most talented people (who only rarely work for the blackhats or the pirates) an excellent reason to break its security wide open. This means the security has to stay out of those users' way, instead of constantly impeding them.
I actually would like to have the desktop available on WP as well but not necessarily if you are using it as a phone. But imagine connecting it via HDMI and having RT Applications + Desktop available. The hardware power is there, given that current WP8 devices run the same Qualcomm SoC that Dell uses in the XPS10.
API-wise I expect them to bring a lot more of WinRT over to WinPRT (especially on the managed side). I'm not sure if they will extend it to system-level concepts like a shared file-system - my feeling is that they won't do that but we'll have to wait and see how the APIs to access the SD card are progressing.
While I agree, the downside of doing that is that it greatly increases the install footprint. Windows RT has a much larger install footprint than other "mobile" OSes, and it has hurt platform adoption somewhat as well as increasing the manufacturing price of the tablets it runs on (because they need more storage; 16GB wouldn't really cut it). WP8 is even more space-sensitive; there are already WP8 devices with very little internal storage, and many phone lack any kind of expansion port. Adding the desktop and all of the desktop utilities (management console and all its snap-ins, all the little utilities like paint and wordpad and so on, plus all the libraries needed to support them) would add up to probably at least another few hundred megs; trivial on a PC, acceptable on a tablet, problematic on a phone.
I'm creating a Qt app so I thought I could publish it in the Winstore as well. But Windows is such a one big mess compared to Linux that I simply can't set it up.
I installed VS Community 2013, with the Emulator images, WinStore package management tools and the Qt SDK. I added the C:\Qt\Qt5.5.0\5.5\winphone_x86\bin to PATH, copied my program written with use of Qt Quick Controls.
I built the app with the Qt Toolchain for the WinPhone emulator. Is there any way to deploy the app directly to the emulator?
I knew no such way, so I tried generating a VS project. Even though Qt is in the PATH, qmake complains about uuidgen missing. What should I do with it?
To be honest, I'd rather deploy to the emulator directly from the Qt Creator.
It's pretty easy to deploy apps to the emulator. Just use the standard Application Deployment tool (it's installed with the WP8.x SDK, you can find it using Start search) and select which emulator configuration you want to deploy the app to, then select the .XAP or .APPX or whatever and hit Deploy. Bear in mind that the "emulator" is actually an x86 VM running on your PC; you'll need to compile any native code for x86 ("Win32" though technically that's an API used on many instruction set architectures, not an architecture itself) to use in the emulator, but to ARM (actually THUMB2) for the phone.
With all that said, I haven't heard of anybody trying to write a WP8.x app using Qt before. It might work if the compiler knows how to target the correct platform and how to bundle up the installable app and everything, but I haven't ever tried or heard about anybody else doing so.
GoodDayToDie said:
It's pretty easy to deploy apps to the emulator. Just use the standard Application Deployment tool (it's installed with the WP8.x SDK, you can find it using Start search) and select which emulator configuration you want to deploy the app to, then select the .XAP or .APPX or whatever and hit Deploy. Bear in mind that the "emulator" is actually an x86 VM running on your PC; you'll need to compile any native code for x86 ("Win32" though technically that's an API used on many instruction set architectures, not an architecture itself) to use in the emulator, but to ARM (actually THUMB2) for the phone.
With all that said, I haven't heard of anybody trying to write a WP8.x app using Qt before. It might work if the compiler knows how to target the correct platform and how to bundle up the installable app and everything, but I haven't ever tried or heard about anybody else doing so.
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Well, it appeared to be a problem of VirtualBox. It doesn't support nested virtualization and thus Hyper-V is not detected as supported.
Yeah, that wouldn't work; the WP8 emulator uses Hyper-V and requires hardware virtualization support.
You could just get a test device; even brand new the Lumia 5xx series can be had for under $100 US. Used ones are cheaper. I think BLU and Huawei also have some very low-cost WP8 handsets.
GoodDayToDie said:
Yeah, that wouldn't work; the WP8 emulator uses Hyper-V and requires hardware virtualization support.
You could just get a test device; even brand new the Lumia 5xx series can be had for under $100 US. Used ones are cheaper. I think BLU and Huawei also have some very low-cost WP8 handsets.
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Well, I managed to copy Flash.vhd from the Win8 fs and have it booted in VirtualBox on Linux host. The only problem is that I don't know how to copy an app to the phone machine.
The Windows Phone SDK (installed as part of recent Visual Studio versions, though I think you can still get it stand-alone) includes an "Application Deployment" tool (xapdeploy.exe). It uses USB, so you have to forward the USB device from your host to your guest VM, but after that it should work.
what are homebrew apps ...are they like accent color...which can be used to change color of interop wp devices........ like wp tweaks....or anythong other////please explain....
Are you just asking what people mean when they say "homebrew apps"? The short answer is "anything that must be sideloaded instead of installing from the Store". Generally speaking, homebrew apps use unapproved APIs, enable privileges that third-party apps normally don't have, require privileges that third-party apps normally don't have (meaning they only work if you used the previous kind), or were rejected from the Store for some other reason. The examples you list are, indeed, all homebrew apps.
If you are asking for something else, please clarify. Also note that there was a long period without a lot of homebrew development, but it's picking up again after the recently published hacks enabled interop on more devices, and there are more good things coming soon.