Microsoft’s applications on Windows Phone 7 Series not Silverlight-based

Following a lead from a xda-developers.com forum thread whose users have analyzed the Windows Phone 7 Series emulator ROM with CSI-like forensics, a question that is now obvious in retrospect was raised, “are Microsoft’s own applications on Windows Phone 7 Series based on the same development platform it exposes to third parties, Silverlight?”

As I found out today at MIX10 the short answer is no, with a fairly legitimate explanation.

The reason the “default” applications on Windows Phone 7 Series are not built on Silverlight is actually a very straightforward technical problem, the applications were simultaneously developed with the platform and tools when they committed to building the operating system from scratch.

Although it might seem the grass is greener on the other side, Microsoft insists neither users or developers should be concerned as the public-facing Silverlight platform comes with no disadvantage to third parties.

In terms of performance, they state there is no discernible difference in the processing or rendering speed of third party applications. On the other hand, the breadth of APIs could have some differences but developers of other smartphone platforms like the iPhone face this too. Microsoft vows to surface additional APIs if developers voiced their needs.

Microsoft wasn’t able to confirm or deny the use of the “Iris” or UIX framework, but references to UIX in the ROM dump would strongly suggest so. Appropriately, Rafael Rivera is starting a series of posts that dives into the technicalities of Iris.

11 insightful thoughts

  1. How about APIs for text duplication and reproduction so I can take a URL from the browser, put it into a url shortener, and share it from a Twitter app…
    Or if I want to quote a portion of the article above and then write a comment about it in this comment box below…
    Or if I wanted to copy a funny quote I received in a txt message and share it via email…
    Or do the same thing from twitter to txt message…
    Or if I want to share the fact that I’m a fan of Parliament Funkdelic and want to look for lyrics to Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication and then make a #ZuneTune tweet about it…
    Or if I want to share a squence of driving directions from one location to another, located on a company webpage, and send them via txt or email…
    Or if I understand that without copy and paste, URL shortening services will not be very useful on this new mobile platform…
    Or if I simply expected the basic function of copying and pasting text to be included from the beginning…

  2. Which also begs the question? What language is Office Mobile 2010 written in on WP7S? Breaking compatibility with native apps was a bad decision IMO.

    1. wonder if they will just give us download tokens with the wp7 phones instead of preloading

  3. Haha, Classic one Solar257!
    I cant believe they *ucked this up so good.
    I knew there would be something, and copy n paste really is a big thing.

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