Windows Phone 8 Emulator

One of the advantages of developers in .NET technologies is that we often have access to new features long before the rest of us mortals, that is, end users.

"

Thus, at BUILD 2012 just held the week before, the Windows Phone 8 SDK was finally released to the development community ; although it had previously been released to a small number of testers around the world, and later to MVPs (Most Value Professional)."

Now, while the new Nokia and HTC devices arrive, presented on October 29, to the Spanish market, we can launch the emulators that include the new SDK to see what the differences are with an LG with Windows Phone 7.x.

Hyper-V emulation technology

Windows 8 has many new features and improvements, but for computer professionals one of the most interesting features is the inclusion of a Hyper-V virtual machine clientAlthough it is true that you have to have a computer with the physical capabilities to support this hardware emulation technology, the majority of today's computers also include these capabilities.

This is relevant because the emulators, which are four in different resolutions, are really Hyper-V machines that are launched within templates that Visual Studio runs.

This way we can be sure that we are accessing a Windows Phone 8 device, with the native operating system on emulated hardware but very adjusted to reality.

What's new in Windows Phone 8

The first thing that jumps out at us and what tells us that we are on a Windows 8 phone is the form of the ">

Entering the phone's call settings we find something new that is very useful for everyone, since nobody almost ever calls themselves: our own phone number telephone.

In the Contacts application, included in the system by default, a new way of grouping our contacts has been added in addition to groups, which is called rooms and where we can chat and share information with our family and friends.

In the messages application, the type of attachments that we can send has been increased, so from the current WP7 that only allows us images from the library, we can now send videos, a map with our location, notes from voice - sound recording in mp3 - or a contact from our phonebook.

When we are in Internet Explorer with the mobile configuration in Spanish, when entering an address it offers us by default that the geographic suffix is ​​. It is , not like in wp7 that it always was . com .

The previous XBOX Live application has now been separated into two different ones. On the one hand, the Zune disappears and Xbox Music and videos arrive, which uses the Xbox Music service. On the other, we have access to the play area that is similar to that of WP7.x including the 3D avatar and all the information related to our console account.

Regarding the Office Suite included in the operating system, the first sign of changes is the replacement of the Office 2010 icon with that of the 2013 versionThe main change in the suite is that in the locations they have changed the connection with SharePoint for access to email attachments.

On the other hand, access to One Note has its own icon on the Windows Phone 8 start screen, but it has lost notepad management, at least in the emulator. I hope that this option is available on the devices, it is very useful for those of us who write a lot of notes. On the other hand, the creation options have increased by a couple of options.

One of the most notable novelties is ">configure what things children can access and what things they can install This way we can safely leave our device to any of our small beast creatures without being able to cause damage or access restricted material.

Finally, to end this tour, we are presented with the application of ">

In short, we are facing an operating system that is visually very similar to the previous one, but that brings many novelties and improvements, without taking into account that It is a new platform where the number of applications in the Store is expected to continue to grow at the current rate, but with the capabilities that can now be accessed.