Windows Phone Thoughts: Some of the Things Windows Phone 7 is Going to Lack

"While Windows Phone 7 (WP7) sounds intriguing as a platform for iPhone-type applications, TechEd 2010 was very illuminating on the many things that this new platform does not include and why you will unlikely be able to migrate your existing Windows Mobile applications forward. Let me go through the laundry list of the have-nots..."

Image courtesy of WMexperts

Moving to a completely new platform - and that's really what Windows Phone 7 is, despite it still be based on Windows CE - means having to start over. And having to start over means, at the start, things will be missing. From a developer's point of view, this is where things can get painful. The list of what's missing is pretty long, but some of them we already know, namely the lack of native code. If you're making games XNA Game Studio is a great tool - but if you're not making games, you're going to code in Silverlight, and that has a laundry list of limitations that go along with it. All told this is a pretty negative article - time will tell if creative developers can work around the limitations and deliver great apps. And, hopefully, Microsoft is keenly aware of what developers want next, and will add it.