Developing for HTC HD2
A while back I had the pleasure of taking part in development of a small game for HTC's HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5, which I must say wasn't a stroll in the park. I have broken this post into two parts one about development and the second about the phone.
Before we got started on developing a small graphic hack was performed greatly increasing the performance - around 500%! And I must say that was necessary, see the comparison film.
After the huge increase in performance development could begin. It turned out quite troublesome, since it's like developing games in windows forms. So, it's not that programmer/game development friendly.
Now I haven't used a touch phone before, so I admit it might take a bit of getting used to. That said, I found it more difficult to write a text than I had expected. Hit wrong keys, did double presses, and I couldn't feel my way as on a regular keyboard. I've given up wearing a watch, since I have my mobile on me anyway. I often bring it out of my pocket to have a quick gaze on what time it is. The problem however, is that it displays the last shown time before it went into standby (black screen) and then takes a slight delay before it actually updates to the current time. Quite annoying that time isn't updated before it's shown. I really don't want to be given false information, since I before I noticed this had already slipped it back into my pocket - suddenly 10 minutes lasted quite longer ;) Also, time or a watch is something you just gaze at quickly I really don't want to wait for it. Sticking with time, there is a nice old school calendar clock (see the picture below), which has some nice animation for when the time changes.
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In the beginning I found the animation really cool and I think the developers did as well 'cause every time I go into some menu and back to the home screen the clock has been pushed back 1 hour and some minutes, just so they can do the cool animation, which after a while isn't that cool anymore, but rather an annoyance. Lastly, I haven't been able to configure the build-in mail service to use the GPRS network for my mail when no Wi-Fi is in the vicinity..
Stepping a bit back from all my criticism it's really a nice phone it just ruins the experience encountering these small annoyances.
Windows Phone 7 (WP7) seminar
With WP7 it becomes possible to develop applications across computers, Xbox 360, and Windows Phones. Microsoft is holding a seminar Thursday the 17. of June at Fisketorvet focused for developers who want a sneak peak on WP7 development platform.
Seminar is held in English. Sign-up here (free).