Windows Phone 7 Devices

Good to see this is out! I've been using the iOS exporter for a good while now and have enjoyed some of my first real indie developer success with it. I'm also enjoying the heck out of being a beta tester for the Android exporter. On seeing the XNA exporter pop up I figured I should probably jump on this too, particularly in time for Windows 8's store, but I'm not sure how much money there is to be made on Windows Phone 7 and thus how much to invest in a device. I don't really want to spend money I can't make back quickly.

As of this moment I have absolutely no knowledge of Windows phones, since I've been an iOS and Android nerd for so long. I'm looking to find a device I can afford to take the risk with, something which should run the games relatively well but not break the bank... I currently have my eyes set on the HTC Radar:

http://www.htc.com/managed-assets/ww.../handphone.png

I can get one of these used for £120. 1GHz Scorpion CPU, 512MB RAM, which I think is about the same spec as the iPhone 4, which I use for my base platform, OR, Nokia Lumia 710...

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review...0bw-380-75.jpg

Which has 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU, 512MB RAM, £120 new.

How do you guys think there will fare? Am I aiming too low or is it a good idea to go for one of these?

What devices do you have, or do you intend to pick up?

I went for the Nokia Lumia 710

My friend keeps trying to put me off the lumia, talks about bad build quality, no dev support, dying brand, but he is an HTC fanboy... As long as it PERFORMS okay then I'm not nothered.

I'm in exactly the same position as you DistantJ.

I've noticed windows 7 phones have certain minimum requirements, those being a 480x800 screen, ARMv7 cpu, DirectX9 GPU, 256mb ram and at least 4gb of flash memory. With these in mind I'm actually thinking it might be best to get a 'low end' device so I can check my games will run ok on everything. Those minimum specs seem capable anyway in phone terms.

I got at home first grn Windows phone and there are some performance issues and built (no window scaling) but I can say that it works well.

The worst thing is that on XNA code framerate is separated from video framerate making it card to verify what dlows down. And yes built in framerte will show 50 FPS even if game runs 1-2 FPS...

Ahh, the minimum requirements of WP7 seem to be about the specs of the iPhone 4, so most low-end devices should be good to build for...

Like I'm saying hardware might be same, but software is totally different as well as language and you might be surprised how bad it performs on low end Windows Phone devices. I will try to find video which elaborates it a bit more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1cR569R-tU

Fast comparison of same project available in File Archive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fanotherpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1cR569R-tU

Fast comparison of same project available in File Archive.

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Which WP device did you use for the test?

Very first Windows Phone which was released by O2. Don't remember precise models now (as precise as I could described in the video description). Just wanted to make a point, that it will be slightly harder to compile on Windows Phone due to different XNA architecture which is PITA on low specs.

Crikey... Doesn't even seem worth bothering with WP7... lol

It is worth. But you have to think about WP7 as totally different platform more like XBOX rather than extra port on PC.