How to Specify a Target Version For Windows Phone

This article shows how to specify a target version for Windows Phone. Microsoft has released Windows Phone 7.0 and the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK where the application development can be targeted based on the needs. Applications developed with Windows Phone 7.0 can continue to run on the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK by simply upgrading to the latest version of the SDK. We can target the Windows Phone 7 OS initially at the time of developing the application by using the tool provided with Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

With the Windows Phone 7.0 SDK, the applications that are developed can run on the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK by simply migrating the application to the latest version, whereas a Windows Phone 7.1 SDK targeted application can run on the lower version whereas the new features that are available with the latest version will not be available. Basically we have backward compatibility to develop the applications.

Let us see how to set the target version in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE in simple steps.

Steps

Open Visual Studio 2010 IDE in Administrator mode and create a new Silverlight for Windows Phone project as shown in the screen below.



On providing the project name and the location, clic on "OK"; to get the Target version pop-up to select the Windows Phone SDK version that the application is targeted (basically Windows Phone 7.0 or Windows Phone 7.1) as shown in the screen below.



Now selection of the platform required for the development will target the respective SDK and we can proceed with the features that are available with the respective SDK. If we want to upgrade from the Windows Phone 7.0 to Windows Phone 7.1 SDK anytime then we can do that by going to the properties and changing it directly. To do that, we need to open the Windows Phone 7.0 application in Visual Studio 2010 IDE and select the properties of the project (right-click on the project and select properties) and you will see the Target Windows Phone OS Version on the right side where you can change it as per the requirements as shown in the screen below.



Selecting Windows Phone OS 7.0 or 7.1 upgrade, we will see the upgrade dialog box that confirms the upgrade as shown in the screen below. Click on "Yes" and proceed further to upgrade to the respective versions.



If we are going to target an application development that runs both on Windows Phone 7.0 and Windows Phone 7.1 then we can create an application in Windows Phone 7.0 and run the application in both of the versions of the test devices and we can see if everything is working good.