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Hey,
i´m currently wondering if i should go for the Lumia 920 or the Note 2.
There is the everlasting app question that´s holding me back, so, if anybody could give me a headsup if the following is available ...well, it would be nice:
1. An app/tool like myphonexplorer (http://www.fjsoft.at) to a) write sms on pc b) backup these c) sync
2. is there a vnc server available (did not find anything) for winphone? or is this possible with winphone8?
3. I´m aware that there´s no real notification center - but what if you have a news app installed (say cnn for example) and some breaking news is coming in. is there something like a popup on ios/iphone?
thanks in advance
1.) There is no local sync functionality with Windows Phone. All PIM data has to go through ExchangeActiveSync which means GMail/Outlook.com or another MailServer like Exchange. SMS can be backed up to the Cloud although there is no export functionality (Apps can't access a users SMS in WP8).
2.) There is no VNC server as Apps can't access other Apps visual state. I don't know why you would need a server on the phone anyway. Looking through the Marketplace brings up several VNC Clients, I didn't test any of them though.
3.) There are Toast-notifications that pop down from the top of the screen. Those are displayed for a set amount of time (some seconds) and then vanish (or you can swipe them away to make them disappear before that or tap on them to be taken to the App). Aside from that there are tile-notifications that display info on the Live Tiles. Which of those features an App uses and how information is displayed on the tile is up to the App's developer.
Thanks for your answers, which lead me to one more question:
Is it safe to assume that (sadly) such a tool like Airdroid (http://airdroid.com/) will never see the light of the day on wp8?
I´m asking all this because i don´t always have my phone in my hands and accessing most of it functions via a browser was a *huge* plus in the past for me (especially with the mentioned aidroid).
With the current official APIs it's not possible. Perhaps someone could hack something like this in the future but as always I would not count on this. It didn't happen for WP7 for sure.
So in the end I guess that's a no.
Hi,
Write file access on Windows Phone 8 is very restricted. In fact 3rd party apps can only write pictures to the public picture folders. Other types, such as music, documents, or video folders cannot be accessed.
Are there hidden API calls available for accessing these folders (I am aware that applications using these APIs will probably fail Marketplace submission)?
Greetings,
Yes, there are but you need special permission from MS to use them.
Do you have more details about these API calls?
No...not really. I know there are APIs for everything we can't do as ordinary devs, but MS only releases these to certain groups (typically recognized development studios).
These include:
Native compiled APIs, to use with C++/C#
Appointment API (other than live calendar)
Bluetooth APIs
and some others.
thanks, this really explain a LOT of things.
Do you have an idea how to get access to these APIs? I already tried it with the MS developer support but they say that they don't know
I don't know exactly. But you can't get them through the usual ways. Maybe if you send them a physical letter asking xD?
There are native APIs accessible to regular users. You can read all Calendars since WP7.5 and starting with WP8 you at least can create a new Appointment in a Calendar but only through a Task so the user has the ability to edit it and he must confirm it. Bluetooth-APIs are also open in WP8 although not everything can be done through them.
There might be additional APIs you can gain access too if you work with Microsoft directly. I would suggest you contact one of the Microsoft Dev Champs near you (there is a "Find my Champ" App in the Marketplace) and get into contact with him.
But unless your App gains special permissions through Microsoft even though you might know about those APIs your App would not be able to use them.
And then they cry that Google won't give them the API for a youtube app....the irony
The problem with YouTube is more that there are APIs but that YouTubes Terms of Service prohibit using those APIs for competitors in the search engine space. So Microsoft is specifically prohibited because they own Bing. I hope you can understand the difference but I have a feeling you won't.
Thanks for all your comments. Please don't abuse this thread with company bashing because the situation is often more difficult than it seems. Thanks :good:.
I think wp8.5 may see some more APIs open up. Wp8 is rushed and many existing APIs on win8 simply does not exist on wp8.
Ms is taking a more cautionary approach for APIs as they don't want junior devs mess up the phones user experience like they did with Android.
Sent from my RM-820_nam_canada_246 using Board Express
I am a hardcore Google user. I have an android phone and tablet and lots of google stuff online. My phone is getting old, and I was thinking of trying out something new.
Couple questions:
1. Whats the equivalent of "rooting" on wp8, if any?
2. How would you go about "rooting" your phone.
3. Are there any recommend phones for general use+development?
Julian90090 said:
I am a hardcore Google user. I have an android phone and tablet and lots of google stuff online. My phone is getting old, and I was thinking of trying out something new.
Couple questions:
1. Whats the equivalent of "rooting" on wp8, if any?
2. How would you go about "rooting" your phone.
3. Are there any recommend phones for general use+development?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. There is no equivalent of rooting at this time, as Windows Phone is much more locked down than Android (comparable to iOS) and there aren't as many devs working on it
2. Nothing yet, but its very easy to developer unlock it to side load custom made apps
3. You are probably best off getting a Nokia, either a cheap (~$100) Lumia 520 or a higher end like the Lumia 920/925/928 (I'd go with the 1020 if you can afford it). Windows Phone is very efficient, and runs almost as well on lower end hardware like the 520 as it does on higher end.
If you are really a hardcore Google user you are likely to find Windows Phone lacking as Google is intentionally keeping their programs and services off the platform (at least first party, nearly everything can be accessed through third party apps).
I made the switch, and I love it, but Windows Phone is not for people that want to constantly tweak everything because it is locked down. I used to love to tinker, now I love that I can't.
Yeah... WP7 was eventually broken wide open, but WP8's lockdown has been harder to bypass. There's a few devices (Huawei W1?) for which people have reported being able to edit the stock ROM somewhat, which is probably usable for "rooting" the phone, but none of the high-end devices have a known working exploit yet.
Developer-unlock, which will allow sideloading low-permission (no special capabilities, just the standard public ones) apps, is available for free, but you have to use PC tools to do it. Get the WP8 SDK from Microsoft (free, but a big download) and run the Windows Phone Developer Registration tool. Unless you pay for a developer account, there will be a very low limit on the number of apps you can sideload.
I'm actually personally pretty happy with the Samsung ATIV S phones; they have the best hardware in many ways (biggest battery, biggest and nearly highest-resolution displays, biggest internal storage that also has an SD card slot, best currently-available-in-WP8 CPUs) and you can install many of the Nokia apps anyhow (you can also install the Samsung apps on Nokia phones, same for HTC, etc.) using a proxy to modify the store requests. However, for a budget phone, the Nokia Lumia 52x line is hard to beat, and for camera quality, the Lumia 1020 is the best smartphone available, bar none.
There's plenty to do if you like to tinker with the phone... the problem is, you have to find it all yourself. There's not that much, aside from things like using a proxy to get apps intended for different OEMs' phones, that we've found to work so far. I've written a neat app that lets you browse the visible parts of the WP8 file system and registry from your PC (see my signature, it's the webserver app) which I hope will help people find something exploitable to get full Admin privileges on the phone, but so far, that hasn't happened. There's lots of other potential exploit vectors too; people just need to find them and make them usable!
Like GoodDayToDie said, it's NOT rootable. End of story.
As an experience goes, though, I switched iOS -> Android earlier this year because I was firmly in camp Google. I seemed to have problems that most other users did not, but all in all it was a miserable experience. After about 4mo switched to WP8.
For reference, on the phone; I use Google Maps, Google Voice, GMail, Contacts, Calendar, and search.
Contacts, Calendar, and mail all sync smoothly with built-in stuff. Search is an app, and it can't take Bing's place on the search button.
There's not an official Google Maps app, but there are apps in the Store that offer it. After about 6w now, I'm mostly using Nokia's Here stuff for mapping though.
Google Voice is available as a third party app. I was using Metrotalk. It was better than GV on iOS but inferior to GV on Android.
For what it's worth.
Except, you know, the part where it's nothing at all like a desktop OS.
No support for arbitrary applications or running as Admin. No file browser or registry editor. No command prompt or built-in scripting engine. No third-party background services (officially, at least; unofficially it's possible if you can work with the low permissions) or multiple windows at once. No task manager or management console. No device manager or third-party drivers. No user installer or recovery tools. No way to uninstall updates or make disk backups. No way to pass a file directly to another application (it must go through a registered extension handler, which the other app must be selected as the handler for). No multi-user support. None of the standard Windows power management tools. No OpenGL support, or ability to manually update the drivers. No support for external mice (or really for any mice, properly speaking). No support for USB host mode (that I can see, at least not in the base OS). No support for Windows networking or VPNs. No (built-in) support for remote desktop. No printing. The included version of Office is very limited compared to the full thing. No way to change the default web browser, email client, or several other such things. No support for installing new system media codecs or fonts. No way to choose what store a certificate is saved into, to export a saved cert, or to delete a saved cert.Browser has a limit of six tabs, no Flashplayer, and no Tracking Protection [Lists] feature.
Windows Phone 8 has about as much to do with Windows 8 as Android has to do with Ubuntu. In fact, it has significantly less, from the user's perspective.
some Noob's experience with WP8/ Nokia 928
Some other problemsthat i have stumbled on while trying WP8 for past 2 days, Nokia 928.
1. Ringtones and txt messages are changeable but notifications sounds for other programs are not (i.e. metrotalk - client)
2. Using public wifi that requires a comfirmatory click on their acceptable use page - Broken - works first time for me, then every time after it constantly loads up "w w w.msftncsi.com/nsci.txt" and the phone is constantly asking if I want to continue connecting to that wifi hotspot - Annoying.
3. Internet explorer is the builtin browser ( with some 3rd party UC browser, Surfcube 3D browser) but NO chrome nor firefox, - some pages load weird, especially if you choose desktop mode.
Images that appears in the browser search in IE 10 or UC browser, using bing or google comes back blurry, until you choose to open that one pic in full size image , but then you can't scroll through the result of images until you go back, at which time the images will sometimes not load, mind you this is on wifi.
4. No native Google voice apps - Metrotalk is good but you have to go through some hoops to setup push notification (ie having the app be able to notify you of txt and voicemail without actually having that app open), and you can't change the notification sound of Metrotalk as stated above
5. No file browsers
As I said, this is my experience with the phone and WP8 for the last 2 days, YMMV
Is MAP (to sync SMS and E-Mails, possibly the Calendar to devices such as Navigation Systems (Kenwood, Ford, BMW) or Smartwatches (Pebble)) functional on any WP 8 device in any version (GDR2 / GDR3)?
According to some articles, Nokia wanted to (or did already) implement MAP as part of the "Transfer My Data" App?
(e.g.) wpcentral.com/nokia-adding-bluetooth-support-message-access-profile-map-future-update
Wondering if I could get, or expect MAP Support for my Ativ S.
Transfer My Data is indeed supposedly capable of transferring SMS. It's possible to install it using a proxy to spoof the device ID.
I don't know how easy it is access such things through third-party apps, though. I also don't know about support for any of the devices you mention. If it's not available now, it's probably coming in WP8.1, expected early next year (about when GDR4 would otherwise be released) although I suppose it's possible that it's part of the next "service pack" style update, which mostly adds a bunch of business-y stuff (S/MIME email, mobile device management rules, VPNs, etc.)
When developing an application for desktop windows, there's always a way to access functionality - sometimes through back doors like the registry, etc... I'm developing an application for Windows Phone 8.1, but there are certain pieces of functionality that aren't exposed in the PRT APIset that is available to me. For example, we want to ensure that the user has password protection on the lock screen when using the application. There doesn't seem to be any associated APIs to readily use. So my question is, are there back door ways to do such things? How? Is there a way to access ALL system settings - like a registry or something of the like?
proch said:
When developing an application for desktop windows, there's always a way to access functionality - sometimes through back doors like the registry, etc... I'm developing an application for Windows Phone 8.1, but there are certain pieces of functionality that aren't exposed in the PRT APIset that is available to me. For example, we want to ensure that the user has password protection on the lock screen when using the application. There doesn't seem to be any associated APIs to readily use. So my question is, are there back door ways to do such things? How? Is there a way to access ALL system settings - like a registry or something of the like?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Another question would be - if something like intune can enforce lock screen password policies, shouldn't I be able to do it the same way that intune does it? If so, how? If not - why not?
It's not possible to check if user enabled lock screen password or not as far as I know
but if you want to made your app secure (because it may include important data)
you can create a password for your own application !
I did it in a little notepad app my password page allow user to set a password with all English and Persian Characters , numbers and special Chars like [email protected]#$ and etc.
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It's pretty easy to check, using the registry, but at least in 8.0 that's not allowed at all for store apps (your app would get rejected). I don't know if the rules changed for 8.1. There are ways to sneak past the store checks, but they could pull your app from the store if they ever found out. I know of at least three ways to access the registry APIs (4 in WP8.1) and two of them are pretty hard to detect unless somebody checks for them specifically... but they're the kind of technique that malware uses, so such checks may be in place.
I don't know what InTune is doing, specifically - I'd need to pull the app apart to see - but there are special application capabilities (not normally available to third-party developers) that can query and even set policies. Apps without those capabilities will get Access Denied if they try to use the same methods though, and normally you can't add those capabilities to your app.
GoodDayToDie said:
It's pretty easy to check, using the registry, but at least in 8.0 that's not allowed at all for store apps (your app would get rejected). I don't know if the rules changed for 8.1. There are ways to sneak past the store checks, but they could pull your app from the store if they ever found out. I know of at least three ways to access the registry APIs (4 in WP8.1) and two of them are pretty hard to detect unless somebody checks for them specifically... but they're the kind of technique that malware uses, so such checks may be in place.
I don't know what InTune is doing, specifically - I'd need to pull the app apart to see - but there are special application capabilities (not normally available to third-party developers) that can query and even set policies. Apps without those capabilities will get Access Denied if they try to use the same methods though, and normally you can't add those capabilities to your app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this great and detailed information. See, that's exactly what I'd do if I were developing a desktop app - since i know that intune does it, I'd figure out how intune does it and voila. I'm finally getting over the idea that the same methodologies apply to windows phone development.
For my own educational purposes (since I want to understand this platform better), I would really like to know specifically how you go about accessing the registry APIs (for example). If there's any way for you to describe any number of these methods, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks again!
My NativeAccess libraries (check my signature, or search on the forum or on Codeplex) contain an example of one way to access the registry. The code is open-source; you may use the libraries as-is (don't expect to get them into the store, though I won't stop you from trying), use the source code as a reference, or modify/build them yourself; the license is very liberal (MS Permissive). The functions I use are generally documented on MSDN, in the desktop APIs section; the phone has the same functions, although the DLL names are changed and the header files hide them.