A lot of blogs have been showing off and talking about new Windows Phone 8.1 features that are the big picture features I love like Cortana, Action Center and even the new Calendar views.

A week ago I splurged and upgraded my Lumia 920 to the Lumia 1020. So to those of you who were expecting me to switch over the Android or an iDevice; I'm still entrenched in the Windows Phone world. And this phone cements my opinion to stay.  Let's talk about the good and the bad.

Today I picked up a Lumia 1020. I am impressed with the camera as you'd expect but I am also loving the size. It's about the same size as the 920 except for the extra camera bump. It feels lighter than I expected. The AMOLED screen with Gorilla Glass 3 looks great too.

Today Microsoft is finally releasing the new Windows Phone 8 SDK. As I've been updating my Windows Phone book for this new incarnation of the device, I am excited that the SDK is finally going to be available for public consumption.

So the Windows Phone event is over and I’ve had time to digest it somewhat and read between the lines. At the time (for those who read my twitter feed), I was quite reactionary and upset at much of the news. Most of this what as a user of a Windows Phone, not as a developer of a Windows Phone. Do note that another caveat is that I am an author of a Windows Phone 7.5 book, and the thought of my book being suddenly obsolete was upsetting as well (but that happens every time one of my books passes the new car smell line). So let me talk briefly about what I think about the news from both a user and a developer on the Windows Phone platform.

UPDATED: Changed links to be universal, not US specific.

A lot has been made since a report from Microsoft late last week (http://shawnw.me/HPEh0R) that seemed to say that Silverlight on the phone was going away in Windows Phone 8 (Apollo). I liked a lot of what this article had to say (from e-week):

My new article in DevProConnections Magazine is now live. If you want to see the top ten features of Windows Phone 7.5 (according to me), go see the article now!

So the Windows Phone Marketplace hit 40K apps. What does it mean to the platform? There are a number of articles out there that talk about the 40,000 apps and compares them to other platforms but I think they are missing a key differentiator.

As many of my readers know, I’ve been neck deep in the Windows Phone. More recently, I’ve been digging into Windows 8 development as well. On my most recent trip, I spent quite a bit of time with the BUILD tablet. Good news is that it’s a pretty good piece of hardware. Even though it’s not ARM, I am still getting a good four hours of battery life. This version of Windows 8 is early but I do think there are some things that Windows 8 should learn from what they’ve done with the Windows Phone. Here is a short list of what I think the team should look at on the phone:

After my recent post on Periodic Agents, I had a number of people react to specific parts of the API. Let’s discuss each of these separately.

URL: MangoAlarms.zip

I am currently reading the Mango (Windows Phone OS 7.1) version of my Phoney Tools project. But I have a particular problem: I need to maintain both a 7.0 and a 7.1 version of the project builds. You might have the same issue with your own project so I thought it’d be a good way to show off some special features that Visual Studio has to help you solve these sorts of situations. Essentially my goal was to maintain one set of code but build both sets from the same source.

Yes.

In finishing up my new Windows Phone book, I had to deal with the confusing version problem. There are three version numbers to be aware of:

Url: http://www.atlantacodecamp.org/default.aspx

Url: http://phoney.codeplex.com/

Url: http://shawnw.me/fT1Y5v

Url: http://phoney.codeplex.com

Url: http://phoney.codeplex.com

Url: http://phoney.codeplex.com

Url: http://phoney.codeplex.com

Url: http://www.vimeo.com/20362526

Url: http://phoney.codeplex.com/

Url: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ee720180

Url: http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&i...

Url: http://www.msdnevents.com/wp7

Url: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=185584

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/debuggingtombst...

Url: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpde...

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/wp7childwindow.zip

Url: https://agilitrain.com/Workshop/Info/Silverligh...

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/wp7odatamovies.zip

Url: http://devlink.net

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/lottophone.zip

Url: http://www.devlink.net

Url: http://www.atldotnet.org/default.aspx

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/PhoneListWithTr...

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/xboxbrowser.zip

Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/phonexboxbrowse...

Url: http://agilitrain.com