After a couple days of seeing the Windows Phone 7 technology unveiled at MIX10, seeing code-level demos, and getting a chance to tinker with the new WP7 dev tools, I’m hugely excited and disappointed at the same time.

On one hand, it’s mobile technology that can finally be developed with .NET and Silverlight-based technology. WP7 apps are Silverlight, for that matter. Windows developers are on the verge of finally being able to deliver great web apps (and by web, I mean everything not on the desktop - mobile, web API’s, etc) to life. We’re finally catching up to what the rest of the world is doing.

On the other hand, MIX10 has been nothing but a huge teaser for the technology. The dev tools have been unleashed along with a WP7 emulator:

That is very cool - but the emulator can’t do much more than what a plain old Silverlight application can. It shouldn’t be too surprising, but you can’t take advantage of features such as the accelerometer, GPS/location API, microphone, or speakers when using the emulator. For me personally, this means I can’t really try out SilverSynth on the WP7 yet.

In a nutshell, you can’t really take advantage of any really cool WP7 features with the emulator. Yes, there is the WP7 navigation flow and the concept of hubs - and we need to work with the emulator and get familiar with those concepts - but the really cool stuff is in the hardware, which we don’t have.

I also had a couple of opportunities to chat with Charles Petzold today at MIX10. He’s written the first book on WP7 development and has offered up the first six chapters of the book for free (for now ??) on his web site: http://charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html. He and I talked about the frustration we have with the limited emulator - and the hope that the content of his book remains relevant when developers are finally able to get their hands on real WP7 devices this fall.

At this point, the WP7 dev tools basically allow early devs to get a taste of what is coming down the pipe - to be ready for the real device later in 2010 and (likely) a revised set of dev tools when the real device arrives.

We developers are never satisfied. I mean, we’ve been given a WP7 developer tool set for free and an opportunity to develop for technology that isn’t even on retail shelves yet. It’s hard to complain… but yet we always want more.

Happy WP7 coding, and here’s to an exciting 2010 with more WP7 news to come!