WP7 Device Limbo

I have finished another app and I am currently working getting the material for app submission. Unfortunately, I have been in device limbo and have been unable to send anything to my phone to test for the past week. Initially I thought it was the demo gods acting up because I wanted to do some demos of my app to some friends.

I have been a WP7 developer for more than a year and my first thought was that I forgot to renew. A quick check of my bank statement indicated that I had paid up. The other curious thing was that the test apps I did have on the phone were saying they were expired and then disappeared.

Thanks to a post in the AppHub by AdamDawes.com, I was able to restore the phone, but the process was far from intuitive. So what did I have to do?

1. Go the my dashboard on AppHub and chose Windows Phone. One thing I noticed on this page was that there was little information. I needed Adam’s help to find the secret door.

2. Click on your name in the upper right corner. Not what I would call obvious.

3. Click on devices. Even though I had paid and registered a few times, it still showed my phone having an expiry date in the past.

4. Next hint from Adam. Click Remove. and re register the phone.

It worked like a charm and I have been able to load my app and do a real test. Somehow shaking a laptop does not give the same user experince as shaking the phone. Unlike the emulator, the phone is much faster and some of the areas I thought would be slow were not even noticible. Other areas, like loading the SplashScreen appeared reasonable on the emulator, but need to be slowed down ofr the phone.

So, Microsoft. The “hidden” door for the user account is NOT a great user experience. If you do collect money from us, at least update the device expiry dates.

John Marshall… Visio MVP       Visio.MVPs.org