Since my wife's phone died, had to get a new phone and I used this opportunity to try out a Windows Phone 7 (Samsung Omnia) so that I could try my hand at developing some apps.
The last time I tried out a Windows Phone or rather Windows Mobile was a few years ago and deploying an app was a breeze. So, started off with the same expectation.
Did some reading and figured out that I needed the Windows Phone SDK, Zune (to connect the phone to Windows).
Connected the phone and Zune started up but realised that my live id had limitations and got the following error "The location setting for your Windows Live ID doesn't match the setting for your computer (United States)." Changing regional settings and locale did not help. There is a codeplex tool to fix this - http://localizune.codeplex.com/.
Now, decided to test some apps and realized you actually need to pay $99 even if you just want to test out some apps on your phone! So, gone are the days when you could actually write code and hit F5 to deploy it to your mobile. Once you have registed with App Hub (by paying $99), you need to register the phone.
Launched the Windows Phone Developer Registration tool and get another error message "Unable to connect to phone. Please check that the Zune software is running and that Zune's sync partnership with your phone has been established". After spending almost 2 hours did the customary reinstall (of Zune) and was able to register the phone.
Now the phone is ready to accept custom applications!
