Submit your Mango app updates now and your 7.0 updates later

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With WP 7.5 Mango devices already rolling out around the world, like in Japan, Russia and France, it was only a matter of time before developers would be able to submit an update to their apps to work with the latest version of Windows Phone. As announced by Todd Brix on the official Windows Phone Developer Blog, you may now submit your applications to the Windows Phone Mango marketplace. For developers that are submitting updates to their existing apps that run on WP 7.0 the normal caveats apply; existing users with 7.0 devices will not receive the new functionality that comes with Mango-compatible version of your app, but they will be able to continue using the app as it is.

Unfortunately, as we've already known, this is going to be an annoyance for many of our hard-working developers who will want to update their existing apps to WP 7.5, and still update their apps for WP 7.0 users as well. Thankfully, by the end of October, that problem should be all but vanquished. The app submission process will be getting a nice change to provide developers with a dual-update path on their existing apps, meaning that they'll not be limited to adding features only for Mango device owners, but will now have a way to keep supporting their existing 7.0 users.

To help distinguish app feature-sets from 7.0 and 7.5 versions within the marketplace, a small text overlay has been created to be added to screenshots for all apps with a 7.5 upgrade path (shown above). Hopefully, this will help clear some of the confusion that users will have as they browse through app screenshots to see features that they can't access on their 7.0-based devices.

While it's nice that they'll be making this dual-update process available for developers, it's a shame that it will be so long before it arrives in October.  We can't expect them to make everything so easy on us, can we?

Source: Windows Phone Developer Blog  Thanks goes out to Terry for the tip!

WC Staff
WC Staff
14 Comments
  • So we are cheering for fragmentation now?
  • WTF are u talking about? it has been stated MANY times that ALL devices will be updated to mango so by the time the rollout is complete this will be moot and there will be no fragmentation and as of right now the fragmentation isn't as bad as it is in android and iOS.
  • Yea, not even close.... That is the biggest problem with Android.
  • MS wants developers to update their apps to Mango ASAP, but with the way it was, developers were holding off on doing that until most of the customers have upgraded to Mango. So I don't think this is to promote fragmentation, but it there to make the transition better (and encourage developers to start working on Mango versions sooner than later)
  • Fragmentation is inevitable, given that phones with smaller pixel counts are bound to arrive. And with Windows 8 next year WP devs are going to want to cash in on the tablet market. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go spend a few hours watching BUILD conference videos.)
  • u don't know what ur talkin about either MS has specified a MINIMUM of 480x800 for wp7 so so much for "phones with smaller pixel counts"
  • It sounds like Microsoft is planning for NoDo to still be on a large number of phones well after October. I hope Mango isn't going to be another long rollout.Don't get me wrong though, devs should have the ability to update the NoDo version. Just concerns me a bit that Mango could take a while to get into everyone's hands. To be fair, "Fall" doesn't end till almost Christmas so they have 3 months to get it out and still keep their promise.
  • No, customers on Verizon will still be on nodo till next year....
  • Kind of worrying though that this is a solution for the end of October. Isn't the idea that all phones should be on the same version by then?
  • Well, it's worrying for sure, but as long as the update comes out in the "Fall", it's not "late". I guess the badly botched NoDo rollout is still fresh in our minds so we're assuming the worst here.
  • Or maybe Microsoft is anticipating that many users will fail to update their phones, just like they fail to update Windows. You think they really don't know how many people out there choose not to update Windows?
  • If it wasn't for me, then my wife and my daughter wouldn't update their phones, so I can imagine a lot of people not updating the handset when mango finally gets pushed out
  • That's exactly it - I'm sure a lot of non-technical people just ignore the update pop-ups.
  • This is nice if apps start showing this. Then people will start pressuing the carriers to release it already.As we know, carrers will drag their feet unless they are making new money off it....