Windows Phone Dev Centre will now allow multiple XAPs for the same Windows Phone 7 and 8 app

Windows Phone Dev Centre will now allow multiple XAPs for the same Windows Phone 7 and 8 app

January 16, 2013 | By Surur

Here is an interesting development for Windows Phone Developers. The latest improvements to the Windows Phone Dev Centre allows developers to basically publish two different apps for Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 under the same name, with different app descriptions and screen shots.

This allows developers to target the new features and APIs of Windows Phone 8 without having to worry about maintaining compatibility with Windows Phone 7.

On the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Bernardo Zamora writes:

One of the key advantages of multiple XAPs per app GUID is that you can associate different metadata, such as long description, with each XAP. [...] And you don’t have to worry about your app showing up twice or end users finding the wrong version for their device. Our catalog detection will show your 7.x app to those with Windows Phone 7 devices and the 8.0 app to those with Windows Phone 8 devices.

Windows Phone users will only be shown the version of the app applicable to them.

Read more about this new feature at the Windows Phone Developer Blog here.