Can we install a Windows Phone 7 SDK developed app on Windows Phone 8?

Question

Please suggest somebody. I am new Wndows Phone developer. Can we install Windows Phone 7 SDK developed apps on Windows Phone 8?

I have installed Windows 7 on my system and when I tried to download and install the Windows Phone 8 SDK, Microsoft says Windows 8 is required for the Windows Phone 8 SDK. Here is the download link for the SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=35471

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You said it yourself. You have Windows 7 installed on your system and the Windows Phone 8 SDK requires a system with Windows 8 installed. So, the answer is no.

If I'm not mistaking, apps that were developed using the Windows Phone 7.5 SDK kan be 'converted' to Windows Phone 8 apps. For that you will have to open the 7.5 solution in Visual Studio 2012 with the new Windows Phone 8 SDK installed. I don't know for sure if this works but this worked for covnerting Windows Phone 7 apps to Windows Phone 7.5 apps.

Answer 2

Of course, all Windows Phone 7 apps can run on Windows Phone 8.

Answer 3

When you have Windows Phone 8 SDK you can develop app for Windows Phone 7 also. WP8 have a some new features. When you don't use this features app will working on Windows Phone 7 succesfully. http://www.phonearena.com/news/Will-Windows-Phone-77.5-apps-work-on-Windows-Phone-8_id34959

Answer 4

If you want to develop apps for Windows Phone 8, you have to update your OS to Windows 8, then the installation of WP8 SDK will work.
If you don't want to install Windows 8, just download the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK and use it on Windows 7. Apps developed for Windows Phone 7 will work just fine on Windows Phone 8 devices.

Answer 5

Just to make a clear answer: yes you can. I do this all the time. You will need a 64bit Windows 8 machine with the WP8 SDK on it (which includes the 7 SDK) to be able to deploy your WP7 app to a WP8 phone. it works the way it always has: just hit run from VS (only difference is that you don't need Zune to deploy to a WP8 device). You can also use the WP Application Deployment tool to deploy any .xap file outside of VS2012 (even if it was built on a Win7 machine, but you still need Win8+WP8 SDK to deploy with that tool).