Created my first Windows Phone app

After getting a Lumia 900 last week, I decided to write an app for myself. One of the complaint that I had is that I need a minimum 4 taps to dial a number from a contact list, something I would like to avoid when I am driving. I can pin a few my most frequently used numbers to a tile; from there I can dial them with 2 taps. I set out to write an app and hope I can dial 30-40 number in 2 taps. The hear is the idea:

1. I group my phone number in groups, such as family, friends, colleagues, etc.
2. I display the groups using the panorama control and phone numbers within each list in a list control.
3. I need a tap from the tile to start the application. I may or may not need a swipe to get to a contact. I do another tap to dial the phone number.

It turned out that I need another tap after I tap the phone number. The reason is that the PhoneCallTask does not trust me; it prompted me to confirm if I really wanted to dial the number. I hope Microsoft can make this a policy that can be granted when the application is installed.

I am an experienced WPF and Silverlight developer. This is my first Windows Phone app. I hoped I can write this app is a couple of hours, but it turned out that I spent almost a whole day to learn unique features in Windows Phone. The WindowsPhoneGeek.com site is immensely helpful. So here are a list of things that I learnt through this simple app:

1. Panorama control and data binding to panorama control.
2. Windows Phone Toolkit ContextMenu control and reference the tapped item from the context menu click handler.
3. Application bar icon button and menu.
4. WP7 navigation framework and pass an object from a page to another page.
5. WP7 built-in theme resources.
6. PhoneNumberChooserTask and PhoneCallTask.
7. WP7 application and page events.
8. WP7 icons, application icon, background icon, marketplace icon.
9. WP7 Isolated Storage.

These appear to be minimum to get started with an app. I was able to deploy my app to my phone. I cannot deploy to my app to marketplace yet. That is because I unlocked my phone with my employer’s account but I could not possibly release my app to the marketplace using my my employers account. I either have to pay $99 to get my own account, or release my source code to make arrangement to have someone else release the app for me.

[Edited 5/3/2012 to add some pictures]