What is the development experience for Windows Embedded Handheld?

Question

With the release of Windows Phone 7 almost upon us, I was wondering if anyone had details of the other successor to Windows Mobile - Windows Embedded Handheld?

The roadmap had release in the 2nd half of 2010 but I have yet to see or hear anything about the platform and what it's development experience will be. As it's built on Windows Mobile 6.5 I'm not expecting a great deal of differences in API/SDK/features but wondered if anyone knew anything about whether development will be in Visual Studio 2008 or 2010?

Enumeration

Answer 1

WEH is really just WinMo 6.5 re-branded anyway, at least in the first incarnation, so the experience until some other big announcement is going to be the same as it is today.

I'd not expect to see anything VS2010-related for Windows CE (or WEH) at any point this year. My expectation is that we'll not hear anything on that front until CE 7 is actually released (and it's a VS08 plug-in). My money would be that we'll hear in the MIX 2011 timeframe.

Herculean

Answer 2

Check out the executive white paper from microsoft on this topic back in June. On the bottom of page 4 it says the next release coming next year will take advantage of Silverlight and XNA. Sounds sort of like Windows Phone 7 but possibly different? May not know the answer to this for while.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/handheld/future-version.mspx

Wonderment

Yes but there is also supposed to be a release this year which will be a bridge between WinMo6.5 and next years Silverlight version – Enumeration

That interim is likely to be VS 2008 still and add things like Silverlight for Windows Embedded. I can't see it being based on VS2010 when the upcoming Platform Builder 7 still isn't. – Herculean

Yes, there is already a couple of devices that have been released in the last couple of months. At least one is from Motorola. They are basically WinMo 6.53 and you definitely need VS 2008 and WinForms. So it's hardly an interim, really just a name change. – Wonderment