Windows Phone 8 Development Internals: Phone and Media Services

Summary

In this chapter, you examined the different levels and types of app platform support for integrating your app with standard features and services on the phone. Built-in apps such as the camera, email, browser, search, and connection to the Windows Phone Store are all exposed by a consistent set of wrapper classes that take care of the complex internal behavior and cross-app hook-ups, all while providing a developer-friendly API surface with which to work. The app platform also provides three broad categories of API support for building audio and video features into your app. There are three main classes for media playback at varying levels of flexibility. Audio input via the microphone and low-level manipulation of audio data is enabled through a second set of classes. Integration with the phone’s media hub is enabled through the XNA MediaLibrary class. With judicious use of these APIs, you can easily build a very compelling, media-focused user experience into your app. Additional MediaLibrary extensibility is covered in Chapter 16.