What framework does Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 support?

Question

What framework does Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 support?
I could not find much information about this online. But I have heard that WP7 did not support the full framework. If so what are the limitations in terms of frameworks for WP7 and WP8?

Bonus question:
Is the programming of WP7 and WP8 limited to C#? If not what other programming languages can be used?

Answer 1

Each edition of .net has it's own .net profile. Well-known .net profiles include the "client profile", Silverlight, Windows Phone, WinRT, compact framework, etc. The "classic" .net profile is the .net full framework used on the desktop (WinForms), server (WebForms & WebServices). Though The .net desktop edition itself has to contend with framework version differences (1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 4.5, etc).

Windows Phone 8 is a branch from Windows Phone 7. Which is a branch from Silverlight 4. Which was a branch of Silverlight 3. Which was a branch from Silverlight 2. Which was a branch from the CoreCLR profile. Which was a branch from .net 3.0. All the while into each branch would start off from the previous branch and also pull in selected changes from the .net desktop edition. and other profiles.

So, what version of .net is Windows Phone 8 running? Windows Phone 8 .net profile. That profile is branched of Windows Phone 7 profile and is heavily influenced by .net 4.5, WinRT and Silverlight 4. Not confused enough? Same deal happens with the XAML format.

There's a great project on Codeplex that you can download and examines the content of .net profiles and versions.

Answer 2

Windows Phone has it's own custom framework (based on Silverlight in 7.x). Each phone OS version supports its own feature set.

You can see the supported versions for 7 and 7.1 on the main MSDN help (for Silverlight) - for example, see Color . At the bottom:

Silverlight for Windows Phone

 Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0 

The Windows Phone 8 API reference documentation is separate.

Answer 3

To tackle the bonus question, you have the following programming options

Windows Phone 7.x: C#/XAML, VB/XAML, XNA

Windows Phone 8: C#/XAML, VB/XAML, C++/DirectX

Windows Phone 7 applications will run on Windows Phone 8 devices (with very few exceptions).

I have a post on the support of various features (across Windows 8 as well) that may help decipher the documentation of API, which is admittedly scattered throughout MSDN