Shortly after I got my Windows Phone I had the idea of creating an app that lets me remotely control my desktop computer. The reason for that was that lazy me needed to use a clumsy and error-prone full-size wireless keyboard and mouse when I wanted to surf the web from my couch, using the small media PC connected to my TV set. Wouldn't it be nicer to use the much more handy mobile phone as input device? Unfortunately the RTM version of Windows Phone was missing some networking features for that – using web services or http wasn't what I was looking for. The Mango release changed that, because TCP/UDP socket support was added to the platform. More...

Update 2011-11-17: A recent update for HTC phones is confirmed to fix the issue for the Trophy (firmware 2250.21.51002.161), Mozart (firmware 2250.21.51007.401) and HD7. The last remaining phone model affected (that I know of) is the Dell Venue Pro.

When I connected the Samsung Omnia 7 I mainly use for development and testing to Zune today, I received a notification that (yet another) Samsung update was available. I had updated the device to Mango very early already, and received a firmware update back then, so this was kind of unexpected. After installing the update, the newly reported firmware version on the phone is 2424.11.8.5. Curious about what has changed with this update, I ran a few tests, and the most satisfying finding was that this update has fixed the UDP bug I have posted about a few days ago. But wait, there's more! More...

Update 2011-11-17: A recent update for HTC phones is confirmed to fix the issue for the Trophy (firmware 2250.21.51002.161), Mozart (firmware 2250.21.51007.401) and HD7. The last remaining phone model affected (that I know of) is the Dell Venue Pro.

Update 2011-10-01: A recent firmware update from Samsung fixes this bug for the Omnia 7! Read more on the topic here.

Update 2011-09-30: This article is compatible with the final version of Windows Phone 7.1 "Mango". All the findings here are (unfortunately) confirmed using the RTW version of the developer tools as well as real phone devices updated to the final version of Windows Phone OS 7.5.

UDP is a popular protocol in networking when you want to establish simple communication that does not require all packets to be reliably transmitted. The fact that with UDP (unlike with TCP) all packets are transferred individually somewhat simplifies the application level protocol and algorithms required to parse the data on the receiving end (you can find a post of mine about TCP on the phone with sample code here). And finally, UDP is perfect for time-sensitive applications that want to have a pseudo real-time communication without the need to wait for dropped or delayed packets to arrive or be resend. With the Mango release, UDP support was added to Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, some of the fundamental benefits of UDP apparently are broken by the current implementation. More...