3. Read the Docs Understand the policies that represent the requirements all applications need to meet in order to pass certification testing. The Windows Phone 7 application certification requirements are posted at http://developer.windowsphone.com. All the policies and requirements are documented in detail. Spend 30 minutes reading the documents to save yourself a lot of time in the long run.
4. Know Your Iconography Section 4.6 (Application Screenshot) Screen shots should encompass the full 480 x 800 dimension, must be a direct capture of the phone screen or emulator and need to represent the correct aspect ratio. Section 4.5 (Windows Phone Marketplace Iconography) Avoid using the default Windows Mobile icons. Including a panorama background image is optional but recommended. This will enable Microsoft to potentially feature your panorama image on the Marketplace catalog to help improve your application’s visibility (with the likely result of more downloads).
5. Support Information Section 5.6 (Technical Support Information) Until 31/10/2010, it is recommended that applications include the version number or support information (for example a URL or email), which is easily discoverable by end-users. Modify your applications now to help plan for 1/11/2010 when this test case will be enforced.
6. Toast Notifications Section 6.2 (Push Notifications Application) There must be the ability for the user to disable toast notification. On first use of HttpNotificationChannel.BindtoShellToast method, the application must ask the user for explicit permission to receive a toast notification.
7. Apps Running Under Lock Screen Section 6.3 (Applications Running under a Locked Screen) This only applies to applications that continue to execute when running under the locked screen and does not apply to applications in a suspended state. Prompt the user for explicit permission to run under a locked screen upon first use of ApplicationIdleDetectionMode.
8. The Back Button Section 5.2.4 (Use of Back Button) Back button behavior is one of the most typical failures. A common failure is pressing the back button during application runtime exits the application, instead of returning the application to a previous page or closing the presented menu or dialog.
9. Themes Section 5.1.1 (Multiple Devices Support) Avoid controls and text washing-out by testing applications with the Theme Background set to “light”.
10. Languages Be sure that the application description and the text the application displays to end users is localized appropriately in the target language.
11. Failures Upon Upload There is a validation tool that assesses your application upon upload to the Marketplace. One common failures is: Error 1029 – Your XAP in missing an interopmanifest. Make sure the interop syntax is specified in the manifest file. If the account does not have permissions to run interop, this error message will also be generated.
12. Windows Phone Developer Tools Be sure to use the RTM version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools. Applications built on previous tool versions will fail testing.