Last year when working on some Windows Phone 7 projects i thought it was a good idea to change the skin of the Phone emulator of all the developers in our team for screenshots and demos. I created a project on codeplex and gathered all the skins i could find on the internet into a simple app where people could switch from the default skin to a Lumia 800, HTC device or Samsung phone for example.
When Windows Phone 8 was announced i received a lot of questions from people to update the skin switcher app to support Windows Phone 8 and finally today i had time to finish this project and upload version 1.0 on codeplex.
In the Windows Phone 8 Emulator Skin Switcher you can choose between 17 different skins from all currently available Windows Phone 8 devices. The app works the same way as it did for Windows Phone 7. Just start the skin switcher, select a skin and restart your emulator. You can select up to 3 different skins at the same time. 1 for each emulator resolution.
Available skins at 1.0 release:
- WVGA
- WP8 Default
- HTC 8S Blue
- HTC 8S Orange
- Nokia Lumia 820 Black
- Nokia Lumia 820 Cyan
- Nokia Lumia 820 Red
- Nokia Lumia 820 White
- Nokia Lumia 820 Yellow
- WXGA
- WP8 Default
- Nokia Lumia 920 Black
- Nokia Lumia 920 Grey
- Nokia Lumia 920 Red
- Nokia Lumia 920 White
- Nokia Lumia 920 Yellow
- 720p
- WP8 Default
- HTC 8X Black
- HTC 8X Blue
- HTC 8X Neon
- HTC 8X Red
- Samsung Ativ S
You can download the Windows Phone 8 Emulator Skin switcher at codeplex here:
http://wp8emulatorskins.codeplex.com/
If you’re still working with Windows Phone 7 you can use the old Windows Phone 7 Emulator Skin Swicher which is also available on codeplex
If you have any feedback or if you’ve created a skin yourself and would like to have it added to the application let me know by adding a comment here or contact me on twitter
Happy Coding and testing using your skinned Windows Phone 8 emulator!
Geert van der Cruijsen
