If you are doing Windows Phone development and you do NOT have Telerik’s Windows Phone control toolkit you are doing something wrong. For the price of a Windows Phone Store developer account (when not discounted) you can join Nokia’s Premium Developer Program. I have been in the program for almost a year and I’ll be renewing my subscription. The Premium Developer Program gives you the following:
- A Windows Phone Dev Center account (normally priced at $99, currently $19). You get a token for one year of membership to the dev center. This token can be used at any time. If you already have an account, you can use the token when the account expires.
- A free license for Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone. These controls and tools are priced at $99 per year (if you wish to receive updates). I have found this toolset to be very valuable. I have only used a few of the components, but it has well passed the $99 value.
- 12 months of access to Buddy.com. This cloud solution gives you one year of access to 1 million API calls per month. Buddy.com values this at up to $1200.
- Two tech support tickets with Nokia. a $198 value.
I have not used Buddy.com, but when Parse offers the same plan for free, I cannot say you get much value from the offered plan from Buddy.com. I have yet to use the tech support tickets so no value there. The price for a dev center account is normally $99. They currently have an offer (ending in about a week) that lowers the price to $19. Being in the program did save me the normal $99 cost to renew my dev center account. That alone made the Premium Developer Program worth the cost. The real value for me is the Telerik RadControls license. I plan on doing some posts on a few of their controls that I have used. I can easily say that this toolset, along with the free Windows Phone Dev center account makes the Nokia Premium Developer Program well worth it.
This toolset is a must have for any Windows Phone developer.
Disclaimer: I am not, and was not paid by Telerik nor Nokia for this post (but I wouldn’t mind if I do :).