Register Phone for Windows Phone 8 App Development

This Windows Phone 8 app development tutorial shows using Windows Phone Developer Registration tool and how to register your Windows Phone 8 smartphone as a testing and debugging device during your WP8 app development period. Windows Phone developers can also read official documentation on how to register developer phone for Windows Phone 8 app development at this MSDN tutorial too. But in this document, programmers will also find details for my case on how to troubleshoot Windows Phone registration error shown below:

Error communicating with the Windows Phone Dev Center. Please set the correct date and time on the phone, check the Internet connection on device and try again later (ErrorCode:0x64)

Run Windows Phone Developer Registration Tool

On Windows 8 Start screen, start typing Windows Phone Developer Registration. And among Apps, launch Windows Phone Developer Registration tool to register your phone for Windows Phone 8 app development and test process at Windows Phone Dev Center.

Launch Windows Phone Developer Registration tool on Windows 8

Phone Registration Prerequisites for App Development

When Windows Phone Developer Registration tool is launched, on start screen app developers will be informed shortly about the phone registration process and prerequisites.

A Windows Phone developer must complete the below prerequisites to successfully register phone for debugging and testing Windows Phone 8 apps:
A current developer account at Windows Phone Dev Center,
A Microsoft ID (Live ID or Hotmail account, etc.) and password associated with the developer account,
A Windows Phone device connected to a Windows 8 computer, powered on and screen unlocked

Register Developer Phone using Windows Phone Developer Registration Tool

Click Register button to unlock your phone for Windows Phone development, testing and debugging on a real smartphone device rather than an WP8 emulator.

As seen in below screenshot, the next step in Windows Phone Registration tool is to log in to Windows Phone Dev Center using a valid Microsoft ID and password which is registered as a Windows Phone developer account. You should have paid the annual fee for Windows Phone developer account before for testing your WP8 app on a real Windows Phone 8 device.

After you provide valid developer account credentials, Windows Phone Developer Registration tool tries to register your phone and unlock it for testing and debugging tasks.

Unfortunately Windows Phone Developer Registration tool fails to register my Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 smartphone at first. With a great dissapointment, I pressed the Retry button a few times before I read the registration error details.

Error communicating with the Windows Phone Dev Center. Please set the correct date and time on the phone, check the Internet connection on device and try again later (ErrorCode:0x64)

The date + time settings on my Windows Phone 8 device (Nokia Lumia 920) was correct, I googled on the web for a solution. And at last I came up with a solution on my case.

To troubleshoot this problem, you can also try to enable Wi-Fi connection through Windows Phone 8 Settings app and connect to a valid Wi-Fi connection.
Then re-try all above steps by calling the Windows Phone Developer Registration tool and login to Windows Phone Developer portal using your Microsoft account.

I read on Windows Phone Developer forum that on Windows 8 operating systems running on 64-bit (x64), the first time phone registration always fails. So press Retry button once more :)

If the above steps did not help to you during registering your Windows Phone 8 device for Windows Phone app development, to get more help on Windows Phone registration troubleshoot, please refer to Windows Phone Dev Center forums.

Developers will be able to see their registered devices on Windows Phone Dev Center Dashboard when they log in to portal with their Windows Phone 8 developer account. As you see the maximum number of phones to register for Windows Phone 8 app development is 3.

Registered phones listed in Windows Phone Dev Center for Windows Phone App Development