Is a mobile subscription necessary to test apps on an actual Windows Phone 7 device?

Question

I am planning on purchasing the new HTC phone running Windows Phone 7, and am planning on using it for development purposes only; however, I can't afford the expensive subscription to T-mobile's data network at the moment. Is a cellular subscription necessary to use the phone for application testing purposes; or can I just use my WiFi network? Yes; I am aware of the fact that there's an emulator, but it is difficult to reliably test applications using an emulator.

Answer 1

You can test programs on your device without a data subscription. Of course you will need to decide if your particular program needs testing on a 3G only connection (eg. to test response times on slow connections etc. It can be faked, but I would recommend you test as close to real conditions as possible).

Regardless, you do need to pay the annual developer fee ($99) to Microsoft.