Create Your Own Skin For The Windows Phone 7 Emulator

1/30/2012

Overview

After being teased with a "super confidential" video of Nokia's new Sea Ray phone, I was interested to try an N9 skin for the Windows Phone emulator I found on this site. It isn't the same as having one in your hand, but at least it is something.
The hacker in me, became just as curious as to how one could create a new skin if they wanted to. When developing Android applications, I would occasionally change its emulator skin to keep things fresh.
So, I took some time to delve into what makes up a skin, and I am happy to share what I found out.

The Graphics

Each skin consists of 3 graphic files. Below you can see how each one from the N9 skin looks like.