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Windows Phone Unlock Tool Goes Official
judgecorp writes "A tool to unlock (or 'jailbreak' if you like) Windows Phone devices is now available with Microsoft's blessing. ChevronWP7 Labs was withdrawn at Microsoft's request a year ago, but is back now, allowing users to run any app on their phones for a cost of $9."
But Microsoft withdrew it a year ago.
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It's sad when Microsoft is more forward thinking than Apple isn't it.
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I would not have expected this sort of news from Microsoft a decade ago. Then again, maybe we are getting too used to Apple.
I think this is a nice move by MS :)
You pay the $9 to run your own apps on the phone, right. But only atmost 5 of them. Yes, there is a limit on the number of apps you are allowed to run on your very own phone. And you have to pay for that. Pathetic.
Windows is to big for app store lock down anit trust laws is one thing.
But the app store system should only block apps that can damage the system not adult games / pron apps.
It if allows unchecked code, it doesn't appear to be that much different than the previous version aside from version differences.
Hopefully it has no restrictions on what code can be done, thus being as full of an unlock as the previous one was. Otherwise it still makes ChevronWP7 another "embrace, extend, extinguish" job.
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If I can run unsigned code on this guy I can do anything, including find a way to get Linux on it.
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1) App market works just like before
2) The $9 price tag isn't from Microsoft, it's from the guy who made the unlocker. He is selling it.
Rafael Rivera generally tends to hold a good deal of trust and clout amongst Windows enthusiasts (shock and awe that there's such a crowd, I know) in that he's known specifically for thoroughly investigating a product. He always produces a high quality service, product, workaround, etc. for whatever his project happens to be, and has provided many of the safe patches that unlock hidden functionality during previous Windows alpha and beta releases.
His involvement in this project and in other general Windows reverse-engineering gigs in the past leads me to believe that ChevronWP7 is a solid and safe release. The fact that Microsoft endorsed this is not at all a surprise.
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The main thing I use my Android phone for is playing chess against the computer while recumbent on the couch. Nine dollars seems a bit ridiculous.
Without threat of him being shut down by microsoft, and presumably if they're sanctioning it there's some trick on the corporate side or something. They can probably sell a US government version where the unlocker won't work or things along those lines.
That's basically it. They also knew this would hit the tech news sites, for that free advertising.
You would not have expected Microsoft a decade ago to release an open operating system while Apple released a vertically integrated and closed down market?
Microsoft is many things, but bending over backwards to let anything run on their systems (including malware) has been one of the greatest strengths and weaknesses since the beginning.
Microsoft has never been the direction apple is. While shutting out competition was always a strong stance of theirs. Preventing competition from running on their OS or any devices they run has never been a high priority. I do have to admit, Xbox is probably the most independent developer friendly console (out of the top 3 competitors of course), Microsoft has never attempted to discourage people from using any software on windows. That is kinda how MS kicked apples ass back in the day. (Macs were strongly against allowing competition to design hardware, Microsoft encoraged a huge compeating pricewar to drive down hardware prices and boost software sales.)
That is kinda how MS kicked apples ass back in the day. (Macs were strongly against allowing competition to design hardware, Microsoft encoraged a huge compeating pricewar to drive down hardware prices and boost software sales.)
sed s/MS/IBM
FTFY
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Microsoft encouraged the price war by being willing to license MS-DOS to any company that made a PC with a remotely IBM-compatible BIOS. IBM didn't want openness; in fact, it tried to charge back-royalties on ISA to anyone making MCA cards.
But are there any WP7 devices sold in the United States that don't either A. cost more than my laptop or B. require a full-price subscription to a calling plan with more minutes in a month than I use in a year?
Microsoft jailbreaks you!
But seriously, this "jailbreak" is a Microsoft-sanctioned app that costs $9 and requires you to log-in to windows live... Doesn't sound like a jailbreak to me. Sounds like something that Microsoft should have BEEN OFFERING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Whats that, we get to run whatever app we want on the computer we bought? THANKS MICROSOFT! Hey, it beats the $99 yearly fee to get a dev licence.
Seriously? Do they not want people developing for their platform? (oh, that's right, they only want big companies. They don't care about hobbyists at all.)
Is Windows 8 going to require a jailbreak to install homebrew too?!? Madness.
I'm sick of defective by design and I'll not be celebrating some "features" that they finally enabled. Its my device. Let me use it already.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Wait, you mean they're doing something to sell their product?!
God damn it, somebody call my Congressman - I won't put up with this shit where a company performs actions meant to increase the sale of their products!
WP7 isn't really targeted at the government; it's missing a lot of certifications for things like that which Windows Mobile had and Blackberry has. It's intended for the mass-market, and this works well for that.
However, if they wanted to create a modified ROM that didn't allow installing unsigned applications, that would be quite easy indeed. The "am I unlocked?" setting is just a registry value. It's probably only checked a few places in the code. Modify those checks so they always return "false" or modify the app-installer so that it only ever allows app packages with the marketplace signature, and you'd be fine.
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IBM was the hardware manufacturer, it was IBM who lost money when the hardware competitors came in, and MS that benefited.
Unfortunately, there's a barrier in Mango (whether you use the marketplace developer account dev-unlock, which has been available from day 1, or ChevronWP7 Labs which is essentially the same thing from the phone's perspective) that prevents apps from getting high-permission access (specificlaly, prevents opening a handle on a driver, which is the standard way to break out of the low-privilege app sandbox on WP7). To do this, an app needs to specify the "INTEROPSERVICES" capability in its manifest, and by default Mango blocks installing or running non-marketplace apps with this capability. NoDo and below did not - that's how people were able to do file browsers, registry editors, tethering apps, and so forth - but this restriction is part of Mango.
You can still run some homebrew apps, including native code, but only with low permissions. While it's useful to know there's limits on what an app can do, I'd really like to be able to remove those limits on apps I trust. A webserver that demonstrates access to the full socket API, including TCP server sockets (the official API only has client sockets) is cool, but there's a lot more that you could do.
Fortunately, there's a way around this restiction also built into the OS. The process of removing this restriction is called "interop-unlock" by the guys who discovered it, and is possible easily on LG phones (change the MaxUnsignedApp registry value to 300 or more using the built-in registry editor), possible on Samsung phones (instructions and app here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1271963), and difficult if possible at all on HTC phones (requires rolling back to pre-Mango, which isn't possible on new devices). No solution at all for Dell, Toshiba, or Nokia yet.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Microsoft encouraged openness and competition on the hardware front so they could sneak in the back door and obtain lock-in via software instead... It worked largely because at the time software was perceived as a very small cheap component of an expensive hardware bundle, especially when you could pirate the software.
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This isn't an "open" system by any stretch of the imagination. It's basically charging people $9 for the ability to sideload software, something Android enables via a checkbox. The security systems remain 100% in force.
I'd be impressed if it put the user in control of the security systems, rather than let Microsoft retain that control (oh, and if it were free and not $9.)
Mod parent up
How is demanding 9$ for the "privilege" to install up to 10 unapproved apps anywhere close to "bending over backwards to let anything run on their systems"?
Unforunately not all android devices have the checkbox. The HTC Aria on AT&T was one of them as well as some of the low-end motorola devices.
That's AT&T being a bunch of assholes though, not a matter of policy set by the OS vendor.
Steve Jobs designed the Mac so that it could only be opened by special tools. So it's more that Apple has "controlled the whole wigit" (with a brief period of licensing to clones when Jobs wasn't in charge) since then. The Apple II was open - but since then, not so much.
Aren't jailbreaking and unlocking different? Calibrating refers to being able to execute cystine programs on your phone, whereas unlocking allows one to use any carrier. I think this article is referring to jailbreaking.
A tool to unlock (or 'jailbreak' if you like) Windows Phone devices
I don't know if this is global or local parlance, but over here "unlock" generally refers to removing the SIM-lock from a locked phone, enabling the use of SIMs from any service provider. This is in most cases a breach of contract with the original service provider, unless the contract has since expired.
Jailbreaking refers exclusively to the removal of any restrictions to the installation of applications. Granted, in most cases one has to jailbreak the phone to unlock it, since the unlocking software is generally nowhere to be found in app stores supported by the service provider - for obvious reasons. Whether or not jailbreaking is a breach of contract is up for discussion in some cases and clearly no breach in others.
It seems to me that 'jailbreak' is the term to use here.