ChevronWP7: Windows Phone 7 unlocker discontinued

Emil

Posts: 152   +0

Less than a week after the release of ChevronWP7, which allows you to unlock any retail Windows Phone 7 device for application side-loading without having to pay $99 per year for a WP7 marketplace account, the app has been discontinued. ChevronWP7's three developers, Long Zheng, Rafael Rivera, and Chris Walsh were approached by Brandon Watson, Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone 7, and decided to kill their app.

"Through this discussion, we established a mutual understanding of our intent to enable homebrew opportunities and to open the Windows Phone 7 platform for broader access to developers and users," the developers said in a statement. "To pursue these goals with Microsoft's support, Brandon Watson has agreed to engage in futher discussions with us about officially facilitating homebrew development on WP7. To fast-track discussions, we are discontinuing the unlocking tool effective immediately."

Zheng, Rivera, and Walsh will likely become more involved with the shaping of the Windows Phone platform but ChevronWP7 will not be the way to do so. The app caused a lot of controversy as the developers argued with Microsoft and bloggers in regards to the unlocking process and potential piracy applications.

In the meantime, the trio has made available a WP7 custom ringtone manager (download tool, download source) the first WP7 homebrew application taking advantage of unlocked phones. The application has two components: desktop, used to build a custom XAP package with five custom ringtones you select from your computer (requires .NET 4.0 Framework), and XAP, deployed to your WP7 device to install the custom ringtones. Ringtones have to be in the WMA format at 48KHz (a WP7 requirement). Also, the XAP has to be deployed using the Microsoft Application Deployment tool with the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK.

Permalink to story.

 
As long as MS specifically states that they accept no responsibility for damage caused by independent/homebrew apps, I see no problem with this. WP7 can behave just like a regular OS, users can pay for the app store subscription or opt out and install hombrews, but end users simply have to accept responsibility for their choices. Hope these three devs bring more positive stuff for the WP7 platform.
 
"...were approached by Brandon Watson, Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone 7, and decided to kill their app."

Translation: Microsoft cut them a check. ;)
 
Ok, so what's to keep those that have this program from putting it out on torrent sites?
 
Unbelievable. Can you imagine if you bought a PC but were not able to install whatever you wanted? What if the only software you could run had to be bought from/through Microsoft? Antitrust...anyone?
 
Guest said:
Unbelievable. Can you imagine if you bought a PC but were not able to install whatever you wanted? What if the only software you could run had to be bought from/through Microsoft? Antitrust...anyone?
Switch out PC with iPhone and Microsoft with Apple and read that statement again. lol.
 
madboyv1 said:
Guest said:
Unbelievable. Can you imagine if you bought a PC but were not able to install whatever you wanted? What if the only software you could run had to be bought from/through Microsoft? Antitrust...anyone?
Switch out PC with iPhone and Microsoft with Apple and read that statement again. lol.
So true, but with Apple, it's in the pursuit of a 'Quality end user experience', anybody else does it, unfair, anti-competitive, antitrust......
 
if they really got a paycheck, good for them. They proved it can be done and that's enough.
 
Excellent point.
So Maemo is the way to go (possibly Android, but even then...)!
 
Plus, Apple doesn't charge you 99 bucks a year for access to the programs, many of which are free.
 
use your common sense!
users don't have to pay access the microsoft market place,

it's the people who make the applications that have to pay the 99$ so that you can install it on your phone.

If you make an Adobe Air app, it's even worse; you have to buy an expensive Verisign digital certificate
 
Back