News

Windows Phone 7 jailbroken with ChevronWP7, Microsoft responds

The great escape

Windows Phone 7 jailbroken with ChevronWP7, Microsoft responds
|

A wily band of hackers has successfully jailbroken Windows Phone 7, allowing handset owners to unlock their device, bypass the official App Marketplace, and cheekily 'sideload' apps on to the phone.

The super simple utility is called ChevronWP7, and can relinquish your smartphone from the grips of Microsoft with little more than a USB cable and a couple of mouse clicks.

It’s intended to, “allow the sideloading of experimental applications that would otherwise can’t be published to the Marketplace” but, like the iPhone, also allows for naughty app piracy as a by-product.

“We do not condone piracy,” ChevronWP7’s creators say.

Members of the Windows Phone developer program can already sideload app legitimately, as long as they pay the $99/£63 annual fee. Allegedly, Microsoft’s PVK system can detect (and theoretically ban) illegitimately unlocked devices. So far, no one has had their phone locked, blocked or banned.

Microsoft has issued a generic statement regarding the recent jailbreak release, encouraging customers to use their WP7 device as intended, and warns of some potential problems that hacking your device can incur:

“Attempting to unlock a device could void the warranty, disable phone functionality, interrupt access to Windows Phone 7 services or render the phone permanently unusable.”

As always, Pocket Gamer bears no responsibility if you turn your shiny Windows Phone 7 device into an incredibly expensive brick with such utilities. Use at your own risk.

Electric Pig
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer