Windows Phone 7 jailbreaking is under way, first milestone reached

November 12, 2010 | By Surur

wp7interopservices Long Zheng reports that efforts to jailbreak Windows phone 7 and run unmanaged native code is under way.

It started when user “hounsell” on xda-developers.com noticed that accessing a DLL called “Microsoft.Phone.InteropServices” which gave OEM’s access to native code, would also do so for any other application.

Australian developer Chris Walshie was subsequently able to create such an application using his developer certificate, which allows him to side-load applications. This application would then have full access to the phone, including the registry and file system.

While this is great progress, the hack still needs developer access to side-load the application in the first instance ($99 per year), as Microsoft would not allow such a subversive app in Marketplace, and research is continuing on ways to circumvent this requirement.

Do our readers feel jailbreaking is just what Windows phone 7 needs, or will this be a bane on development on the platform? Let us know below.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged jailbreaking, windows phone 7

davide

Er what is jailbreaking?
Liz Hernshaw

Terrible news.

With xbox live on it the last thing you want is people cheating/hacking games. I hope MS do the same and ban the device.
GP007

Directly links to xaps has been blocked now, someone forgot to do it when the search option went live it seems.
bobbycannon

If someone jailbreaks their phone then they deserve to be banned. There currently no good reason to Jailbreak the phone.
efjay

I would say getting banned from Xbox Live is a pretty big downside. But that may not matter to some if they want to run poor quality applications.
GP007

I agree for the most part but a few more options on the lock screen wouldn't hurt I think.
OmniaFan

but even then – everyone could simply decide to not jailbreak! You act like if they manage to jailbreak WP7 you are forced to do it…
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1682208105 Ian Stripes Brown

I'll just wait for the updates I'm loving the phone just the way it is!
Steve

lol… *rolls eyes*