Cutting through the back and forth surrounding Windows Phone 7 tethering are two new hacks, with one being markedly easier than the other to implement. After discovering the option in Samsung’s Focus and Omnia 7 late last year, engineering minds over at xda-developers have now uncovered a method to allow USB internet tethering on HTC’s smattering of Windows Phone 7 handsets. Unfortunately, you’ll need to unlock your device before any of this will work, but the case is definitely different for Dell’s Venue Pro. For that one, you’ll simply need to modify the .INF file — no unlock required. Hit the links below for the devilish details, and try not to set up a P2P farm using your phone’s 3G connection. We hear carriers are none too fond of that foolhardiness.
Microsoft just dropped a few tidbits of knowledge on us regarding Windows Phone 7′s performance in the marketplace so far. Here’s what we’ve got:
‘Early research’ says 93 percent of WP7 customers are ‘satisfied’ and 90 percent would recommend the platform to others. We don’t know details about the research, though — number of customers polled, time frame, so on.
Average of 100 new apps in the Marketplace per day, and over 6,500 total are available right now.
Most importantly, “over 2 million” licenses have been sold to OEMs around the world.
What does that tell us? Well, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: the iPhone 4 sold 3 million units in a little under a month after its launch, so Microsoft clearly has plenty of room to catch up — but that comes as no surprise to us, analysts, or Microsoft itself. Furthermore, selling a license to an OEM isn’t the same as selling a phone to a customer, since many of these manufactured devices are sitting on store shelves; it’s unclear exactly how many WP7 devices are actually in users’ pockets right now, but the number is certainly less than “over 2 million.”
Microsoft’s earnings call is tomorrow where we expect to get more detail on the platform’s performance, but the company is saying today that it sees plenty of reasons to be “bullish about the foundation for long-term success” here — and considering that they simply can’t afford to fail in the mobile game, we hope they’re right.
Microsoft’s been playing it really cool with the nascent Windows Phone 7 hacker community so far, which is winning them friends in all sorts of important places — not the least of which is the ChevronWP7 team itself. The first guys to split the platform open for homebrew apps were recently invited up to Redmond for a powwow with the guys in charge, and it seems the meetings were fruitful to say the least; though much of what they saw was under NDA, they say they’re “genuinely excited” by what Microsoft has in the works. Furthermore, Microsoft was kind enough to give the team a heads-up that an upcoming platform update would break the existing ChevronWP7 tool, though they say they’re “collaborating with Microsoft on an interim solution that will continue to support homebrew developments after the update.” Considering that they’ve already reached out to jailbreaker extraordinaire Geohot as well, it’s clear that Microsoft doesn’t believe this is a black-and-white situation — the ChevronWP7 guys seem to think homebrew has a place somewhere in the platform’s future, it just remains to be seen how that’s going to play out.
A new jailbreaking system for Windows Phone 7 devices is promised, though the developer is waiting until after the first official update is released so as to avoid Microsoft patching the exploit. According to Windows Phone dev Julien Schapman, his Windows Phone 7 Device Manager app works in a way “similar to that of ChevronWP7 in the way they both use a fake registration server, but my method is different and more reliable” according to WinRumors wrote Schapman in an email to WinRumors.
“For example it automatically detects when a WP7 is plugged in and will check if this is a registered developer phone,” he continues, “if not it will register it once and for all, so the device will never re-lock like with ChevronWP7.” The previous tool was the handiwork of the ChevronWP7 team, who agreed to pull the app at Microsoft’s request and who are now working with the company on ways to engage with the homebrew community.
Classic gaming on the go is more or less old-hat for many smartphone platforms, but Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is still playing catch-up. Latest addition is this Game Boy emulator, running in Silverlight courtesy of Samuel Blanchard, who created the video below and then triple-letterboxed it for your squinting pleasure. Right now it is still a work in progress, unable to save your in-game progress and needing some further polish, but it certainly looks like it runs well enough — though hopefully he gets that aspect ratio fixed before offering this up for download.
You’ve seen Windows Phone 7 and Android both ported to the stately HTC HD2, now how about having them on the same device at the same time? Well, not literally at the same time, that’d be all sorts of confusing, but the restless souls over at xda-developers have figured out multiple ways to install both WP7 and Android on the HD2 while using the same SD card. We’ve looked at them and none of the methods seem particularly trivial or, you know, easy, but then what would be the point of a dual-boot solution if everyone could just up and do it? Detailed instructions await at the source link.
Okay, armchair sleuths, this one’s for you — we’ve got two very legit-looking logos here, but not a lot of proof. Our tipster tells us that both of these high-quality vector graphics are the names of upcoming devices for Sprint, with the HTC Arrive (née Ruby) allegedly an upcoming Windows Phone 7 device, while Kyocera Echo is apparently the retail name for the phone internally known as the Sanyo Orange. It just so happens that the trademark for “HTC Arrive” was registered the very same day we received this logo, so we think we’re onto something here, but the truth of the matter is that all of these codenames are falling on virgin ears.
Okay, so the WP7 hacking community may not be quite as active as that working tirelessly to keep every facet of Android devices splayed to the breeze, but that’s not to say there isn’t a skilled group of tinkerers doing their best on Microsoft’s best. ChevronWP7 is a clear example of that, and though it’s been officially pulled it is still quite certainly being used. Now its functionality has been extended with a second hack that enables you to use Zune to sync your HTC handset without it getting all locked up tight again. You can find all the details on the other end of the source link below, but we’ll go ahead and warn you that as soon as the next WP7 version drops this particular unlock will be disabled. Then it’ll be on to the next one.
Okay, so the WP7 hacking community may not be quite as active as that working tirelessly to keep every facet of Android devices splayed to the breeze, but that’s not to say there isn’t a skilled group of tinkerers doing their best on Microsoft’s best. ChevronWP7 is a clear example of that, and though it’s been officially pulled it is still quite certainly being used. Now its functionality has been extended with a second hack that enables you to use Zune to sync your HTC handset without it getting all locked up tight again. You can find all the details on the other end of the source link below, but we’ll go ahead and warn you that as soon as the next WP7 version drops this particular unlock will be disabled. Then it’ll be on to the next one.
Microsoft continues its surprisingly sensible approach to Windows Phone 7 hacking, offering notorious Sony and Apple hacker George “Geohot” Hotz a free WP7 handset. Hotz had expressed his disillusion with Sony after the company sued him for his work hacking the PS3′s copy protection, and suggested that he might look instead to Windows Phone 7; Microsoft “entrepreneur on loan” Brandon Watson promptly tweeted him with the offer of a free phone to “let dev creativity flourish.”
“#geohot if you want to build cool stuff on #wp7, send me email and the team will give you a phone – let dev creativity flourish #wp7dev” Brandon Watson
According to Watson’s Twitter profile, he is working with Microsoft to help the company restore its “developer mojo”; it’s not clear whether Hotz took the exec up on his offer. Microsoft recently met with the ChevronWP7 team responsible for the Windows Phone 7 unlocking tool which turned regular handsets into developer-friendly models, in an attempt to embrace the homebrew community rather than fight against it.
Cutting through the back and forth surrounding Windows Phone 7 tethering are two new hacks, with one being markedly easier than the other to implement. After discovering the option in Samsung’s Focus and Omnia 7 late last year, engineering minds over at xda-developers have now uncovered a method to allow USB internet tethering on HTC’s smattering of Windows Phone 7 handsets. Unfortunately, you’ll need to unlock your device before any of this will work, but the case is definitely different for Dell’s Venue Pro. For that one, you’ll simply need to modify the .INF file — no unlock required. Hit the links below for the devilish details, and try not to set up a P2P farm using your phone’s 3G connection. We hear carriers are none too fond of that foolhardiness.
