Back in January we reported that ChevronWP7 Labs, the officially-sanctioned "jailbreak" service for Windows Phone "homebrew", was coming to a halt. At the time, the reasons cited mostly revolved around the difficulties some users experienced in installing it and the following tech-support needed to help them out. The project was put on indefinite hiatus with more tokens possibly being...
Just over a week ago, the homebrew unlocker tool ChevronWP7 Labs was released in the wild. A joint venture by Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh and Long Zheng, the officially sanctioned tool was a bold and complicated project: unlock phones so that apps can be side-loaded for a modest $9. The challenge of course was the myriad of PC setups, devices, OS versions and miscellaneous that could...
Now that Mango has come to a lot of Windows Phones, there's still a few big things to look forward to this year: Skype, Nokia and of course ChevronWP7 Labs. For those new to the site or community, ChevronWP7 Labs is the little project by Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh and Long Zheng who originally unlocked Windows Phone in the pre and post NoDo era (with Microsoft's indirect and humorous...
![Change background colour in WP7 [How To]](https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w300h225crop/public/resource_images/change-colour.png?itok=QPE7dUfh)
A good majority of us has been intrigued by the white background and black live tiles combination of themes, not to mention choosing the color scheme of your device by hex values instead of a limited (but aesthetically pleasing) list. Thankfully diaahussein and rmcgraw have come up with a sweet little guide (especially convenient for us newbies). You will need an unlocked device (read...
We've been covering the "Walshed" device situation where attempting to install the May security update failed for many users who used the work around to receive NoDo using the Chevronwp7.updater. A while back Chris posted on his blog that a fix was being approved by Microsoft. This tool has now been released and is available on his blog (link below). Source: Chris Walsh
A registered member over at the XDA Devloper forums has posted a potential fix to the problem caused by the Chevronwp7.Updater, which leaves devices in an un-updatable state. This has been posted by a user who has no other posts on the forum, it hasn't been recommended by Chris Walsh and isn't an official response from Microsoft. We must urge you guys who are still awaiting the fix to...
Chevron have posted on their Twitter account that a fix from Chris Walsh is being validated by Microsoft to see to the problems that have arisen from unofficially updating handsets to NoDo. We recently looked at how the Chevronwp7.updater has caused issues for many users attempting to receive the May security update, hopefully once this fix is approved by the Windows Phone team, we...
Seems there is more trouble in store for those who forced the NoDo update with Chris Walsh's work around with the May security update, but there's a 'simple fix' that's going to be provided by Chris himself. Some users are reporting success while others are being hit by errors (80180048 included) and there's currently no information available as to what the problem is and how the '...
Back amongst the chaos of complaints, rants, tantrums and media surrounding the NoDo update process, Chris Walsh released a tool that forces a Windows Phone 7 device to update to NoDo - this hack was later regarded as a life-saver for all users who were impatiently awaiting the update notification. Since then, there have been numerous reports and articles suggesting the tool (if used to...
Wearing their gifted shirts from Microsoft (Brandon Watson confirms only 5 exist), the ChevronWP7 team is in force at MIX11 this week, blogging, covering the event and meeting with whose who in the Windows Phone world. And we must say, they're all stand up guys. So we had to grab this photo, because why not? From left to right: Chris Walsh (@chriswalshie, site), Raphael Rivera (@...
Windows Phone Radio, Microsoft's official Windows Phone 7 podcast, returns with hosts Brian Seitz and Matt Akers to discuss the weekly update blog posts by Eric Hatula (NoDo) and later joined by Brandon Watson to talk about the ChevronWP7.updater. Firstly, let's cover what is really meant when updates are in the "testing" stage over on Where's my update?... "It doesn’t mean that they’...
Well, that answers that. In the meeting with Microsoft, the ChevronWP7 team evidently brought up the issue of emulators, specifically the NES one floating around, which we took for a spin a few weeks ago. The answer from Brandon Watson, Director of Developer Experience for WP7, should have been expected: unless there is a legal way to host and distribute those ROMs, it's a violation of...
Oh Microsoft, this is why we like you and not say Sony or Apple, who take a different approach to jailbreaking. Long Zheng and Raphael Rivera of ChevronWP7 met with Microsoft, including Brandon Watson to go over the whole jailbreaking thing, making the Marketplace more secure and discussing the future of Homebrew. No details on progress was given, but at least the ChevronWP7 team got...
We’ve been covering the exploits of the ChevronWP7 team for a couple of months. From the original release and the various applications released for unlocked devices, to Microsoft having a heart-to-heart with the team and the subsequent discontinuation of the unlocker, it’s been a busy couple of months. The stated reason for ChevronWP7 development being discontinued was that Microsoft...
Last night, the ChevronWP7 team posted a new blog on their upcoming meeting with Microsoft in Redmond next week. At that discussion, they plan to put forth the argument as to why the Hombrew community is important as well as the general feeling on improving the OS: We’ll be sharing our perspective on the homebrew potentials of Windows Phone 7 and some of the wider community feedback...
![Samsung WP7 apps ported to HTC devices [Homebrew]](https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w300h225crop/public/resource_images/htcsam.jpg?itok=rkq_zxmN)
Although porting HTC apps (like YouTube and their Weather Hub) to non-HTC devices is not going too smoothly as HTC has many "checks" in the way, the reverse seems doable. XDA developer xboxmod has successfully ripped numerous Samsung-only apps and distributed the XAP files for others to install. All that is needed is an unlocked device (developer or ChevronWP7) and to install a...
![Add a WiFi tile to your Windows Phone [Homebrew]](https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w300h225crop/public/resource_images/wifi.jpg?itok=_7Xmd8kZ)
This one will cause a lot of envy amongst those with non-developer/ChevronWP7 unlocked phones. Developer CodeJoker has gone ahead and done the obvious: create a shortcut to the device WiFi settings. It's exactly what you think it would be--you tap the icon and you're at your configuration to turn WiFi on or off with a few less steps than the current setup. You simple install the XAP...
![Windows Phone 7 and app piracy - closer than we think [Security Whitepaper]](https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w300h225crop/public/resource_images/code.jpg?itok=pSKkLZpl)
Walking the fine line between black and white hat security, XDA member V@l€n has gone and posted a detailed "security whitepaper" on the state of app piracy in the Windows Phone Marketplace. We almost hate to write on the topic since it will attract claims of supporting piracy, but the fact is developers and Microsoft need to know just how vulnerable the platform is so that it can be...
![FlickPad X2 bringing Japanese language support to WP7 [Homebrew]](https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w300h225crop/public/resource_images/flickpad2.jpg?itok=czwzSGhW)
Although WP7 can support many characters (we had an email written in Thai read just beautifully), full-on language support is a whole other issue. Microsoft is busy at regionalizing WP7 for Asian markets and we can expect that in the second half of 2011. Until then, developer "kaorun" (Kaoru Nakajima) is in the early stages of bringing Japanese to Windows Phone 7 through his app called...
![Custom accent colors coming for Windows Phone 7 [Homebrew]](https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w300h225crop/public/resource_images/justinblack.png?itok=R84NEvfk)
Back in June we mentioned about jailbreaking Windows Phone 7 and how that could lead to custom themes (aka "Accents"). Since that time, we have jailbroken our phones via ChevronWP7 and adopted their subsequent first release, custom ringtones. Now it looks like they are moving on to app #2, those custom Accents. As can be seen above, developer Justin Angel has a custom "black" theme...