There’s a new jailbreak tool for Windows Phone 7 under development. It’s called WindowBreak and right now you can use it on some Samsung smartphones to enable support for apps that aren’t downloaded from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Jaxbot, the developer of the project, hopes to add support for phones from different manufacturers.

The tool basically lets you do the same thing you can do with the ChevronWP7 tool — but you don’t have to pay $9 to use WindowBreak.
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If you want to install apps on a smartphone running Windows Phone 7, you have two options: Get your apps from the Windows Phone Marketplace or pay $99 for a developer account. Scratch that… now there are three options.

Today the folks at ChevronWP7 have launched a new tool that lets you sign in with your Windows Live ID, pay $9 via PayPal, and get a token which will allow you to unlock your device so that you can install third party apps without a developer account.

You’ll need to install a tool on your Windows PC to unlock your device. There are 32-bit and 64-bit versions available.

Once you unlock a device, your $9 token cannot be used to unlock another phone — but you can use it to unlock the same device over and over.

Right now the ChevronLabs Unlock utility is aimed primarily at developers that want to test apps on a phone without signing up for a full developer account. But as more developers start to create third party apps that aren’t available from the Windows Phone Marketplace, the ChevronWP7 utility will let casual users and coders alike try out those apps on their phones.

If you do later decide to sign up for a developer account with Microsoft, you should send an email to the ChevronWP7 team to deactivate your account in order to prevent any conflicts with your Microsoft developer account.

via WP Central

When Microsoft launcher Windows Phone 7 last year, the company basically created a nice big, thick line between newer Windows phones and older models. Windows Phone 7 cannot run any apps developed for Windows Phone 6.5 or earlier — and Microsoft didn’t offer WP7 as a software updated for any phones designed to run earlier Windows Phone or Windows Mobile software.

That move didn’t sit well with some folks, who figured there weren’t huge hardware differences between some of the last Windows Phone 6.5 devices and some of the first Windows Phone 7 devices.

It didn’t take very long for hackers do port Windows Phone 7 to run on the HTC HD2, one of the most powerful phones to ship Windows Mobile 6.5. But it’s taken a bit longer to get Windows Phone 7 up and running on another phone. But now it’s finally happened.

Xda-developers forum member Nokser has released an early Windows Phone 7 build for the Toshiba Tsunagi TG01/TA01 smartphone.

The phone was released during the summer of 2009, and it features a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor, 256MB of RAM, 512MB of ROM, and a 4.1 inch, 480 x 800 pixel display.

The Windows Phone 7 port is still pretty rough around the edges. The camera doesn’t work, the phone signal and 3G data signal are pretty bad, and the battery charges slowly. In other words, if you actually want to use your phone, you should probably avoid updating. But if you’ve got an older Toshiba TG01 lying around that you’re not using and you want to see what it would have looked like if Microsoft or Toshiba had offered an update, now there’s a way.

via xda-developers

Following HP’s announcement that it would discontinue all webOS hardware including smartphones and tablets, Microsoft’s Brandon Walsh reached out to webOS developers, promising free phones and other tools if they were interested in developing for Windows Phone 7. So far he’s received over 200 replies.

For its part, HP is trying to convince webOS developers not to jump ship. While the company will no longer make devices that run webOS, HP hasn’t yet put the operating system to bed. Instead, officials are hoping to get other companies to license the software for use on their own devices, much the way Microsoft and Google already do with their smartphone operating systems.

The problem is that it’s hard to see a future for webOS at the moment. Less than two months ago HP was gung ho about the TouchPad tablet. Today the company is liquidating its inventory by selling the tablet for just $99. Since there currently aren’t any other companies using webOS, who’s to say that a month from now HP might not just pull the plug on the software division as well?

HP is trying to persuade developers to stick around, and promises to keep supporting webOS. But all HP has to offer at the moment are words and a user base that won’t be growing for a while (at least not once this weekend’s HP TouchPad fire sale is over). Microsoft, on the other hand, is giving developers free phones.

Up for some good times with your Windows Phone 7-toting friends? Firing up the new We’re In app puts you on the fast track for geolocation-powered fun.

Select friends from your phone’s contacts, let “your peeps” (Microsoft’s words, not mine) know what you’re up for, and let the app know how long you’d like to make your location known. We’re In offers built-in group messaging — which we already knew was coming system-wide in the Windows Phone 7 Mango update — and lets your friends ask questions and post updates (like “stuck in traffic” or “almost there”) right inside the app. When the event expires, location sharing stops automatically. Participants can also tap “leave” at any time to opt out instantly.

We’re In is sort of like an answer to check-in apps like Google Latitude and Foursquare, though it doesn’t yet offer goodies like check-in deals or badges. Of course, with Microsoft’s affinity for Facebook there’s a decent chance that We’re In could add support for Facebook Places and Facebook deals in future versions of the app.

Keen-eyed observers might also detect some similarities between We’re In and another Microsoft app for Windows Phone 7, Lunchbox. Lunchbox, however, is a more 9-to-5 take on things and is geared toward business use — power lunches, spontaneous meetings, and the like.

Microsoft will soon begin pushing out Windows Phone 7 Mango as an over-the-air software update for devices currently running Windows Phone 7. But if you’ve got an HTC phone and you’re willing to do a little hacking (and warranty voiding) you don’t have to wait. DarkForcesTeam has put together a custom ROM for most HTC Windows Phone 7 devices.

The DFT Freedom ROM is based on Mango, which means that you get all the new features including support for multitasking and improved Windows Live Skydrive integration and an improved media player.

It’s also pre-jailbroken, which means you should be able to install apps that aren’t available from the Windows Phone Marketplace. The developer shave removed the apps that are typically preloaded by carriers such as T-Mobile or AT&T, but left the HTC apps intact.

The custom ROM should work with the HTC Pro 7, HD3, Surround, Trophy, and HD7 and it’s available in 22 different languages.

You can find more details at the xda-developers forum, where you’ll also find links to the download files and information on installing the custom firmware. The instructions aren’t really written for beginners, so either make sure you know what you’re doing… or you’re willing to risk breaking your device before proceeding.

You know a mobile operating system has arrived when developers start writing classic video game console emulators for it. So it looks like Windows Phone 7 has arrived, because a Gameboy emulator called Wario’s Jewels launched last month.

The app features a virtual gamepad, smooth graphics and frame-rates, and a file browser and game information menus that look pretty good on Windows Phone 7.

So far the developer says the emulator can support about 500 different games, and you’ll will be able to add games to their smartphones by uploading them to a server so that they’ll be automatically downloaded to your device.

Unfortunately Wario’s Jewels is not available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. You’ll need to unlock your phone with a developer account or using ChevronWP7 in order to install the Gameboy emulator.

via xda-developers

Nokia will start offering smartphones running Windows Phone 7 in the US and other markets later this year. But for the next year or two the company will continue to offer phones running the Symbian operating system as well as cheaper “feature phones” with web browsing, chat, and other internet apps — it just won’t offer them in the US.

All Things D reports that once Nokia starts selling Windows Phone 7 devices in the States, it will pull out of the Symbian and feature phone spaces.

The single-minded focus on Windows Phone 7 for the US also helps explain why Nokia has no plans to launch the N9 smartphone running MeeGo software in the United States.

Symbian phones were never very popular in the States anyway. The operating system was one of the dominant smartphone platforms in Europe up until recently, but the OS has been losing market share to iOS, Android, and other platforms in recent years.

Nokia has already promised to offer support and software updates for Symbian phones for the next 5 years, so if you’re currently using a Symbian smartphone you might not need to replace it anytime soon.