WinPho7 retail units have only been out for a few days, but a proper jailbreak isn’t that far off now that some devs gained root access to the system. It’s not like anyone really thought Windows Phone 7 would be locked up forever, right? It was only a matter of time.
Developers swarm high-profile platforms with fun and profit in mind. Microsoft can’t be that upset. A good chunk of Winphone7 sales will come just because the owners will be able to use the device how they want. Hackability was one of the reasons the first Xbox succeeded. Creating a garden with impenetrable walls sounds great in boardroom discussions, but can ultimately hurt sales and hinder 3rd party developers — which again, hurts sales.
via RedmondPie
Upon closer inspection, (hounsell) documented some interesting characteristics of the application that gave it its native capabilities – most notably a DLL called “Microsoft.Phone.InteropServices”, which if poked the right way provided COM access.
This explote came after one dev, hounsell from XDA-Developers, noticed that a Samsung app used a different code set than usual 3rd party apps. Instead of being based on Silverlight, it ran on the native WP7 code. Bananas started falling from trees and then came access to the root. It’s only a matter of time now before a rough jailbreak hits, followed up by a simple GUI-based version. Nice.