Windows Phone 7 Retail Device Rooted, Jailbreak Coming Soon?

It’s only been a few weeks since Microsoft’s completely overhauled Windows Phone 7 OS was launched around the world, and we are now hearing the first reports of WP7 being rooted and “jailbreaked”.

windows phone 7 wp7 jailbreak root admin access

iStartedSomething reports that an Australian developer Chris Walshie has proved that it is possible to run “native unmanaged code” on a retail Windows Phone 7 smartphone.

It started out when hounsell from XDA-Developers noticed that Samsung’s Network Profile application in WP7 ran on native code, instead of the usual Silverlight-managed code that all third-party apps are supposed to run on.

Long Zheng explains:

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.

Chris was then able to deploy a WP7 app using the developer sideloading process keeping in mind hounsell’s entire idea. This gave him root access to the system which is a must for “jailbroken” apps to be able to run in the future.

These apps obviously won’t be allowed by Microsoft, so expect a Cydia-like third party store to crop up sooner or later. 😉

For the average Joe, it doesn’t get much simpler than this: Windows Phone 7 will, eventually, be jailbreaked so you can run unofficial software and tweak the system according to your preferences.

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