Database Info

[Q] why to unlock the device ?

hi all i just got my htc hd 7 i want to know what benefits unlocking will bring to me + i read about touch explor and windows decive manager from where and how to download these?
thanks in advance

I think Unlocking is not important in my opinion because the available app outside Marketplace are not good app, as you register your credit card in Zune, you can buy very nice app and games better than those outside marketplace.
A very important reason to stay locked is to have the latest radio and firmware versions, but unlocking makes you with old ones.

verynuclear said:
I think Unlocking is not important in my opinion because the available app outside Marketplace are not good app, as you register your credit card in Zune, you can buy very nice app and games better than those outside marketplace.
A very important reason to stay locked is to have the latest radio and firmware versions, but unlocking makes you with old ones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's a bold statement. firmware or radio versions have nothing to do with UnlockState.
if you want to configure your phone beyond what's possible natively, there are a few apps that can be sideloaded that allow you to do what the NoDo OS for example cannot do, only two here. a) changing accent colors, b) adding your own ringtones.
Schaps has his own website with a forum and download section. If you google it you won't need much time to find it.

Hello,
wholly, the fact of unlock the WP7 allows to put some programs such as accent etc her personify sound wp7

derausgewanderte said:
that's a bold statement. firmware or radio versions have nothing to do with UnlockState.
if you want to configure your phone beyond what's possible natively, there are a few apps that can be sideloaded that allow you to do what the NoDo OS for example cannot do, only two here. a) changing accent colors, b) adding your own ringtones.
Schaps has his own website with a forum and download section. If you google it you won't need much time to find it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As a Mozart user, I can not unlock the device with the latest Radio and Firmware, So I miss the camera update and loading speen which are important additions to me
Adding ringtones are not important because the internal ones are very nice.
Also changing the color and editing the device system may cause my system to be unstable.
Just an opinion.
Sorry for my English.

Actually it's up to the individual,some might stick to lock phone some might not.The best for those who unlock is that they can explore what their phone can do just like win mobile 5 to 6. and they can do the same as lock phone ie: update etc. so on and so forth.
Just my 2 cents.

[Q] i want to move to WP7 from android...curious on a few things

WP7 im curious about a few things
the GUI:
What changes it? Roms or Themes? i see some WP7 phones on here that dont use tiles, but use a theme or a rom, which is it? how does it work?
Roms and Themes:
what does each do? From the android world, Roms did mostly everything... and themes changed like colors.. how about WP7?
unlocking:
unlocking from what i read allows non market apps, how about carrier unlocking? on some android phones (that have bootloaders unlocked) they can do some changing to the registry and do a carrier unlock, how about with WP7 phone?

Gorship said:
WP7 im curious about a few things
the GUI:
What changes it? Roms or Themes? i see some WP7 phones on here that dont use tiles, but use a theme or a rom, which is it? how does it work?
Roms and Themes:
what does each do? From the android world, Roms did mostly everything... and themes changed like colors.. how about WP7?
unlocking:
unlocking from what i read allows non market apps, how about carrier unlocking? on some android phones (that have bootloaders unlocked) they can do some changing to the registry and do a carrier unlock, how about with WP7 phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Themes are color changes. Blue tiles, Green Tiles ect.
There are a few roms that will unlock your phone if loaded, but they still don't give you much customization control. The GUI in Windows Phone really can't be modded much.... but that also makes it secure.
I was a rom flasher in the older windows mobile days... i loved customizing the crap out of my phone (you'll find posts by me in the wizard, Tilt, and Pure forums). I really never used my phone though till i had windows phone. i just tinkered.
With Windows phone and live tiles, all the information is there immediatly or within 3 clicks. I check facebook without an app. i post pictures to facebook right from the camera. Things are so much quicker when they are integrated. I actually use the phone as it was ment to be. I don't have to worry about roms fixing one thing and breaking another as i did back in those days.
Pick one up, you'll have 30 days to return it. Use it at least 20. At 1st it's a system shock and you feel limited until you really get to dig into it and get how everything flows. Don't give up on it in the 1st week. It's completely different from android or iphone and change always seems frustrating at 1st.

ROMs are only available for HTC devices up to now
but some developers are working for the first Samsung custom ROM.
in the GUI you can change tiles colors.
all devices are unlockable, except lumias!
I hope to have been exhaustive

ROCOAFZ said:
I was a rom flasher in the older windows mobile days... i loved customizing the crap out of my phone (you'll find posts by me in the wizard, Tilt, and Pure forums). I really never used my phone though till i had windows phone. i just tinkered.
With Windows phone and live tiles, all the information is there immediatly or within 3 clicks. I check facebook without an app. i post pictures to facebook right from the camera. Things are so much quicker when they are integrated. I actually use the phone as it was ment to be. I don't have to worry about roms fixing one thing and breaking another as i did back in those days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Couldn't agree more. I've probably already said it a half-dozen times on these forums, but Windows Phone gave me my life back. The mantras "glance and go," "get in, get out, get on with your life," and "seriously?" are all VERY accurate.
My wife was 5 or 6 months pregnant and I was just launching a side business when I upgraded from a Tilt to a Samsung Focus (on a Titan now), and it was PERFECT timing to make the switch. I can't imagine juggling two jobs and a baby and still spending a few hours a week hunting for the perfect ROM. It may not do as much as an Android (or even some later WinMo phones), but there's not ONE thing that I feel that I'm missing personally, and for every feature it lacks there are a hundred features that it does SO WELL.
I think my favorite thing, apart from the beauty of Metro itself, is contact management and social integration. Being able to link my wife's Live contact/FB profile/Twitter handle and have one updating tile is amazing. Being able to change my status across several networks from the "Me" tile is awesome. I feel like my digital life (especially contacts and calendar) is finally unified and under control.

Advantages of Hacking WP7?

I Jailbroke my iPhone, and have Rooted all my Android devices, which have clear benefits. Being that WP7's market is so bare, and the OS has virtually NO customization, what are the advantages to hacking WP7? I don't see any ROMS in the Forum, so how does hacking it improve it?

From the point of view of someone that's only recently 'jailbroken' using WindowBreak, I've found that sideloading a lot of random apps to my WP7 has helped me do things I couldn't before - such as using the LED as a flashlight on my Omnia 7
It's the little things...

Mine is only developer unlocked but even with that and no interopt, battery status app rocks
in other words you can download homebrew apps and sideload them. Some developers here let you try them out and comment before they hit the marketplace.
Also if you have a gen 1 inter-opt unlocked you can access the registry and do all kinds of cool things like unlock internet sharing, and run file exploring tools and such.
With the iphone, what advantages did you get? it's also a pretty closed system. With android i understand. Some phones needed custom romms to get rid of the carrier crap to make them work faster. In windows phone all carrier apps can be uninstalled. Took me 1 minute to remove all but the one that shows my data usage as i wanted to keep that one.
Without jailbreaking, we can also use cab sender to get microsoft upgrades without waiting on our carrier. We don't have to be unlocked for that. So instead of getting a put together might work or not version of ICS because my carrier won't release it, we just download the cab file right off MS's servers and use a tool on here to install it.

ROCOAFZ said:
With the iphone, what advantages did you get? it's also a pretty closed system. With android i understand. In windows phone all carrier apps can be uninstalled. Took me 1 minute to remove all but the one that shows my data usage as i wanted to keep that one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iPhone is totally closed to. but the benefit of unlocking was the MASSIVE app store of polished apps. So once jailbroken, I was able to install hundreds of apps. But with WP7, its only Homebrew stuff to date right? I am not knocking it, just trying to see if there is a real advantage for me to unlock mine. Just a curiosity.

Piracy blows, Homebrew all the way - a Megadrive emulator tops any phone game I've ever played

xfile102 said:
iPhone is totally closed to. but the benefit of unlocking was the MASSIVE app store of polished apps. So once jailbroken, I was able to install hundreds of apps. But with WP7, its only Homebrew stuff to date right? I am not knocking it, just trying to see if there is a real advantage for me to unlock mine. Just a curiosity.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you know what your doing and don't want to support developers - you can do the same with wp7 and it's 60,000 apps. Just gotta know where to go.
We however have way more security and 2nd gen has yet to be interop unlocked which would allow the above. Also all our apps are polished also. they have to make it past MS and their guidelines before they can hit the market.

ROCOAFZ said:
If you know what your doing and don't want to support developers - you can do the same with wp7 and it's 60,000 apps. Just gotta know where to go.
We however have way more security and 2nd gen has yet to be interop unlocked which would allow the above. Also all our apps are polished also. they have to make it past MS and their guidelines before they can hit the market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't get me wrong, I'm all WP7, but isn't their a NES emulator on the store? LOL
Regardless, like he said you don't have to support devs, but seriously everytime you don't, baby Jesus cries. Remember that.

LOL, that NES emulator got accepted by MS? It was one of the first pieces of homebrew for WP7, initially it was rejected from the marketplace so the dev just posted a link to the XAP file. By the way, there totally are custom ROMs for WP7, but currently they're limited to HTC phones because those are the only ones that we've unlocked the bootloader on so far...
Advantages of basic dev unlock:
* Install some apps that add nice features (Battery Status, Screen Capture, Webserver, app folders, etc.)
* Ability to install apps that make certain changes to the phone (see the "OEM Marketplace XAPs" thread linked in my sig.)
* Ability to install homebrew or pre-release apps posted on forums like this.
Potentially, the ability to restore (it's write-only) data to your phone that was backed up from a prior one (see interop-unlock...)
Advantages of interop-unlock (dev-unlock plus an extra registry tweak, not available on all phones):
* Ability to install many more homebrew apps (the registy value that controls this, MaUnsignedApp, is also the one that controls interop-unlock).
* Ability to install apps that use drivers on the phone to do stuff normally not possible (ranging from flashlight control to modifyying parts of the system, such as the following...)
* On most phones, the ability to install registry editor apps and tweak a lot of system settings.
* Ability to install ProvXML processor apps, and make significant changes to your phone (like turning off the carrier check on th Internet Sharing feature).
* Ability to install configuration tweaking apps that can do things like full custom themes and modify all the system sounds.
* On some phones, ability to install filesystem browser/manager apps.
* On some phones, ability to "root" a phone (run arbitrary code with maximum permissions). For example, I'm the dev of the HtcRoot project.
* On some phones, granular data backup and restore (things like app and game data; could be restored on a dev-unlocked but interop-locked phone).
Advantages of unlocking the bootloader and installing a custom ROM (currently gen1.0 HTC only):
* Full unlock that turns off the policy restrictions on the phone, allowing any app to access the whole device.
* Full unlock allows running third-party EXE files, including both homebrew and some WinMo apps (Opera Mobile and Mini have both been done, for example).
* Install homebrew XAPs by opening them using the phone's browser or attached in email, without a PC (there are "Bazaar" apps that allow you to access WP7 homebrew apps directly on the phone this way).
* Support custom update CABs, so the ROM can be updated without re-flashing the phone (for things aside from official updates).
* Tweak some stuff that's normally locked in ROM, like the bootup screen.
* Theoretically, replace significant system components (such as modifying the phone's UI shell).
It all depends on what you want to do, and what phone you have. We (homebrew hackers and devs) are always looking to support more devices, and to gain more control over the device.

I have my device dev unlocked. I've only installed side loaded two applications so far, one being a beta for an upcoming Twitter client called Carbon and the other being a screen capturing app.
I love using the screen capture app, it's handy when doing a review of something. However, it currently can't capture screens of games, just normal apps. Other than that, I haven't seen a major benefit for anyone to really unlock their devices.

Spookidoodles said:
Piracy blows, Homebrew all the way - a Megadrive emulator tops any phone game I've ever played
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Megadrive AKA Genesis ? Who has a Good Sega Genesis emulator that works on WP7?
I know of for console emulators
VNES Light= Great NES emu
Sonic's Jewels= A good Sega Master System And game gear emulator(pre-sound works awsome).
I know of no other console ones that are any good.
Please let us know...

Basic unlocking is the best way to go, any device can get unlocked, and some basic things like battery tiles, etc, can be installed that aren't on the market. I'd at least do an unlock.

DavidinCT said:
Megadrive AKA Genesis ? Who has a Good Sega Genesis emulator that works on WP7?
I know of for console emulators
VNES Light= Great NES emu
Sonic's Jewels= A good Sega Master System And game gear emulator(pre-sound works awsome).
I know of no other console ones that are any good.
Please let us know...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry man, I was just phrasing it like that to prove a point - should have said I'd much prefer a dev to make a Megadrive emulator homebrew than get 100 paid for game apps for free - and before anyone says "that is piracy" I still own my Megadrive and over 50 games each of which I can legally create a backup of and use on an emulator so nyeahhh

[Q] [REQ] Custom Omnia ROM with only unlock added

First of all, I'm not sure in which forum does this belong. If it needs to be moved or removed, feel free to do so.
As the title says, I'm looking for a custom ROM for Omnia whose only modification would be that it's unlocked. I only need the unlock feature. Actually, I might not even need that right now, but in case WP gains some momentum, I expect more and more useful homebrew applications to be made, so I'd like to be ready.
The ability to do the unlock on my existing OS install would be perfect, but as far as I know, that is not possible.
There are now at least two popular ROMs for Omnia, but both of them stray too far from the stock experience for my personal taste. I find the stock experience to be as near as perfect as anything can be. Especially from the aesthetic aspect. I don't like those custom livetile themes for example.
I don't mind the adding of additional homebrew apps, since I can always remove them if i need, but I don't know how deep do these customizations go? I did notice some threads and post reporting problems. Would that also appear in any ROM, regardless of the depth of modifications, or is it because of some tweaks cooks are making?
in any case, I'd be thankful for any answer.

There are multiple levels of unlock; what are you thinking of? It's quite possible to dev-unlock and interop-unlock a stock Omnia 7 phone using the WindowBreak project. That will allow you to install any number of homebrew apps, and will allow you to use high-privilege apps such as WP7 Root Tools.
If you want "full-unlock" such as is required for the DFT BlueTooth File Transfer feature or to run the ported version of Opera, you'll need a custom ROM.

Well like Goodday says it depends on what you want to do. If you just want interop unlock then and still keep your official update path then Windowbreak is your route if you are not able to do use WindowBreak.
Then a custom ROM is your best option I would say the mi7ROM 1.3b 6 language is the best one for that. He has two ROMS 6 language which is mostly just the unlocks and a couple pre installed xaps Nokia, HTC, and a few others but they can be removed. He did not even put in the DFT Bluetooth app since some people had issues with it. He also has the 18 language ROM which is partly skinned and has many more xaps installed and a skinned theme.

GoodDayToDie said:
There are multiple levels of unlock; what are you thinking of? It's quite possible to dev-unlock and interop-unlock a stock Omnia 7 phone using the WindowBreak project. That will allow you to install any number of homebrew apps, and will allow you to use high-privilege apps such as WP7 Root Tools.
If you want "full-unlock" such as is required for the DFT BlueTooth File Transfer feature or to run the ported version of Opera, you'll need a custom ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't really know what level do i need. I'm now interop-unlocked, and i know that there are some homebrew apps that require full-unlock. For example, I'd like to have the possibility to mess with the registry. Not that I would use it a lot, but just in case that i need it sometimes.
I'm gonna go with custom rom.
chicagolive said:
Then a custom ROM is your best option I would say the mi7ROM 1.3b 6 language is the best one for that. He has two ROMS 6 language which is mostly just the unlocks and a couple pre installed xaps Nokia, HTC, and a few others but they can be removed. He did not even put in the DFT Bluetooth app since some people had issues with it. He also has the 18 language ROM which is partly skinned and has many more xaps installed and a skinned theme.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What makes mi7rom better than xda devs 3.0 rom?
I'm not really sure, they both seem to have not that many modifications (which is good), but xda devs seems to be the newer build, so I was planning to go with it.

Um, interop-unlock is all that's required to mees with the registry. That's been true since the first registry editors (of course, back then there was no interop-lock to unlock, but the editors work the same now as they did then). It's also enough to use WP7 Root Tools, which
A) contains a registry editor (and a filesystem browser)
B) allows you to run some apps that previously required full-unlock.
It won't do Opera or BlueTooth file transfer, but it will do pretty much all the other apps

GoodDayToDie said:
It won't do Opera or BlueTooth file transfer, but it will do pretty much all the other apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm, that sounds great. But if you had to guess, would you say there are going to be some more apps that require full unlock?
Also, and i know this might be a very stupid question to ask, will hard resetting the phone remove the interop unlock? Because as i said, i do need to do a hard reset, because marketplace has finally landed in my country so i'm changing liveID, and i have this samsung update that fixes the hole windowbreak has been using.

Yes, hard-resetting a stock ROM will remove the interop-unlock. You can, however, roll back to a previous firmware version (one compatible with the Windowbreak hack) and then hard-reset.

GoodDayToDie said:
You can roll back to a previous firmware version (one compatible with the Windowbreak hack) and then hard-reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do I know if my zune backup is of the compatible firmware version?
If it's not, how can I do that manually? There is a thread with links to official firmwares but all the links are dead. Do I need magldr for these? I have an Omnia bought in T-mobile in Croatia, but I've additionally did SIM-unlock. Is there some kind of an archive of those firmwares?

[for any programmer/hacker] Want to install the Homebrew App (.Xap) for freely?

I have one idea for great solution [need help from experts].
Hey guys, about two months I started to find some way to unlock my HTC HD7.5 with Mango at the latest update.
But up till now, I never find a concrete way to Unlock my Windows Phone because I find any different problems when I tried to Unlock my Device.
It was a true damnation for me, because I like so much to personalize my things, it's my passion and sincerely I don't accept to have one phone with the same aspect of the all originals.
Now I explain my idea,
With the original Microsoft Marketplace App on our Smartphones, we can always download and install directly the Apps (.Xap) inside and without Chevron.
For the Homebrew it's not the same, we can't install this directly like Marketplace, we need always the unlock.
But now the idea coming in my mind, if we study this App function and adapt it for install the custom Apps by the Web browser, and we put it on same blog with his website gadget, can also make that functions?
Pratically I think:
We create some blog/site with info, news, and the App-gadget who can simulate the Marketplace functions, with the running and installing process.
After we can open that through our Smartphone's IE9 and we feely download ad install the homebrews apps, also the jailbreaks/unlocks (if we create some kind of new).
Anyway it's a great idea, and I'm sure we need the concrete gadget, me I can't realize because I don't have some programmator experiences, but I find this bast**d idea
Here there are much programmators, for they maybe it's not a problem to realize!
I hope xD

It's entirely possible that I'm misunderstanding due to your English (though I doubt I'd do as well in whatever your native language is) but I *think* what you're suggesting is already well-known to not be possible.
First of all, the phone will neither install nor execute unsigned apps (that is, homebrew) unless it is developer-unlocked. You can test this on a dev-unlocked phone; temporarily revoke the dev-unlock, and try to launch any app that you sideloaded onto the phone. It won't work. Since it's extremely unlikely that will be able to add the Marketplace signature to homebrew XAP files, that's a no-go.
Second, we already know how to install apps from IE on the phone (if you look at my XapHandler app, that's what it does). However, just because we know how to do it doesn't mean it can be done on every phone. First, you need dev-unlock just so you can execute unsigned code on the phone at all. Second, you need root-unlock so the XAP installation code runs with enough privileges to install apps.
If instead you mean just make a website that spoofs the Marketplace, that's easy to do but it won't help. The phone doesn't actually really care what Marketplace site it connects to; it just downloads the app over HTTP from some web server. The problem is that the XAP file needs to be signed (first issue that I mentioned) or a dev-locked phone won't install it.

GoodDayToDie said:
It's entirely possible that I'm misunderstanding due to your English (though I doubt I'd do as well in whatever your native language is) but I *think* what you're suggesting is already well-known to not be possible.
First of all, the phone will neither install nor execute unsigned apps (that is, homebrew) unless it is developer-unlocked. You can test this on a dev-unlocked phone; temporarily revoke the dev-unlock, and try to launch any app that you sideloaded onto the phone. It won't work. Since it's extremely unlikely that will be able to add the Marketplace signature to homebrew XAP files, that's a no-go.
Second, we already know how to install apps from IE on the phone (if you look at my XapHandler app, that's what it does). However, just because we know how to do it doesn't mean it can be done on every phone. First, you need dev-unlock just so you can execute unsigned code on the phone at all. Second, you need root-unlock so the XAP installation code runs with enough privileges to install apps.
If instead you mean just make a website that spoofs the Marketplace, that's easy to do but it won't help. The phone doesn't actually really care what Marketplace site it connects to; it just downloads the app over HTTP from some web server. The problem is that the XAP file needs to be signed (first issue that I mentioned) or a dev-locked phone won't install it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhm ok, I understand.
Too bad, because it was a good idea!