Hey folks, I've done a fair amount of reading up and have come to the conclusion that homebrew apps that access the registry to make changes to phone features (like Advanced Config) will not work on 2nd gen Windows Phones (like my Focus Flash) as the situation stands.
I've seen more complicated methods arise to make some of these same changes (complicated to me, likely not to many of you. I could make these hacks work if I needed to, but am as likely to screw something up). My question is, are we likely to eventually see these 2nd gen phones hacked and opened up the way the 1st gen phones were, with app registry access and even custom ROMs, or are we looking at a different landscape for Windows Phone these days?
Should I wait and keep my eyes open for the status quo to change, or am I currently looking at the extent of Windows Phone development/hacking for the 2nd generation?
Well, Heathcliff74 says that the next version of WP7 Root Tools (v0.9) will support Samsung gen2. WP7RT includes registry and filesystem browsing, but the new version will also allow you to mark any app for running always in TCB ("root" or "admin") which will allow you to use many additional apps, such as Root Webserver and a few other things I'me currently working on (installation of XAPs from IE for example, if I can make it work on partially-locked phones).
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As far as my stock quantum goes, I really can't complain about wp7. Great features, flows great, everything I could ask of a marketplace based OS. I got the phone knowing it would be locked down, but hoping the possibilities would grow. I do miss the seemingly endless capabilities wm offered though. Access to all resources, running native apps without the need to sideload.
I noticed a month or so ago a few guys in the forum were discovering ways to gain higher priveledges within WP7 and with the little knowledge my noob self has, have looked into the differences between wm6 and wp7, new kernel, beeing sandboxed and whatnot. And im curious, are we waiting for m$'s release of limited native code execution to oem's to be exploited, or is there an update in the privilege adventure?
With the amount of wp7 devices released and soon to be, I doubt I can look forward to an exploited bootloader to run a custom rom on my first gen wp7 quantum (such as a tricked out wp7 or possibly wm support...?), but a ported version of haret to run xdandroid as I did on my diamond would be exceptional, and from what I understand not too impossible considering wp7 uses ce7 (not sure if there's backward compatibility for ce6 though). We would just need a new UI, and an understanding of the device specific hardware for support in android...?
Where do we stand on any of these options, are they likely or if so, nearing?
I can understand your frustration with the restrictions on WP7 but for most scenarios, access to native APIs isn't that essential in my opinion (and I have been developing on WM6 myself). WP7 uses WinCE 6.0 R3 and not CE7. The Windows Phone team do recognise that they have been quite strict with the exposed APIs and I am sure that was a combination of fear of what developers write (in terms of crashing your phone) and work need to be done with Silverlight for WP. Mango brings new low level functionality and should be made available soon - Sockets been the first that comes up in my mind. Is something wrong with sandbox solutions? I believe not
For any other reasons I probably wouldn't have much to say on the subject, but I've always been one to tinker with my Xbox, psp, router, anything fun. If I can get more functionality out of it, I look for a way. Unfortunately I am not skilled enough to make it happen, so I look upon the gurus. In this case I consider dualbooting wm or even starting android from within the current OS as expanding possibilities. Which is why I look for answers to my question. Any answers?
hello everybody, I really can't get modding with windows phone, sorry I've been with android so long and now is all different.
So I have a LG 7 with mango, I want to install the nokia market xap. I just can interop-unlock modifying the registry with the mgf app?
Is a reversible operation?
Thank you
Hi, I'm actually the author of the Nokia Market (and Samsung/LG/HTC/Dell marketplace) XAP. You don't really need interop-unlock; normal developer-unlock works fine.
That said, to answer your question directly:
Yes, you can use the MFG app to dev-unlock (and interop-unlock, if you want) your phone. The steps are available on the Dev&Hacking forum, in multiple places including the interop-unlock thread.
The difference between dev-unlock and interop-unlock from your perspective is the MaxUnsignedApp value - if you put it at 10 (the default for a normal dev unlock) you can install up to 10 homebrew apps (XAP files), and they can't use ID_CAP_INTEROPSERVICES (access high-permissions drivers to break out of the sandbox). If you set it over 300 (most people go for 2,000,000,000 or so) you can install more homebrew apps than you'll ever need to, and they can use ID_CAP_INTEROPSERVICES (which enables some cool hacks, for example the MultiTaskToggle app linked in my signature - it's still compatible with LG just fine). This is referred to as "interop-unlocking" the phone, and must be done after "dev-unlocking" (which is just tweaking a few other registry values).
The whole thing is completely reversible. You can reverse it using the MFG app again, for example. I think you can reverse it using the Developer Registration tool (part of the WP7 SDK, this is the program normally used to dev-unlock a phone). You can, for the "nuclear" option, reverse it by wiping / hard-resetting the phone.
Hope that helps!
a big thank goes to you
Hey mates.
Im looking for a wm 7 alternative to the quite nice app protector android app called Smart App Protector.
What i need is the functionality to restrict my wm7 devices so the users cant enter IE, Settings and other functions than those i want them to.
When a user tries to open the browser on a android device with the smart app protector installed, they get prompted for a password, which is exactly what im looking for.
If there isnt an app that does what im looking for, does anyone know a way to restrict at least internet trafic in IE, i still need data connections, but the users wont be allowed to use data except for 1 app.
My first impression of the wm7 - 7.5 is that its very restricted compared to Android devices :S
Thanks a lot for your help.
A quick for-the-record: No such thing as WM7. Windows Mobile is dead. Although some of the underlying code got re-used in WP7, the upper part of the Windows Phone stack is completely new, and the low-level stuff has changed considerably as well. What you're asking for would probably have been quite easy on WinMo.
On WP7, it's a lot harder. There are three ways I can think of. The first and simplest would be a well-modified custom ROM. Another is to modify the policy system to prevent launching iexplore, settings3, and similar programs, but have an app that (once the password is provided) allows changing those policies. Note that we don't yet have full control over the policy system (as a community; Heathcliff74 knows quite a bit but is busy with his Root Tools project). The third would be to try modifying the registry entries for certain operations. The effectiveness of this depends on whether apps are launched directly (by executable) or indirectly (by GUIDs in the registry). If it's the latter, the launch request could be routed through an authorization app first.
Bear in mind, the only one of these changes that is permanent is a custom ROM. Otherwise, the user could hard-reset the phone (losing all data on it but bringing it back to factory default configuration). It's possible to hard-reset just using the buttons; you don't even need to use the touchscreen.
Thanks for the correction, WP7 ofc
Im rather impressed by the performance of the OS so far, but it has many unforseen restrictions for my needs.
Since i only had the windows phone 7 for 1 day so far, i dont have much knowledge about changing what you are suggesting.
I know what you mean, but no idea how to do on WP7.
A custom ROM would be great indeed, but i dont have any experience in that field. Would be great to get a nice configuration tool with a gui to make the needed changes and then a tool to upload the new ROM to the phone...in that simple order
Im also looking for a solution to install software that was supported by windows mobile. Im checking out cheronwp7 at the moment to see if that can do the trick.
It seems a lot like WP7 is 99% consumer minded than business minded compared to old WM, a bit shame imo.
Hi everybody, I am an engineer and I think that windows phone is perfect for my needs..so fast and efficient, office integrated, easy to use and many other qualities..the only thing that I can't find for this OS is Mathstudio.
For those who don't know what's this, it's like having a graphic calculator always in your poket. This program doesn't make everything, of course, but many of the most common things can be done with mathstudio.
I was wondering if somebody could port this program from android/iOS to windows phone 7. Otherwise I must always go around with my mobile and with an ipod touch only for this program. I remember that the previous version of mathstudio (called spacetime) exsists for windows mobile 6.5, an other way could be a porting from windows mobile. I wrote to the official developer but he said he won't realse a windows phone 7 version of his program.
Thank you for listening
Porting WinMo apps is technically possible (though hard unless they were written initially in .NET). Making an unmodified WinMo app run on WP7 is very hard and usually requires a custom ROM to run it (the stock ROMs have very restrictive permissions policies that most WinMo apps can't work with). Porting iOS or Android apps pretty much requires re-writing them, which is an expense that some app authors don't find worth doing.
There are a number of graphing calculator apps available for WP7, and the built-in calculator works pretty well for non-graphing functions, but I can understand wanting access to a specific tool. Unfortunately, since I've never used the app you describe, I can't tell you how well any of the WP7 alternatives compare.
I've got an HD7 and I've made on my own an Y-cable to downgrade it, so now I use the DFT's Deepshining ROM..I didn't know it was even possible to run some old WM6 apps on WP7, such a grat news I'll try to find out more about it Can you give me a list of alternative graphic calculators for windws phone 7? I wasn't able to find anywhere Thank's a lot!!!
I just did a search on the Marketplace for "graphing calculator" and got a number of hits.
If you look at the Opera apps for WP7 custom ROMs, those are actually wrappers around the WinMo Opera apps - the wrappers just put the files in the right places and then launch EXEs.
Thank you so much for the help , I had a look on the marketplace and I found different graphic calculators (Graphing calculator, PoketPi, Eval Graph, Grapher Calculator), but none of them can replace mathstudio for the following reasons: they are only in 2D, they don't support the CAS (computer algebra system, the same present in Matlab), you can't write and save scripts or even one algorythm. I will find out more about wrapping for the moment, but I hope it will come a better solution
Unfortunately, MathStudio will never ported on WP7 platform (according to this: http://www.mathstudio.net/forums/discussion/164/platform-requests , check the last post)
The only hope is upcoming Apollo. WinRT (Win8 API) will have C++ compiler and (probably) will support native code, so MathStudio developers can (also - possible, it's not too easy) port their app to Win8.
When are we getting a XPrivacy port or equivalent? I thought the homebrew scene would have been the first to make something like this,considering how far HaRET and Root Tools went as far as accessing functionality.
We only know how to do a handful of those things right now. The same hacks that Heathcliff74 used for Root Tools policy editing could be used for other policy editing, such as removing specific permissions from apps, but you'd have to either reverse engineer the policy database yourself or get him to write the tool or document the reverse engineering he did. For homebrew apps, permissions could be edited out of the manifest pre-installation - I seriously considered coding this into my XapHandler app - but decided the likelihood of crashes made it not worthwhile.
Unfortunately, that approach would likely just cause a lot of apps to crash. To instead actually modify the way the apps work (i.e. hook their call to the location services and return a bogus address) should be possible with enough work - a normal app couldn't do it because the .NET runtime on the phones doesn't allow modifying system functionality that way, but a custom ROM or high-privilege app could work around that - but it would not be easy.
I suspect the true answer is that nobody has bothered yet.
The simple genius in achieving privacy through data spoofing is something I was mulling a way back,long before the recent scandals. My method,of course,extended way beyond the device and could render all digital information useless,technically speaking. Im gonna nominate this app for one of these awards that keep popping up,even if im not using Android.