Windows Phone 7, the latest mobile operating system the Redmond-based software giant Microsoft brought to the market last month, is now one step closer to being jailbroken.
The news is based on a recent discovery from Australian developer Chris Walsh, who managed to find a way in which one ca successfully run “native” unmanaged code on a Windows Phone 7 mobile phone.
It all started with the discovery of a third-party application available in the Windows Phone Marketplace which is using “native” code, and not the Silverlight-managed code that all other non-Microsoft apps should run.
It appears that the said app (which includes some specific code from Samsung, aimed at setting the Network properties of a Windows Phone 7 handset) has unmanaged DLL’s inside the XAP file.
The same is described in a recent post on XDA-Developers forum, where a member came up with a nice range of observations on the application and on the characteristics that enabled it to run the native code.
A DLL called “Microsoft.Phone.InteropServices” was put into the spotlight, as it was able to offer COM access if handled in the right way.
Chris Walsh managed to come up with a valid application and to sideload it on a developer Windows Phone 7 device that inherited the ability to run unmanaged code.
Of course, Windows Phone 7 handsets that landed on shelves do not offer sideloading of applications, and having such an application available on the Marketplace is something one can only dream of, so things are only starting to shape up.
However, since root access to the OS is possible, and since the door to future jailbroken application for Windows Phone 7 was opened, we should expect for more on this to emerge pretty soon.
“Sure you’re now loading native DLL’s, but your application is STILL running as a managed instance, and you are still bound to the normal restrictions from the OS. You will still get tombstoned, killed etc,” Chris stated in a recent blog post.
Through jailbroken applications, indie developers will be able to step beyond the Silverlight framework and SDK, and take advantage of more capabilities of the handset, otherwise unavailable for third-party software solutions.
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