It's been awhile since we've heard much from the homebrew crowd, in fact once everyone went to 'NoDo' and the door was shut on home-unlocked devices, the amount of side-loading software declined dramatically. That wasn't a terrible thing either, as Mango's "500 features" goes along way in "fixing" any complaints users may have with the OS.
Still, for those developers who either cannot afford the $99 or for those just starting out, there's an odd solution coming forth from the ChevronWP7 team. Evidently they are set to release a new unlocker, but this time with the blessings of Microsoft. It's called ChevronWP7 Labs. The catch? It won't be free this time:
"The service will require a small fee — currently via PayPal — to offset costs but we assure you it will be more affordable than the App Hub. Those who wish to write and immediately publish apps are recommended to sign up to the App Hub instead.
We’re excited to be making this service available to users with the support of the Windows Phone team."
Now, before we can pass judgement on this, we'd have to know how much we're talking here. That range can be from $1 to $98, we suppose and that's a large range. If we're talking $5-15 we can kind of look past it and almost think of it as a tip to the Team for their work; more than that and it starts looking like opportunism (and we'd be surprised Microsoft would be okay in losing that money).
For now though, we can at least be happy that an unofficial/official solution is coming to the platform, which may still allow a homebrew community to grow on the sides and allow devs of all ranges to play with the platform. Stay tuned...
Source: ChevronWP7 Blog; ChevronWP7 Labs
Comments
From my experience talking to XDA-Developers WinMo devs, although they put in long hours and typically supported host servers, websites, help forums and tried to solve users problems the best they could, the response to donationware was no more than a pittance towards covering their costs. So I am all for the ChevronWP7 Team being fairly compensated up front for their continuing efforts and expenses. I agree that anything like $50 would be outrageous, but a one time (or renewable) fee of $10-15 per device or Windows Live ID, is more than reasonable.
There may already be a way to do this, but wouldn't you be able to unlock a few phones to use for testing purposes, say in a commercial setting, without having to pay $99 for each? Until Mango, it doesn't sound like we'll be able to beta test apps.
I have no issue paying the Chevron folks a small $10-20 fee for what they do for us. I'm no developer and just like to use custom colors and such, but it is something I value.
Wow. Iphone dev team charging for a jailbreak? Cynaogen charging for a rom? Saurik charging for cydia. Webos Internals charging for patching. Looks like WP7 Devs are just pawns of MS. Are any wp7 devs out there going to "nut up" and do what is right.
You'll probably find most WP7 devs are more concerned about their work being pirated rather than granting people the ability to freely sideload apps. I'm all for homebrew and it's fantastic what people can come up with when they can get creative with base level access to a device, but if the end result is piracy and a loss of control over the security of the apps going on a device, it becomes a bad situation very quickly
I don't support piracy. I support users being free to access their device completely. Lame developers are still lame.
You're mistaking an officially supported unlock tool from MS to unsupported jailbreaking and ROM cooking on other platforms. There's lots of devs who want to mess with WP7 but don't want to pay the $99 a year fee to do so. This, for a small fee gives you the same thing without the limits, you can use it just to mess with your own devices or to test early code dev before you sign up for App Hub and try to make money for real.Nothing wrong with giving a cheap option to devs, and at least this way any OS updates in the future shouldn't **** with your unlocking ability unlike the first ChevronWP7 tool which doesn't work if you install NoDo.
Def support you with nothing wrong about giving cheap options to dev? nothing is cheaper than free though. Using jailbreaking,homebrew you can do this with iphone and webos. You don't need to root to sideload apps on android unless you are on att. I can't believe that MS and the chevron team needs to charge money for this tool.lame developers are lamehomebrew won't get far on wp7 with things like thiswelcome to your feature phone
Paying to hack a phone defeats the purpose.
paying to hack a microsoft device just feels wrong...
Why? I'm not hacking it to 'stick it to the man' nor to steal anything. Paying for a way to grant your device the abilities beyond what it is intended for isn't an issue for me.
different strokes for different folks
It's paying for devs to test future apps without paying $99, or if you're in a market that's not officially supported by MS's App Hub yet.It's for Devs in the end, the homebrew scene aspect of it is a bonus.
Why is it that Windows Phone users pay more for apps and now if someone wants to JB their phone they have to pay for that also? We have to pay to unlock our phone which we should be able to do anyways because its "our" phone to begin with. With everything on the internet a free alternative will show up or a cracked version of Chevron will be available. Then I might be interested.