With the announcement of ChevronWP7 Labs bringing a new unlocking tool/service to the Windows Phone developer table, we all began rejoicing at the prospect of a continued homebrew community with Microsoft's indirect support.
Our Daniel Rubino put forward the question to readers as to how much they thought would be reasonable for the service. He mentioned $5-15 could be considered suffice for a small pint fund that the team could use at weekends. We weren't far off with this estimate as Chris Walsh has mentioned over Twitter that ChevronWP7 Labs will set interested users back by only $9. A Small fee compared to the $99 with AppHub (which was recently re-launched).
Of course we wont be able to submit apps to the Marketplace, have registry access or native access to the OS, but the ability to create apps and side-load them to be a happy-as-Larry user is huge plus for a mere $9. Perfect for developers who are just starting out or who reside outside the supported countries for Marketplace submission - although we have covered a few services (App Exchange and Yalla Apps) that overcome this issue.
Finally though, a word of caution: Chris has since deleted his Tweets, so this may not be final yet...
We'll keep you up to date with more news, be sure to follow ChevronWP7 Labs on Twitter.
Via: MobilityDigest
Comments
With all the restrictions that they're putting on this, it almost seems completely unneccessary. It seems that any app that can be made for homebrew can be submited to the marketplace for approval. You can't make themes, you can't change sounds (other than ringtone, obviously), in fact, there is very little, if anything that you can change with this proposed method of homebrew that isn't already possible. Don't get me wrong, I want homebrew, SOOO badly. It just seems this walled off method completely counter-acts what homebrew is supposed to mean - ie: no walls.
if you want more freedom with a device maybe wp7 is not the platform for you
We're not putting ANY restrictions on this, they're all set by the operating system.
This is, sadly, much less than I had hoped for. Without registry access and native OS access, this is little more than a bandage for those living outside the Marketplace ecosystem. Don't get me wrong - it's good that someone has fulfilled an obvious need. I just was hoping it would be more useful to me who wants dev level access without the need for most of what comes with App Hub.