Hacker gets native code to run on Windows Phone 7 -- will a jailbreak follow?

Filed under: Windows Mobile, Microsoft

It seems, thanks to one of Samsung's recent additions to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, that a jailbreak of Microsoft's latest mobile platform might come a lot sooner than anticipated.

In a high-tech plot twist that even mother could've predicted, it turns out that Windows Phone 7 can run native code! Until today, it was thought that WP7 apps could only be written in Silverlight, an abstracted platform that made jailbreaking all but impossible. If third-party apps can contain native code, it makes jailbreaking all but a foregone conclusion. There still remains the problem of getting such apps onto your phone, though: Microsoft isn't going to approve the addition of a jailbreaking app on the Marketplace!

Microsoft's acceptance of Samsung's native app raises one other important question: why can Samsung submit a native app, but small-time indie developers can't? Samsung's app obviously required some functionality that only native, low-level code could provide -- but why shouldn't all developers get the ability to hook into the underlying operating system?

As Long Zheng says, for a phone's indie and homebrew community to really thrive, unfettered access to the phone's hardware is required. Let's hope this is just the beginning of WP7 hacking!

Hacker gets native code to run on Windows Phone 7 -- will a jailbreak follow? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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