Chevron WP7 Labs will unlock your Windows Phone device for a small fee

Chevron WP7 is probably the best thing that has happened to the Homebrew community (currently in small numbers at XDA). Chevron WP7 enabled users to developer unlock device their device to sideload applications. The idea was nobel. Not everyone could pay $99 to test their application. It was a bit too much. So the team came out with this hack, exploited a void and made a break through. The Chevron WP7 unlocker gave birth to  several other hacks as well, most of them still prominent on first page of Windows Phone XDA thread. Sadly, the unlock couldn't last for long. Microsoft fixed the bug in upcoming update making Chevron WP7 absolutely useless. The developers killed the project. But now the team behind the unlocker along with Microsoft's support are back with Chevron WP7 Labs which was announced in Windows phone dev podcast. More from the blog:

By Rahul Mathur

XDA Member Comes Up With Workaround To Fix 'Walshed' Phones

With the whole fuss around Walshed phones and Microsoft only recently approving a fix from the ChevronWP7 team for the people who Walshed their phones to get the NoDo update, there seems to be an early ray of hope. A member of the XDA forum, ahodes , has posted a way to fix Walshed phones or atleast any Walshed Samsung Focus. This isn't the official fix, nor has it been declared safe by the maker himself, but the member claims to have successfully updated his Samsung Focus to NoDO after fixing it. Quoting from his post :

I did some digging and figured out what's gone wrong. Some phones have more than one language installed, but the Chevron updater only installs the language update for the language you choose. When Zune goes to update your phone, it tries to install updates for the rest of the languages to, but fails since the versions on the phone are incorrect. All that needs to be done is install the missing language updates. I have a Samsung Focus that was updated with the US English update. Looking at the log files for the update, it also needed:

German

Italian

Spanish

French

Using the Chevron updater as a base, I reworked it to install the missing languages. If you're using a Samsung Focus, you can get the exe. I can't promise that nothing horrible will happen, but my phone did update properly to 7392 via Zune after running it.

If you have some other phone that uses a different combination of languages, it's just a matter of applying a different set of updates. I'm guessing the phones that work fine only had one language installed to begin with. Definitely no need to reflash the phone!

Chris Walsh commented and said :

So this "may" give you 7392. But this can also cause other issues if you install language packs that aren't supposed to be on your device. So I'd hold off on using this.

We would recommend holding off this workaround for the time being, but if any daredevils do try this out, let us know how it goes.

[Source via 1800PocketPC]

By Akshay Bakshi

Microsoft explains the "Walshed" Windows Phone NoDo update , Fix Coming

Used Chris Walshie's method to update your WP7, and now are unable to go past the NoDo update (build 7390) ? There's some good news for you, Microsoft has approved a fix for the people who used the ChevronWP7 updater.

ChevronWP7 updater was a tool created by Chris Walsh, to allow users to update their WP7 device before the official update by carriers. Using the ChevronWP7 updater could put the device into a state, where its unable to receive future updates and reflashing it would be the only fix, says Microsoft.

Quoting Brandon Watson from Windows Phone Developer Blog :

Phones updated via the unsupported method do not contain an official image and cannot be updated further at this time. Due to scheduling of engineering resources, we did not anticipate having to undue the changes made to phones by these unsupported methods. While we are not ruling out having a fix in the future, for now there is no fix.

In the blog post, Watson also tells that users trying to update their Walshed phones using the Zune software would receive a 80180048 error. Even if you try to get your phone replaced via a manufacturing return, the operators will know the situation due to the error code and its upto them to decide what to do. Still, its not all bad.

We understand that this isn’t ideal. Unfortunately, our engineering priorities are focused on improving the process by which updates get to Windows Phone, issuing the security update you just got and working to getting Mango to market. Undoing this specific problem was not in our schedule.

However, the creators of the unsupported tool are a clever bunch, and wanted to get a timely fix created for customers who have put their phones into this state. They believe they have created a way to get these phones back on the officially supported path. We will work with them to validate their solution and applaud the team for taking responsibility to do this.

The ChevronWP7 team has already tweeted that a fix has been approved and more details will emerge soon. Still, nowhere has Microsoft mentioned that the Walshing of phones wouldn't have happened if so much had not gone wrong with the NoDo. After this is all fixed, users may well forgive Microsoft is the king of fruits arrives in a timely manner for everyone.

By Akshay Bakshi