14 DAY TRIAL // Owners of Nokia’s Lumia smartphones can enjoy the features and capabilities of more applications than others, some of them being offered directly by Nokia, while others are third-party exclusives for them, yet it seems that a glitch could offer other users access to the software as well.
Apparently, although the Windows Phone Store actually checks devices to see whether they are qualified to access a specific application or now, there is a way to circumvent that, due to a glitch in the system.
Users interested in exploiting that would then be able to search for Nokia-exclusive applications in the Store on their handsets, and even download and install the software on their smartphones, WPCentral explains.
It all starts with setting up a proxy server that would disguise itself as a Nokia Lumia handset, then requires for all those interested in downloading said apps to connect to the Store using this proxy, as WPDang details in a recent post.
Although the portal would normally return no results containing apps available only for Lumia smartphones when accessed from HTC or Samsung devices, the proxy would bypass that, thus allowing users to view said applications.
However, it seems that the proxy server would not allow users to download and install software, though there’s a way to get around this as well, since the Store won’t filter download requests, but only search requests.
After opening an application’s page in the Store, simply go to settings and turn the proxy off, then return to the app’s page and hit download to grab it.
There are some appealing applications in the Nokia Collection in the Windows Phone Store, and having access to them would certainly make a lot of non-Nokia users rejoice, although taking advantage of said security issue might not be the best manner to do so.
As WPCentral notes, there is also the possibility that these applications won’t work on Windows Phone 8 devices from HTC or Samsung, should they lack the appropriate drivers and APIs, though some people will certainly give them a try.
Now that it has been exposed, the loophole might be patched soon, which would restore things to the way they were before. Stay tuned for more on this.