14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Redmond-based software company Microsoft announced the release of a series of development tools for the building of applications for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series devices, and it seems that the WP7 emulator has been already unlocked. We learned earlier this week that the Windows Phone 7 Build 7.0.0.6077 had been dumped off the emulator, and now it appears that some also managed to unlock the development solution.
When cycling around the unlocked emulator, one can easily see that all the goodies that Microsoft presented at the MIX10 conference, and which didn't appear in the Windows Phone 7 build included in the emulator, are there. Moreover, it seems that there are also a series of features that were not yet presented, such as a comprehensive looking file explorer and even a task manager, the last one coming a little as a surprise, considering the fact that Microsoft already confirmed that the OS wouldn't sport multi-tasking.
“After a good idea, 6 hours of work and a lot a lot of digging I've unlocked the ROM image in the emulator CTP. I will describe tomorrow the method but right now I will just post some screenshots, upload the bin somewhere so I can give you the link and go to sleep cause it's almost 2 o'clock in the morning. I will also test it better tomorrow put I saw that it has a file explorer :) and a VERY nice task manager,” Dan Ardelean states on his blog. He initially posted the bin file too, but took it down since, though the solution can be already found on various mirror sites around the Internet.
Among the other goodies that surfaced from the unlocked emulator, we can count the Office apps for Windows Phone 7 Series, and one can see in the video below what the creation of a Word doc in OneNote looks like. The application seems to be only an early version of the solution, Engadget notes, though Microsoft announced that users usually made minor edits and left comments to Office docs, so there shouldn't be major changes when the final version is released.
10 minutes with Windows Phone 7 simulator unlocked [video] from techAU on Vimeo.
Windows Phone 7 Settings from techAU on Vimeo.
