ChevronWP7

Update regarding token availability and unlock issues

Since the launch of ChevronWP7 Labs a little more than a month ago, we’ve registered and successfully unlocked nearly 5,000 phones. We’re honored to have inspired many amateur developers to begin Windows Phone development!

As you may know, we recently deactivated the sale of additional tokens. This was done to prevent an over-sell situation and to give us time to implement a new payment gateway. We’ll talk about the latter in a future post. For now, we’re sticking with PayPal.

As you read this, we’re working hard to reopen the site and resume the sale of tokens. We should be done with this in the next hour or so. Before we go live, however, we want to outline a few important changes we made to the site.

First, we added a front-facing refund policy. The policy is simple – tokens not eligible for a refund include (but aren’t limited to) those involved in retail returns, resale, warranty repair, or theft. We’ll determine final eligibility on a case-by-case basis, so don’t be afraid to ask.

Second, we changed the order in which you unlock your phone. Previously, we implied that you purchase a token prior to downloading and using the unlocker. (It was listed as Step 1 and Step 2 respectively.) We flipped these steps to ensure users try the unlock client before purchasing a token. Why?

In some cases, the client may not work correctly with your Windows Phone. An issue plaguing us since launch involves a small percentage of Windows Phone handsets not communicating with the PC properly. This issue manifests in our unlocker as the error “Unlock your Windows Phone screen to continue.” Or if you wait long enough, our tool times out and presents the “Your phone is ignoring us” message. This issue also affects the official Windows Phone Developer Registration tool, showing an error of “Unable to connect to phone. Please check that the Zune software is running […]”.

After many countless attempts to debug the issue with a plethora of Windows Phones, we regrettably concluded this is a problem beyond our control and cannot fix. We understand how frustrating this must be, especially to our early adopters. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. If you’re affected by this issue, here’s what you can do:

1. If you possess an HTC Arrive, try the troubleshooting steps listed in Microsoft Support KB 2537993.
    
2. Try using Windows Phone Developer Registration tool (provided as part of the Windows Phone SDK).
   
   If the tool returns an “Unable to connect to phone” message, keep reading.
   
   If you receive a message other than “Unable to connect to phone”, contact us for support. This is likely a resolvable issue that we can help with.
    
3. Try a new USB cable (particularly the cable that came with the device) and port on your PC. Remember, not all USB cables are created equal.
    
4. Reboot the phone and/or the PC.
    
5. Get in touch with Microsoft by posting in the App Hub forums, specifically the Tools For WP7 sub-forum. Be sure to state your phone cannot communicate with the PC via the official Windows Phone Developer Registration tool (see step 2) as App Hub is not a place for ChevronWP7 Labs support.
   
   NOTE: A free App Hub account is required to post on the App Hub forums. If you’re signing up on App Hub for the first time, you may be asked to become an App Hub member for $99/year. At this step, simply click the Cancel button – you will then have a free account, allowing you to participate on the App Hub (but not publish apps to the Marketplace).

We will honor any refund requests via email for users affected by this issue.

To all our users: Thanks for your patience and Happy Holidays.

- Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh, Long Zheng

ChevronWP7 Labs is reaching the finish line!

As you’ve probably worked out by now, we operate on Valve time - a measure of time that vastly differs from real time. So when we said we’d be launching ChevronWP7 Labs “soon”, we really meant “in a few months” bringing us to now – only a few weeks away from launch!

While you wait, let’s set some expectations.

The ChevronWP7 Labs site and service was designed to allow hobbyist developers to install, run, and debug unsigned applications on their personal Windows Phone. All you need to get started is a Windows Live ID. (A Windows Phone might also be handy.) It’s important to note that we don’t need the Windows Live ID tied to your phone. We simply require any Windows Live ID to simplify the registration and login process.

After registering, users will have the ability to purchase and manage what we’re calling “unlock tokens”. One token equals one unique Windows Phone device registration. (You get unlimited re-registrations of that device should the need arise.) Tokens will cost $9.00 USD and be sold via PayPal. If having a Paypal account makes you cringe though, you can elect to check out with a credit card instead.

On the desktop, you’ll run our custom version of the unlocking tool. It’s very similar to the official “developer registration” tool, however instead of requiring an App Hub account, it requires an unlock token. Oh and it looks prettier. Otherwise, it behaves identically. No magic spells. No exploits. Your phone’s warranty and support lifelines will remain intact.

When using our tool, you may notice the “unlock queue” – you’ll be put into one. This queue exists to serialize our unlock requests for various security and administrative reasons, so we’ll just apologize for the inconvenience right now. We’ll be monitoring these queues to ensure they’re kept short and will add capacity where needed.

We know that our work is sometimes misinterpreted as promoting “jailbreaking” activities. This is not the case. Our goal is to help bright people do awesome things without infringing upon the developer community with apps in the Marketplace. In fact, we had many conversations with Microsoft to make sure we do this the right way. It may be the long way around, but we feel this approach is ethical, the best way to ensure that the program stays alive and hobbyists like us get more access to cool toys.

As said earlier, we’re a few weeks away from launch. We’ve been working hard this year to plan, design and implement this system to meet the needs of the homebrew development community; we hope you like it.

Thanks for your patience!

- Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh, Long Zheng