The team behind ChevronWP7, the Microsoft-sanctioned unlocking method for Windows Phone 7, has started the New Year with some good and bad news — the good is that they’ve made 10,000 sales so far, but the bad is that they’ve now sold out and currently have no plans to restart operations.
Initially unofficial, the ChevronWP7 unlock tool gained official sanction from Microsoft early last year, and since then has gone on to help 10,000 Windows Phone 7 users hack their devices. With their phones unlocked, users could install apps not found in the Windows Marketplace.
It turns out that the development team had an agreement with Microsoft to sell no more than 10,000 “unlock tokens”, and has closed their virtual shop doors now that figure has been reached. A countdown on their Twitter feed advised how many remained yesterday, and also broke the news there were no plans to secure a further batch of tokens.
ChevronWP7 team member Rafael Rivera confirmed this several times via his own Twitter account, adding that there was also another reason for stopping the service, calling it “a pain in the a**” to support.
However, there could be the chance of a reprise, as Rivera hasn’t entirely ruled out acquiring more tokens from Microsoft, and later tweeted “Yeah we’re talking about this. Might get more tokens” in response to a follower saying it would have been good to know there was a finite amount of unlock codes.
In the meantime though, any locked Windows Phone 7 devices must stay that way, officially at least, and owners can only hope the ChevronWP7 team decides to reopen the service again soon.
