There’s a bit of good news coming from the ChevronWP7 team, it seems it’s been a while since we have heard much from them. That is besides them actively coding, running Aussie DDD WP7 Mango presentations, releasing fixes for the “Walshie” WP7 forced Nodo tool and twittering away… Well, now they have made a pretty big Windows Phone announcement, completely backed by Microsoft.

This announcement was based on the initial vision which brought the ChevronWP7 team together in the first place. This vision was for a lower-cost alternative method to Developer-unlock your Windows Phone handset, along with the side-loading of Apps, homebrews and other community based initiatives. Unlike the iPhone Dev Team, this service won’t be free. Customers will have to pay a minimal fee via PayPal and then they will have the ability to jailbreak and load homebrew apps on their handsets.

The ChevronWP7 team at their core, came about out of the shared vision of Home-brew and the enthusiast community creating, developing and pushing this new OS platform to its fullest potential, even if not supported by Microsoft. Well, Microsoft has taken the high road with all of this and has embraced their creativity and invited them to a meeting. That is when things got quiet until now.

The announcement on their Blog (pictured below), confirmed a forthcoming initiative from the newly created CHEVRONWP7 LABS team. It would appear that this is going to be the name under which any further WP7 software, tools or general releases from the ChveronWP7 team will be made under. The specific Blog post on their site confirmed a forthcoming low-cost alternative to Developer Unlocking your Windows Phone handset, in-line with their objectives to promote and support the home-brew, developer and enthusiast WP7 communities.

Important enough to mention again, is that this initiative will be fully endorsed up-front by Microsoft.
I have to give a huge amount of credit to the Chevron team (Chris, Long and Rafael), for standing strong behind their initial goal of supporting the WP7 enthusiast community and developers.

Will you pay a fee to jailbreak, knowing you have Microsoft’s permission to do so?
Is Microsoft starting to also see the value of the developer and enthusiast community?
What are your thoughts on all of this? Let us know in the comments below.

source: chevronwp7

UPDATE: According to this article, people are saying the Marketplace is back online. It was down for about 7 hours, and there hasn’t been an official statement from Microsoft as to what caused the outage.

There are reports going around this morning that the Microsoft Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 devices is down, throwing an error that says “Can’t get this info right now. Check back in a little while.” I didn’t bring my WP7 device to work today, so I can’t check it out on my Surround, but so far the reports are that it only seems to affect those that have NoDo (build 7390 or higher) and its been down for at least the past 4 hours. Its also been reported that its worldwide. Microsoft has only given the following statement, “We are investigating these reports and will provide an update when we have more to share.”

For our WP7 users out there, are you experiencing this problem too? Please provide your build number and the phone you’re using.

Source: WinRumors

We’ve heard rumors about the Windows Phone 7 NoDo update for a while now; Actually ever since its launch. Microsoft has had their fair share of problems with their pre-NoDo update, especially with Samsung phones. Now, according to their official French blog, the NoDo update will be delivered in the 2nd half of March through the Zune software. Since its already March 9th, that could be as early as next week, or closer to the end of the month.

I’m the owner of an HTC Surround (not my primary device anymore), and I’ve been periodically checking it for the update and I haven’t even received the pre-NoDo update yet. After browsing some forums, it doesn’t look like any Surround owners have received any updates yet.

I believe this is the first official statement from Microsoft about a timeframe for the NoDo update. We’ve heard rumors about first quarter, January, February, March, etc, but nothing official. So if this is true, we’ll be seeing this update sometime within the next 3 weeks.

Now before you start jumping for joy, this is not the update we’re all waiting for. Its not NoDo, or the update that contains the performance enhancements and copy/paste, but instead, this is a minor update to the device infrastructure that helps improve the whole update process. Some of you Zune users out there might have seen an update to the Zune software that was pushed out a couple of weeks ago. This is probably inline with that. So now we’re just one step closer to getting NoDo!

According to their blog:

“What’s in this update?
This first update for Windows Phone is designed to improve the software update process itself. So while it might not sound exciting, it’s still important because it’s paving the way for all future goodie-filled updates to your phone, such as copy and paste or improved Marketplace search.
In the future, I encourage you to check out our new update history page on the Windows Phone website for a brief, plain-English summary of what each update does or what features it adds to your phone.

When will I get this update?
We’ll begin sending it out today. But to help ensure the process goes smoothly, it won’t be sent to everyone at once. So you might see an update message before your spouse, co-worker, or neighbor (or vice versa). This is a common industry practice. That said, we understand you’re eager to have the latest software on your phone, and our goal is to deliver it to you as quickly as possible.”

For our WP7 users out there, have you seen this update come through yet? I haven’t seen it on my Surround as of this posting. I’ve read reports where it could take 30 minutes once its downloaded because it does a system backup.

Source: Windows Phone Blog

While we don’t have an visual confirmation of this, lets just say it makes sense. We’re getting a report that the Dell Venue Pro is already shipping with the NoDo update on board, ready for some copy-n-paste action—at least in India (did I just burst your bubble?)

Reader Vinod writes to tell us: “My friend just picked up a new Dell Pro in India, and it has the NoDo (copy-paste) update already applied! The moment I saw the copy icon appearing on his phone, I yelled and started trying it out! Works exactly as advertised and in the emulator.”

Like we said, it makes sense. Just like how that leaked Sprint 7 Pro Finalized ROM has now been confirmed to have NoDo on board, we can expect some devices rolling off the factory floors to have the update already applied. OEMs have been working with the update for a few months already, all we know is we’re getting darn close! (Interesting enough, we[source writer] tried every single WP7 device on display at Mobile World Congress, not one had the update applied – looks like Microsoft didn’t let anyone slip it in there.).

So with this exiting news PPCGeekers – can you let us know if you start to see the NoDo update on Windows Phone 7 devices? Let us know in the comments below – if not we should hopfully start seeing the updates soon here in the USA. Maybe just maybe we can get a little NoDo loving in new phones that are on their way our the door as we speak!.

Source: WPCentral.com

You may already know the Web-famous Windows watcher Paul Thurrott and if not well now you’ve heard of him. He has just come forward with several new details surrounding the upcoming updates for Microsoft’s mobile platform. Keep reading to find out more!

According to Thurrott, two major updates are coming this year. The first, “NoDo” (possibly short for “No Donuts”, will find its way to end users some time in early February. He also goes on to tell us some features to be found in NoDo are the “copy and paste functional addition, support for the Qualcomm 7×30 smart phone chipset, a CDMA location stack and a number of software fixes.”

Thurrott also mentioned that later in the year, WP7 users will see another update currently called “Mango” internally (we’ve all heard about this one), which will apparently bring “Internet Explorer 9 with with the Trident 5 rendering engine, HTML 5 and Silverlight, and gesture support.” Possibly new updates in Mango such as more entertainment features, we will see.

Was this what you expected to hear after all the rumors about the updates coming? I think this breakdown is much easier to understand. Now let me know what you think about it.

Source: WindowsPhoneSecrets and BGR

Image: CNET