Windows Phone 7 Emulator Hacked For Full Functionality

It only took a matter of hours after Microsoft released the Windows Phone 7 series developer toolkit for someone to rip the full smartphone build from it, and now the software has been hacked a little more.  Turns out, there's plenty more functionality in the emulator ROM than appears at first glance, it's just that Microsoft have done some work to keep certain elements hidden.  Dan Ardelean, however, has modified the BIN responsible for which features are accessible, bypassing Microsoft's lock-down.

Among the things discovered are a file explorer and a native task manager.  Meanwhile over at xda-developers they've already discovered mention of cut, copy and paste functionality, which Microsoft have admitted won't be in the initial release of WP7 but will instead follow on in a later upgrade.

Unfortunately, Dan has since taken down the files necessary to remove the lock, fearing a negative response from Microsoft.  Of course, this is also a relatively early build of the platform, and part of the reason the company hid certain functionality might simply be because they're planning to change if prior to launch: if developers created apps using the system as it stands, they might find their software doesn't work quite right on shipping Windows Phone 7 series devices.