You know the best thing about a Focus?

[bigkevbosky]

Besides all the great things about a Focus (can use a microSD card, awesome screen, cheap to buy off contract, etc) - the best thing is that it might just be the simplest WP7 device to unlock.

I'm not really big on tinkering with devices, but I gave this a shot :

Developer, Interop unlock your Samsung WP7 with WindowBreak - Windows Phone Hacker

It worked like a charm. I downloaded this and was able to deploy XAPs to the Focus really easily :

[UPDATED-06-APR-2011] New XAP installer, in-place app update, no dev tool and more... - xda-developers

So for any of you thinking about unlocking your device so you can tinker with your phone, give it a shot. I put Nokia Drive, the HTC app hub, Themes, Folders, and Supreme Shortcuts on mine to start with.

I apologize if there's a thread about this already - if anyone has any questions I can answer, feel free to ask.

 

[ZombieBacchus]

Thanks for the links. I want to try this out on my focus. It is nice to have access to the other app hubs. HTC has some nice apps that I want. I don't know much about the homebrew scene though. Are there a lot of apps out there?

 

[Matthew Mazzenga]

Did this about a week ago and it's working great.

 

[Duvi]

Thanks for the links. I want to try this out on my focus. It is nice to have access to the other app hubs. HTC has some nice apps that I want. I don't know much about the homebrew scene though. Are there a lot of apps out there?

Not as much as Android or even Windows Mobile, but they have quite a few useful ones.

The folders is one I really want to put on my Focus.

 

[ZombieBacchus]

Not as much as Android or even Windows Mobile, but they have quite a few useful ones.

The folders is one I really want to put on my Focus.

I remember reading about the folders app. That sounds like it could be very usefull.

 

[bigkevbosky]

Thanks for the links. I want to try this out on my focus. It is nice to have access to the other app hubs. HTC has some nice apps that I want. I don't know much about the homebrew scene though. Are there a lot of apps out there?

Well like you said HTC makes a couple nice apps but not all will work on the Focus. HTC hub, notes, and photo enhancer are ones I know work for sure and flashlight and HTC watch don't. Dock does work but it's a bit funky. The margins are off so the app doesn't run right.

As for homebrew I like supreme shortcuts. It lets you add tiles for a ton of stuff including system apps. Useful if you want a tile that links directly to the brightness setting, for example.

I've also been able to install advanced settings and change my system color. It lets you add as many color options to the theme setting as you want. So in addition to the 10 or so colors Microsoft lets me have I also have "dodger blue" and "crimson", for example.

There are other homebrew apps that are nice like one that monitors your battery and lets you add a live tile showing battery percentage.

 

[JoeScuba]

I get some kind of GPRS stuff, nothing about unlocking or jailbreaking the phone, when I get to the pulldown menu. I'm in my office, don't have signal, but have wifi, could that be a problem.

I have a Samsung Focus 1.3 Running WP7.5

*UPDATE* Disregard, got it, had cell signal on second attempt and it worked. Must be something over-air.

 

[RumpRoast]

I've also been able to install advanced settings and change my system color. It lets you add as many color options to the theme setting as you want. So in addition to the 10 or so colors Microsoft lets me have I also have "dodger blue" and "crimson", for example.

This just made my day. Tired of going back and forth between green and red. I want gray/charcoal. Thanks

 

[RumpRoast]

So I went to the site and got it "broke" and diagnostics also confirms this but I cannot deploy anything. I tried the Advanced Configuration, Accent Changer, Root Tools and everytime I hit the deploy button I get this

"Deployment FAILED with the following ERROR:
Failed to connect to the device. Ensure that the device is completely booted and is connected to the PC."

Steps I have taken so far:

Downloaded .Net Framework 4
Restarted Zune
Rebooted PC and phone
Reinstalled Framework 4
Used all versions of XAPDeploy tool
Downloaded "vs_sdeprolightup-enu.zip" I was getting the 0x89xxxx errors before this
It also made me install something for Microsoft Visual Studio

Any ideas? Sorry for hijacking your thread btw

 

[bigkevbosky]

So I went to the site and got it "broke" and diagnostics also confirms this but I cannot deploy anything. I tried the Advanced Configuration, Accent Changer, Root Tools and everytime I hit the deploy button I get this

"Deployment FAILED with the following ERROR:
Failed to connect to the device. Ensure that the device is completely booted and is connected to the PC."

Steps I have taken so far:

Downloaded .Net Framework 4
Restarted Zune
Rebooted PC and phone
Reinstalled Framework 4
Used all versions of XAPDeploy tool
Downloaded "vs_sdeprolightup-enu.zip" I was getting the 0x89xxxx errors before this
It also made me install something for Microsoft Visual Studio

Any ideas? Sorry for hijacking your thread btw

I'm sure you've already made sure of this but...

Make sure the Zune software is open and running and synced...

Leave your phone UNLOCKED (take off lock screen) - I had this problem the first couple of times I tried to deploy. Leave the time out settings the longest you can (5 mintues) so it doesn't relock during a deployment.

Try again - if that doesn't work, try different deployment software. I know there's Tom'sXAP and a few others. Search the XDA forums for "XAP deploy" and you'll find a couple of different ones. Maybe try this one that I found - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1220617

Also, try "Themes" - Themes for Windows Phone Version 2 - Windows Phone Hacker

If Themes doesn't work either then I dunno - maybe someone from the XDA forums can help.

 

[bigkevbosky]

Ha - another fun tweak I found today - though purely cosmetic - you can change the "3G" so that it says any three letters. You can change it to "LTE" and convince your dumber friends that you already have an LTE windows phone, for example.

 

[Judge_Daniel]

Nokia Drive would work on my Focus without data connection, right? Doesn't it download the maps to the phone?

 

[bigkevbosky]

Nokia Drive would work on my Focus without data connection, right? Doesn't it download the maps to the phone?

Correct. You can download the entire database (something crazy like 2 gigs) or specific states/countries. They all vary in size. For example, California is like 150 mb, but Nevada is only 30 mb.

 

[Judge_Daniel]

:O So it is like I won a free GPS from Microsoft when I won my Focus! Score!