Windows Phone 7 Emulator Hacked, New Features Exposed

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Earlier this week, Microsoft held its MIX10 developer conference and announced all the nitty gritty development details for its new Windows Phone 7 Series mobile operating system.  As part of its development strategy, Microsoft released a suite of free tools to entice developers to adopt the newly announced Windows Phone 7 Series platform. As any developer is well aware, one of the basic tools included in a development suite is an emulator, which allows developers to test out their code before deploying it to an actual device.

For the tech enthusiast, an emulator often provides a sneak peek at the latest and often unreleased version of an OS. In the case of Windows Phone 7 Series, the emulator, still in an early stage of development, was merely a shell and provided only a superficial look at Microsoft’s highly anticipated refresh of the aged Windows Mobile platform. Microsoft may have wanted to keep all those sweet new features we saw on stage at the MIX10 announcement under wraps but hacker Dan Ardelean had a different plan.

After playing around with a leaked ROM dump from the emulator, Ardelean tweaked some settings within the ROM’s registry files and was able to unlock the content Microsoft had hidden beneath the surface. The features that are now available for your browsing pleasure include a file manger, a task manager, a voice search tool, a camera with support for geo-location, and new mobile versions of Excel, Word, and OneNote.

Folks that are interested in a first hand look at the new Windows Phone 7 Series can do so by downloading the free development tools from Microsoft and then pointing their browser to the popular xda-developers website which has a forum dedicated to Windows Phone 7 Series development and hacking. Once you find the forum post with 105,000+ views, you will know that you are in the right place and will find all the help you will need to begin your journey with the emulated version of Windows Phone 7. Once you have had your fill of  this early build of Windows Phone 7, hit us up in the comments and let us know your first impressions of Microsoft’s up and coming mobile OS.