The enthusiast developers at ChevronWP7 have released their inexpensive Windows Phone unlocking tool, ChevronWP7 Labs. This tool provides users with a way to inexpensively “developer unlock” their device, providing them with two key capabilities: Inexpensively run self-created apps on a physical device — Normally, budding developers would need to pay for Microsoft’s expensive ($99 per year) developer program, App Hub for Windows Phone 7, to run self-made apps on a physical device. (Enthusiast developers can run self-made apps for free in an emulator.) But ChevronWP7 Labs provides the same developer unlock capability for just $9. Not $9 per year; $9. So this is a very inexpensive way to run homebrew, self-made apps on physical devices. And if you decide to “go pro” later, you can do so after having had fully-developed your app, not before. Run homebrew apps — With a normal, retail Windows Phone handset, you can only run apps that Microsoft provides through the Windows Phone Marketplace. However, if you developer unlock your phone, using ChevronWP7 Labs or via Microsoft’s expensive developer program, you can also run homebrew apps that were made by other developers. One thing that ChevronWP7 Labs doesn’t do, and this has been miscommunicated via many blog posts over the past few days, is jailbreak a Windows Phone. “Jailbreaking is typically done to give you unfettered root access to the device,” says ChevronWP7?s Rafael Rivera, who is also (full disclosure) my Windows Secrets co-author. “We don’t do that. We enable developers to write code for the device without sacrificing the IP protection that Microsoft has put in place. It’s a win-win for everyone.” To find out more about this tool, please read the introductory blog post, ChevronWP7 Labs Availability, or check out the ChevronWP7 Labs web site. Source: ChevronWP7 Update: According to the Chevron WP7 team, there are some delays and issues they are working with. Wait times to unlock your device may be a bit large right now. We would recommend waiting until further notice. The two tweets mentioned the following: We’re aware some users are still experiencing issues with the updated client. We’re looking into them. We have over 400 people in queue now. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND people to AVOID attempting to unlock right now as it is a very very long wait. Authors: