Two interesting Windows Phone stories have emerged today. The first of which is that the phone’s app store now has over 3,000 apps and 15,000 developers. This means we can expect to see an explosion of apps for Microsoft’s new smartphone platform in the next few months.
This is fantastic news as many commentators, no myself I might add, are saying that this platform will live or die on the number and quality of its apps, just as iOS and Google Android will. I’m not one of those people because these commentators, who are all techies let’s face it, are overlooking the glaringly obvious fact that people need a mobile phone first. Even if the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone handsets had no apps AT ALL, people would still buy them in great numbers. On this score I personally believe, because I’ve used all three, that for casual mobile phone users Windows Phone has the edge over the competition. I’ve been made to eat my words before though, so we’ll see how it goes over the next year or so.
In other Windows Phone news, tech blogger and author Raphael Rivera and Chris Walsh have released the first unlocker for the platform, which if you’re so inclined you can download here. While the idea of an unlocked mobile OS is a tempting one for some power users who want to be able to install whatever apps they want on the device, I wouldn’t recommend that anybody actually unlock their phone, be it a Windows Phone or an iPhone, at all.
The reason for this is that an unlocked phone is an insecure phone that is vulnerable to all types of malware. We’ve already seen examples of this on the iPhone and criminals will be sure to quickly take advantage of this new gap in Windows Phone’s security.
The other reason is simply that you’ll invalidate your warranty on the device so if it breaks during the first year or so you could be faced with a $500 charge for a replacement. Like I say, be very careful before choosing to unlock your phone.
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