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Rooting and modding a Windows Phone is now child's play

What could possibly go wrong?

Making DIY custom ROMs for your Windows Phone has just become ridiculously easy.

A developer known as "Heathcliff74" - and we have reason to believe this is not his birth name - has released version 1.0 of Windows Internals - adding a easy-as-child's-play UI to the hairy business of unlocking and rooting a Windows Phone or tablet.

The same developer previously released a root tool for Windows Phone 7, which was essentially a different operating system to Windows Phone 8.x. WP Internals is vastly more ambitious.

Modders use the ROMs to allow users to tweak the hardware performance and customise the UI, as well as bundling their own selection of apps. Indeed some things such as full backups, and the ability to firewall Google's data slurping, are only possible with a rooted device.

Android has a thriving modding community, with some flavours of ROMs becoming commercialised. Microsoft was reportedly close to investing in one "open Android" variant, CynaogenMod, earlier this year, although it's believed that it never came to a deal. Qualcomm, Telefónica and Foxconn then piled in.

While Android modding thrived, Windows Phone devices were fairly firmly locked down. However, with Microsoft's tacit approval, it seems, devices running the Windows 10 Mobile preview phones were jailbroken and opened up for curious tweakers. The bait was the presence of an Android runtime, the fruit of Microsoft's Project Astoria, which boasted that Android binaries would run on Windows 10 devices "without modification".

Microsoft has now removed the Astoria runtime and gone very quiet.

One practical use for the new tool may be restoring a fully functional Windows Phone 8.1 ROM image to a device that has been "upgraded" to Windows 10 Mobile. Obviously, unlocking and flashing an unauthorised ROM will void your warranty and, if you're not careful, brick your phone, so use your discretion. ®

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