by Ducki on 4/7/18, 1:58 PM with 355 comments
by Someone1234 on 4/7/18, 2:49 PM
For a $30 phone, it was incredibly fast and smooth. The tile interface worked well (particularly information dense relative to notification dots/counts on icons we're seeing now), the onscreen keyboard is the best I've ever used (even to this day), and the way updates were delivered (direct from Microsoft, not the network operator or OEM) was a breath of fresh air from Android.
As anyone and everyone will tell you, lack of apps killed it. In no small part because Google was using their market position to squish it (yes, I appreciate the irony). Google didn't produce Windows Phone apps, which they're entitled to not do, but then Microsoft tried to make apps for Google's services[0] which Google also shut down.
Makes you wonder what would happen if Google pulled all of their iOS apps tomorrow, and then blocked third parties/diminished the mobile browser experience on purpose.
[0] https://venturebeat.com/2013/05/15/google-to-microsoft-kill-...
by manaskarekar on 4/7/18, 3:08 PM
My friends look at me funny when I say that.
There were so many things they did right. Some random things off the top of my head:
- Internet Explorer had the address bar at the bottom of the screen. I don't get how nobody else does this.
- The tiles work really very well (big one). The usability of shortcuts + active information + dense layout on your homescreen.
- The back-button behavior was perfect. It made sense.
- Very snappy response throughout.
- Lots of pros on the hardware of the Lumia 920 itself but that's a different story.
- Best keyboard/swipe setup.
- Lots of thoughtful design elements.
There's all kinds of stuff that was a joy.
I tried Windows Phone 10.1 Dev release and that was horrible.
I do wish Windows Phone continued to live though.
by niftich on 4/7/18, 3:07 PM
There were some high-profile holdouts like Snapchat, whose lack hurt the phone (or hurt retention) among the valuable, younger demographics, while everyone else has been conditioned to be used to a zillion single-use apps, from their bank, their fast-casual restaurant, to throwaway games and random tools that try to imbue phones with some productivity utility.
A platform with a low market share and confusing (and ever-changing) developer story couldn't compete in this market, even if they kept putting out decent hardware for not a lot of money.
They could have reframed the expectations, and marketed it as a business OS, but with a rapidly declining BlackBerry, they didn't want to pursue what seemed like a failing niche. Or, they could have not screwed up Desktop Windows' app story so much, which exacerbated the issues with developing for Windows Phone.
Or they could have arrived at the market several years later, when Progressive Web Apps graduate from wishful thinking tech demos to a viable way of authoring software to be distributed over either URLs or app stores. This is the future that Google wants, their medusa-like competitor who tries to balance their desire to preserve and gatekeep the Open Web with their large install-base of Android phones running apps written in quasi-Java that they got sued over.
Windows Phone was a technically sound product positioned awkwardly, and they couldn't persuade enough third-parties to deliver on the expectations that customers expected. But they neither doubled down, nor did an immediate reversal (e.g. Surface RT), so in typical Microsoft fashion they let it flail around for years without any strong messaging to reassure users (remember this from Silverlight? Zune? XNA?).
by system16 on 4/7/18, 2:44 PM
When I finally did put it out to pasture, it was a breath of fresh air though; I really had no idea how much I'd been missing out on in terms of apps and features on iOS/Android, and how many Windows Phone irritations/limitations I'd just been putting up with.
That said, today I use only a handful of apps and barely if ever explore new ones - I mainly only use Firefox, Lyft, a mail client, a reddit client, and photos. I see similar 'app fatigue' among my peers, so I wonder if Windows Phone would have fared better in today's mobile market.
by gdilla on 4/7/18, 3:13 PM
MSFT handed us a check and a dev shop to pay with it. We designed the app in their ui paradigm and had fun doing it. Had enough money left over to take the team out for a fancy dinner when it was all done.
by bcoates on 4/7/18, 3:57 PM
It's mostly the Nokia parts that I really love, like the transit app, and the fact that it's user-serviceable with minimal tools.
The app ecosystem is actually less of a problem as time goes on; now that Apple and Google ship reasonable browsers in their phones most services I want to use have good mobile web experiences. The real essentials like Pandora / Kindle / WhatsApp are available and still work.
The big pain point for me is Slack's web client, which appears to be gratuitously broken on phones.
by philliphaydon on 4/7/18, 2:48 PM
Windows Phones were kinda big in Asia. Used to see lots of people in Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, with them all the time. But the high end phones never came to these markets. People I worked with wanted all the new phones but MS didn’t release them in Singapore for over 12 months. People gave up and went android and iOS.
I went Android then iOS. There’s a lot I miss about windows phone. And Poki is still hands down the best pocket reader app.
by snomad on 4/7/18, 2:48 PM
Not sure why they keep dropping the ball, lack of focus? Not willing to stay the course? I get dropping zune as the market had moved on, but band was getting good reviews when they dropped it and wearables are still growing. And for the life of me I don't understand why they don't have a motto of a hub in every college class - that device is so perfect for facilitating remote class attendance.
by traspler on 4/7/18, 2:43 PM
by mattnewport on 4/7/18, 3:20 PM
Not sure yet what I'm going to do for my next phone. I've backed the Purism Librem 5 so holding out hope that will actually ship and be a usable option. Biggest challenge for me there would likely be not having WhatsApp or Telegram (Windows Phone still has both).
by pjmlp on 4/7/18, 3:04 PM
My Windows Phones have gotten more updates than all my Android devices summed up together.
The 100% native apps experience, C++ and .NET Native, meant they were more responsive that Android devices on the same price category.
And the development environment runs circles around the chaos of Android tools.
by oDot on 4/7/18, 3:17 PM
Highly suggest you watch the launch video from CES 2009:
by yantrams on 4/7/18, 3:01 PM
by tbassetto on 4/7/18, 2:33 PM
by dylan-m on 4/7/18, 7:13 PM
by joelhaasnoot on 4/7/18, 2:59 PM
by ryl00 on 4/7/18, 2:48 PM
by bArray on 4/7/18, 4:37 PM
by open-source-ux on 4/7/18, 3:20 PM
Contrast that with Android phone approach of separate app widgets, separate app icons and even separate home screens. If you love to tweak to the nth degree, you'll love such features. For the rest of us, it all feels stodgy and overcooked for a smartphone.
Interestingly, Windows Phone design guidelines contained ideas we'd also see later in Google's Material design guidelines e.g. such as the emphasis on animation as more than just mere decoration.
Here is a presentation from the Windows 7 design team that describes the new Windows Phone UI. It's from 2010:
https://www.slideshare.net/stevecla/windows-phone-ui-and-des...
by spikej on 4/7/18, 3:09 PM
by TheWiseOne on 4/7/18, 3:11 PM
IMO the OS was really solid. If they just stuck with it and kept building, albeit targeting the people that didn't use a lot of apps, I think they could've found a niche. They had close to 25% share already in countries like Italy and Brazil and were popular in India, Africa, etc.
by ChicagoDave on 4/7/18, 5:24 PM
I switched back to an iPhone when MS started playing with the email and calendar apps, making them horribly less useful. Around January of 2015. The 6 plus had just come out.
WP hardware was excellent until 2014 when it was clear MS had abandoned the platform. They fell behind quickly at that point.
I knew the Midwest MS evangelist and went to a couple of dev sessions on WP and the philosophy was to pump any garbage or duplicate app into the App Store. I argued they should spend money on the top 100 business apps and just make them better than iOS or Android. MS was never going to beat Apple at cheap games.
Buying Nokia looked good on the outside but it was clearly a disaster.
$6 billion could have enabled a ton of devs to build a ton of apps.
I was sad to see it go, but in the end, my iPhone never really gets in my way. I can email, message, call, and surf the web plus have a few other handy apps that just work.
by afandian on 4/7/18, 3:10 PM
by roryisok on 4/7/18, 10:59 PM
by himme on 4/7/18, 11:09 PM
by fencepost on 4/7/18, 9:26 PM
I also can't feel that I overpaid for it, I got the phone while they were doing a promotion that also included a year of Office365 Personal - and I think I may have paid less for the phone than that subscription price would have been alone.
The app situation though, the app situation was grim even in browsers. I think Edge on it has improved significantly as it has elsewhere, but for a long time you had (pretty crappy) Edge and (pretty crappy) other browsers based on I'm not sure what. I knew Chrome wasn't ever going to be on there, and Mozilla's previous little adventure into other mobile devices had... not worked out for them, but I was hoping someone like Dolphin Browser would manage to port onto WP - it's webkit based, has or had its own implementation to work from (Dolphin Jetpack, so they could update when the phone's built-in webkit was slower), not tied to any Google Play services, etc. The death of Project Astoria (the Android-to-Windows Bridge) signaled the death knell for that and probably WP as well.
There were other security lockdowns that I found annoying (e.g. I upload my call logs and SMS to be able to view calls on a calendar and SMS in email), but the combination of "no apps" and "also no browser able to handle mobile website versions properly" was a real killer.
by untog on 4/7/18, 4:33 PM
It's difficult to remember now just how awful the UI of Android 2 was, and Google let it stagnate entirely with an ill-advised focus on tablet. By the time I returned to Android it was on version 4 and light years ahead of where it was. The performance was (and still is) subpar, though.
by fencepost on 4/7/18, 10:30 PM
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mowmo.twop...
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-backgrou...
[2] https://github.com/m-khvoinitsky/dark-background-light-text-...
by zoom6628 on 4/7/18, 2:48 PM
by ernesth on 4/7/18, 3:34 PM
You could not install another web browser (on symbian I was using opera or opera mini).
There did not exist file explorers (apps could not get permissions to explore local files).
Consequently, it was impossible to open html files (Edge, the only available browser did not understand the file: protocol). I kept some data in html files on my phone to always have them with me even when offline...
The dedicated search "button" was the worst idea ever: it had no use when offline and was barely interesting when connected.
It would automatically turn mute when connected to a bluetooth speaker but would forget to unmute when disconnected.
The volume control was even more confusing than android one (volume was represented as a number, sometimes, max was 12, sometimes it was 32...).
The only good thing (the reason I chose windows phone rather than android) was nokia's GPS app. But it was already ther on symbian!
Good riddance. I don't miss you windows phone!
by hateful on 4/7/18, 6:36 PM
I am in the apparent minority that knows that a screen isn't a piece of paper and not in the majority of people who still believe myths about keeping the light on when you watch TV.
by scarface74 on 4/7/18, 3:28 PM
System 7s redesigned happened because the old design was tied to fixed resolutions - the original iPhone's and the iPad's. Skeumorphism didn't scale with different screen sizes
Apple's extension system was already being used internally with Apple's hardcoded integrations with Facebook and Twitter used it.
by oneplane on 4/7/18, 8:40 PM
by djsumdog on 4/7/18, 10:20 PM
These phones do have UEFI+ARM. Has anyone unlocked the bootloader? I feel these would be an ideal open source OS mobile platform for something like Plasma.
by notadoc on 4/7/18, 8:41 PM
Continuum remains a fantastic idea, frankly I am surprised Apple hasn't adopted something similar with iPhone.
by __sr__ on 4/8/18, 2:32 AM
Coming back to the point, coherence is something Android sorely lacks. Unless you are using a phone with near stock Android[2], the apps are always out of sync with the rest of the OS in terms of the design language. And many apps don’t even follow the Google design guidelines. While there were not many non-Nokia Windows phones, given their track record on Windows desktops, I don’t think MS was going to allow that sort of interface customisation.
The lack of coherence enforces my view that Android is some sort of Frankenstein’s Monster hastily cobbled together without putting much thought into the design - internal or external.
I wish Windows Phone had survived, if only to provide some competition to Android. Let’s face it, iOS and Android don’t really compete in any meaningful way. Google is happy to stick to the volumes while Apple keeps the premium segment.
And I wish I hadn’t sold my Lumia when Nokia/MS didn’t enable 4G/VoLTE for my carrier. At least I’d be able to use it as a secondary phone.
[1] The individual apps can be there for people who like them, but they must plug into the central hub. [2] With Pixel Launcher not being released for other devices, it is not clear what “Stock Android” meany anymore — Google is fragmenting Android themselves. Can you imagine the outrage if MS kept certain Windows features exclusive to Surface?
by jdhn on 4/7/18, 2:46 PM
by DrBazza on 4/7/18, 7:50 PM
The mistake MS made, for me, was abandoning the existing WP7 phones for new WP8 phones, no upgrade path, and taking so long to release WP8.
by nwah1 on 4/7/18, 3:47 PM
I actually like that it pushes me to use mobile sites instead of apps.
Apps are closed ecosystems with app stores that charge a high markup. Sites are free and open.
I can use Uber Lyft, and Facebook without apps.
But with discipline you can do this on Android too.
Pros:
Beautiful Live Tiles Simple interface Unified look Dark Mode Less bloatware
Cons:
On Windows 10 mobile, the phone would freeze up or even restart as much as once per day
Drivers and software seem less optimized and performant even with powerful hardware
Never found a mobile site that allows depositing checks
No Firefox
So as of this weekend I'm now using a fast, stable, cluttered, and ugly Samsung phone loaded with bloatware.
I'm hoping LineageOS can make this more tolerable soon.
by jmiller099 on 4/8/18, 12:50 AM
Had to charge it for longer than recent phones needed, but it came up well (except bluetooth). Fortunately WiFi worked with my current phone's hotspot.
After that had to find a solution for ssh client. Wound up using a midlet runner found on xda-developers and an ssh jar file. The keyboard usage was interesting after foregoing it for about a decade.
by zw123456 on 4/8/18, 1:01 AM
by nostalgeek on 4/8/18, 2:36 AM
I don't want to live in a world where Android is the only mobile OS out there. This is also true for the desktop space, Windows dominance is an issue, especially since the web didn't really fulfill its promise as an app platform, something Linux would have benefited from greatly.
WP browser was also sub-part when it comes to JS/HTML5 support compared to like Firefox on Android at that time. A good mobile browser is just the most important thing for a smartphone.
by coldacid on 4/8/18, 3:47 AM
by Yhippa on 4/7/18, 4:46 PM
Windows Phone was a close second to me. The worst thing about this all is that it seems impossible for a third vendor to be successful unless PWAs take off.
by znpy on 4/8/18, 4:07 AM
It's super freaking cool.
It's sad that this direction is not being developed more.
by Gustomaximus on 4/7/18, 3:03 PM
by kerng on 4/7/18, 8:40 PM
by nailer on 4/7/18, 3:34 PM
This. I never used Windows Phone but I.Am.So.Tired of having to check inboxes for WhatsApp, Email, Tinder, Bumble, Slack and every other app on my iPhone or Android device.
by MLR on 4/7/18, 2:53 PM
I hope the Windows everywhere initiative eventually works out, they got a lot of things right about the touch experience but they couldn't follow through on a lot of it.
by martin-adams on 4/7/18, 10:47 PM
This would then help consumers transition to a Microsoft future. It would however be a blow to the Windows mobile operating system but that ship may have already sailed.
by lostmsu on 4/7/18, 4:36 PM
by headsoup on 4/8/18, 1:01 AM
It was a great phone OS, let down by MS's own declining support of it and the App Gap (which didn't really affect me much, so the first point hurt most).
by jh72de on 4/8/18, 10:46 AM
by ma5ter on 4/8/18, 3:26 AM
by jh72de on 4/8/18, 10:51 AM
by oculusthrift on 4/7/18, 4:14 PM
by mmphosis on 4/7/18, 5:41 PM
by Dolores12 on 4/8/18, 3:26 AM
by twblalock on 4/7/18, 6:29 PM
These days, I don't see how a new operating system could possibly succeed unless it had all of the popular social media apps on day one.
by readhn on 4/7/18, 2:36 PM
by hnfoobar on 4/7/18, 11:15 PM
by skrebbel on 4/7/18, 2:41 PM
All their other mistakes are dwarfed by this single screwup. It's like they wanted it to fail.
by emersonrsantos on 4/7/18, 3:20 PM
Nokia is the company that got stuck in 2005.
by haolez on 4/7/18, 5:00 PM
by dingo_bat on 4/7/18, 6:30 PM
by DEFCON28 on 4/7/18, 4:02 PM
There are some ideas that just need time.