www.theverge.com/2023/10/24/23930478/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-mobile-windows-phone
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
PhonesIt’s a lot of extra cost to support 3 platforms tbh. And anything cross platform sucked to work with. Why would you write your entire app from scratch for the 3rd time for a small portion of users? Most couldn’t afford it
The cost to go to a 2 platforms tends to be the biggest jump. Windows phone could have been great if Microsoft tied it more in with the OS and made doing both desktop and phone apps together early. Much like how we can run iOS apps both on the iPad/ iPhone and M1 Macs with out any real changes.
Now they are building in more stuff into to build multiple platform apps. Microsoft would have been very far ahead there.
I used to develop software for the Mac and I was surprised recently when I happened to look at some of the developer documentation for nostalgic purposes. It looks like they have brought a lot of the APIs for iOS to the Mac. For anyone less technically inclined who is reading this, it basically means Apple did a lot of work to make it so you can write Mac programs the same way you would write an app for iPhone. It's a good play for Apple, as they try to get developers who have become familiar with the iPhone to have less of a cost to get started developing Mac apps as well.
That said, I don't really agree with your idea that going to 2 platforms is the biggest jump. I think that designing a good desktop application can be pretty different from designing a good mobile app. There might be significant changes to the user interface. Desktop would tend to have multiple windows for an app, a design built around mouse and keyboard rather than touch, integration with the desktop environment such as open and save panels and dragging files from the desktop, standard menus such as File Edit etc.. So even if the same code can run on both platforms, there will still be the desire to change many things with respect to the user interface etc on desktop versus mobile.
I think going from one mobile platform to another has certain costs, and going from a mobile platform to desktop or vice versa has other costs. Which of these costs is larger probably is very application specific.
I think many companies might target mobile only nowadays and therefore having a more seamless bridge between Windows and a Windows mobile platform might be somewhat irrelevant. I think more relevant things might be, for example, if the Windows phone could easily share code with another mobile platform. iOS / iPhone seems kinda like its own thing due to the use of Objective C or tech based on that such as Swift. But perhaps Android and Windows phone could more easily share code if they both use similar high level programming languages such as Java and C#. Of course the existence of any technology that could abstract over differences between platforms is also highly relevant.
As a native dev it’s frustrating. People will push something to cover iPhone, iPad, android, tablet, desktop/web and somehow believe it will be great everywhere. Interaction is too different and it’s either optimized one place and sucks elsewhere or it’s mediocre everywhere. No matter how easy it becomes to write cross platform code this will probably always be a problem.
Cross platform saves money but on many apps users have so little patience you can’t afford to not be amazing. They will just uninstall and try a new app. Even seemingly minor things like app install size (which is bigger on cross platform) can cost you a % of users per mb of increased size. It’s not longer the early days of mobile and the expectations for the user experience just go up.
I totally agree. As an example, I used to use Amazon Music. But the Windows app in my view had a poor user experience, so I switched to Spotify. The Spotify Windows app feels much more in line with what I expect from a desktop app. So I've been much happier with it.
Incidentally, the YouTube Music experience is shit... On Google Nest Hub.
Spotify is a thousand times better.
Google doesn't care because they know nobody opts for YouTube music because of YouTube music. They opt for YouTube music because it's packaged with Premium.
YouTube music is also shit in Android TV, you can't even browse the catalog while playing something, it stops the music when you hit back (wth?)
Bloody hell. Along with those nonsense upgrade ads, it's as useless as the Pope's testicles...
Amazon Music lost me when I went from iOS to Android and discovered the Android version is heavily restricted shit.
What if there was some "app running platform" which worked on literally all devices...I know call me crazy. But it could, say, use some universal language like HTML, CSS, and Javascript, maybe already have the rendering and network code in place. I'll bet there's even some way to run something similar to "assembly" on it (built for the web of course). I know this might be stretching it, but maybe we could even build in a way to deliver updates piecemeal without having to go to an app store. We can dream right?
There's my anti app cancer rant for the day, I'll be back soon enough.
Just a few 2cent from a novice:
There's a reason why so many "apps" are just webpages packaged with chromium essentially.
That's also... the entire idea behind Java. Install JVM, run Java code any platform. As long as JVM exists for said platform.
I don't know enough to comment more, but the issue afaik, is it either require the user to install the environment themself (if they don't have it already). Or package the entire copy every single time (found this tidbit in a post of people complaining about why software is so bloated these days - well a lot of em are packaging the entire chromium engine to run their code).
Or if it can run neatly through browsers... well, you just described a web app. With proper design, it could render nicely on most platforms. But not every app can be designed as a web app (the UX design still need to be tailored, but it's a challenge insulated from the OS problem).
The app store also acts as a safeguard, version control and CDN afaik, so I wouldn't vouch for an app ability to push updates directly. I tried to look up information on if Android/iOS even permits this (afaik some games have to do their own updates since they contain too much assets, and the playstore have an app size limit), but didn't try too hard tbh. But might be possible already, simply not done because of the above.
Funny, you almost described Java, the main old language for android apps.
+1
The web platform and PWA-style packages/wrappers in insert framework is the way. And yes cross-platform is still a bear.
This was super interesting to read, thank you for sharing.
I mean, they did have Universal Windows Platform way before iOS apps ran on Mac. The same apps, using C#, worked across desktop, mobile, and Xbox.
But nobody wanted to actually make UWP/Universal apps. Go look at the Microsoft Store, it's barren.
They did develop UWP which worked on Desktop and Mobile. But it was crap to develop for desktop.
They kinda did. W8 and phone os had synergy. Except w8 interface was terrible for desktop (but pretty decent for touch interfaces)
Right now big companies have to support web, embedded web (TVs), iOS (mobile and auto), Android (mobile, auto, and tv), tvOS, FireTV, Roku, along with 3 separate DRM schemes (Widevine, PlayReady, and Fairplay) and I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. It's insane all the stuff you have to support nowadays.
Exactly. Folks develop for iOS and Android because they have hundreds of millions of users (potential buyers). Coming in there with just a couple million at most isn't worth the investment in time and resources for most developers to bother with Microsoft.
Really a chicken and egg deal. People didn't develop for Microsoft because they didn't have users and they didn't have users because there were no apps.
The windows phone was honestly the last in a series of windows mobile devices. They had since the palm pilot era. The palm PC and it's ilk eventually evolved into the windows phone.
They never had a champion for the product within Microsoft, and I think that's why it failed. No VP who saw how awesome it could be and wanted it to win.
They could’ve give some money to big players like WhatsApp to be there. Then make some sort of emulation kit like Xamarin to run android apps on it.
It was a fantastic(in terms of potential) OS and quite decent phones.
The Nokia Lumia 920 is still my favourite phone I have ever owned. I loved windows OS despite the lack of apps. It suited me fine but for a larger market I can see why it failed. It's such a shame, nothing has come close to the Lumia line up for me. I'm on the nothing phone 2 now. I want to see some innovation in the market not just squeezing out a bit more performance every year for a huge price tag.
I still miss the WP keyboard. Still not managed to get an Android one to feel quite the same.
One of my favorite phones, I only replaced it with a Lumia 640 or something later (which I also loved quite a bit)
I dealt with the lack of apps through the browser though, like youtbe/reddit via browser instead of an app.
930 to me, it was such a well refined phone.
Agree, I had 920 as well. It was best.
Since then I am using Iphones. While OS is not the worst, devices themselves are really crappy.
I remember getting a Lumia 520 for $10 at some point, it was so cheap that I was like "what the heck, might as well try out Windows Phone as a spare phone"
I have never used such a solid, performance "low end" device before or since tbh. At the time that device knocked $100+ androids out of the water on smoothness. And the UX was actually quite nice. I wish there were actually good Metro launchers that were still current for Android. Inhabent heard of a good one.
WhatsApp was there, but Instagram was a big issue, we had to use some 3rd party for a while IIRC, and then Microsoft made some half baked "1st party" app, but it lagged behind in features.
It didn't help that people made fun of it for the sake of it and were rooting for its failure, just because it was Microsoft. I found it very pleasurable to use and navigate, it was responsive and made sense. And it had features that only came years later to iPhones and some Androids, like live photos.
I reluctantly switched back to Android after my Lumia died, and I still miss it.
I believe you’re referring to 6tag by Rudy Huyn? The dude was something of a MVP developer for the windows platform who made clients for some of the major apps on android. And while they weren’t as great as first party support, they were well made apps that adhered to wp design principles…
They tried that.
it also had a shit development environment. Was the least favorite one our devs developed for back in the day.
iOS was their favorite because it was the most streamlined, but there were issues with it because at least back then you HAD to do final compile on a Mac OS device with Xcode. Android was the easiest, but had lots of issues because at the time it was poorly standardized and Android studio would have all kinds of different issues because it was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole to cover all those devices.
it was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole
That's the problem right there. We know everything goes into the square hole.
Take your well deserved upvote.
Before Android Studio was out it felt like everything was duct taped together too
Android studio was great on a Mac. Even when I was doing Android development I still would rather use a Mac. Windows driver issue was a huge issue.
Android studio was great on a Mac.
Ironic
Not terribly ironic considering android is closer to macOS than it is to Windows.
Anecdotally it’s pretty common among software engineers (not necessarily mobile devs) I know to have both a MacBook and an Android. Also, last time I was at a Google campus most people seemed to have MacBooks. So it doesn’t seem that strange to me?
I only ever wrote one phone app for uni assignment, and I wrote it for WP, I think Visual Studio was quite nice to use, certainly nicer and easier than Eclipse with Android plugins.
But I think the SDK was missing some key features.
Could Windows not just make a new Windows Phone OS based on the AOSP?
I have a Windows Phone launcher on a work profile for my phone and it mostly works really well with MS Office apps (though Android 14 seemed to break the gestures function on it for some reason).
Just AOSP with some Windows customisations would work nicely, I'd have thought and no need for a third approach to designing apps.
User deleted comment
7mo
I mean, Android is a Google operating system. They are the KING of abandoning support - and people seem willing to give the new Pixel's alleged seven years of support a cautious try.
Microsoft did put out a launcher for Android that adjusts the UI a bit
Now it seems like a phone with a good camera and no apps would be a blessing.
Wouldn’t that basically be a digital camera?
Phone meaning sms and calls too.
Um ... don't install them?
Depending on the model and carrier they come with different apps preinstalled, and you cant always uninstall them, and even if you do remove/silence them you are one update away from a constant barrage of "LOG IN TO YOUR FACEBOOK NOW FOR LIVE UPDATES!" or "HERES MAP DATA YOU NEVER ASKED FOR ABOUT YOUR COMMUTE"
God I miss unlocked bootloaders and XDAdev
I really really liked my old Nokia windows phone. I don’t think it would cut it as well these days but it was a very clean OS, and very nice to use. Also, the best keyboard on a phone I’ve ever used, not sure why.
It really was/is the best keyboard. Swipe type recognized almost every word in every language even if the order was off. I really liked my Lumia 525
Same, swipe on an iphone is a lesson in futility.
I still rave about how well Swipe typing worked on Windows Phone. It was almost magic how it knew what word I wanted no matter how sloppily I swiped it. I was really hoping Microsoft might license it out or something.
I loved my 3 Nokia Windows Phones too. I think it was the 910, 525, and 950XL. I’ll still power up the 950 every once in a while just to type in it.
Keyboard was fantastic, I even use an iPhone app that duplicates the keyboard. It was the vibration feedback and the tap noise that was incredible. The camera is still better on the 950 compared to my iPhone X.
It just needed the apps. As soon as SnapChat stopped allowing 3rd party companies, nothing new came to it.
Don’t leave us hanging, what’s the iOS app for the keyboard called?
IDK if this breaks community rules or not, but it's SwiftKey.
App Store axed swiftkey from new downloads. I had deleted it by accident one time and it is now gone forever. It was a sad day for me
Care to share what app you use? I'd love to replace the crappy iPhone one with a Windows Phone keyboard.
Very solid hardware too. One of the first phones to get OLED screens, Qi wireless charging, high MP cameras with high resolution cropped zooms, high touch screen sensitivity that even current smartphones lack, some models even supported swappable back plates for customization.
Nokia was still on their A game in terms of phone hardware back then.
I went through a couple Windows Phones over the years, and each time I upgraded, I would take the old phone and throw it at the ground to see how much it took to crack the screen. Every phone took at least 3 or 4 solid flings, landing on the edges. Meanwhile I had friends with the worst spider-web cracks on their iPhones from everyday drops.
I’m not really sure if modern hardware has caught up or not, but Nokia seemed to have no trouble applying their durability secrets to smartphones back then.
I remember having a phone with a plastic screen and thinking about how it would never break. With a plastic screen protector it wouldn't scratch the proper screen either.
I had a Zenfone 5 (the first 5) and it fell straight into those Portuguese Cobblestone. The screen protector broke and the screen remained pristine.
Keyboard was so good! I remember it.
The tiles aspect was really functional for me. I miss it
Those were great and yet they got sooo much hate for no reason
I loved my Nokia windows phone! Pretty nice feeling and also built like a truck. The lack of official app support was tough but there were some good 3rd party ones
User deleted comment
7mo
Still have that phone in a box somewhere, absolutely amazing.
I think people just like heavily processed photos. I say phones in the last had good photos and get laughed at on the internet.
I've seen printed photos that don't look like they were taken on a phone.
I got the 1020 with the 42 megapixel camera. It was epic. Crazy photos in 2013. And got the Microsoft band which was the first smart watch that could text. Before that I had the Galaxy Note. One of the first 6” phones. Let’s just say I got made fun of a lot but whose laughing now. Everyone with their crazy 3 camera holes and massive phones.
I have a 3’x5’ picture hanging on the wall of my house that’s a picture from my 1020. I miss the phone.
Massive phones were all the rage.
I remember seeing a huge Sony Xperia once and what a beauty piece of alien tech!
I miss 6'' phones. They still seem bigger than anything we have now. Like you seemed to get more out of a 4:3 22'' TV than you get from the same widesceen size.
I also remember the video about the best camera ever and how it was a bunch of cameras strapped together. The video said how it was the future and I'll never forget a comment listing it's drawbacks.
Before you mourn too much, consider the direction Microsoft has taken in the years since. Had they continued in the mobile OS market, I find it difficult to imagine the clean and user friendly OS design would have remained as such.
Microsoft has really taken the worst path possible.
You can also tell by how popular of a move it was.
Aside from the lack of Apps I didn't see people complaining about their Windows Phones and they ran on the same OS as Windows 8 right?
They didn't "give up" they basically got kicked out by app developers
Didn’t Google basically refused to port any of their apps to WP and when some third party developer wanted to do it Google limited the access to their services?
Yeah I remember a short period where there was no YT app, you pretty much had to use the browser
It really sucks that most major sites have shifted to dedicated mobile apps and let their mobile sites languish. We had a good thing in the universal Web, and it's dying.
It's really annoying when the mobile app doesn't support all the features or crashes etc.. But then I try to go to the website and I just get redirected back into the app. I've uninstalled a lot of apps for that reason.
it's worse the other way around. no website, only a mobile app with full access to all features
You can set your mobile browser to ask before opening the app. Then you can cancel and stay in the browser.
Worst are the abandoned apps that only works on Android 6 or are broken because they had some stupid always online server check or something, many old games are broken because that and even some random products apps like 66audio which isn't even listed on Google play anymore so their headphones are borderline useless
I hope more program/product managers read this comment and take note. We had a great mobile site....but you wanted an app that couldn't do much just to be competitive. Our app ratings sucked despite having a fully functional mobile site. You could have started a trend to use existing resources instead of wasting them on following the trends.
And when the app came out, made by a third party developer btw, it was basically just the bowser hardcoded to YT.
Wasn't just google either, some big names in the app world back then were apple fanboys and wouldn't allow their apps on windows phones either.
They did, which was a far worse sin than bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 96.
Which stinks, because now a new version of windows phone os could probably run Android apps.
While that might be true, Google unfortunately still wouldn't allow them a license to Google Play Services, which would be an instant deal breaker for it becoming mainstream.
not sure if it works anymore, but i was part of the project and it was basically done (remnants became subsystem for linux for the desktop). the engineers on the project redirected gplay service calls to ms services like onedrive and the media library. edit: they basically tackle all of my qualms without reading the article within it--minimum os versions possible--android version must support an old android version, etc etc. There might be some folks in the forums out there that updated the android version support-but I doubt it.
Maybe, but their single biggest threat to google is similar to what apple have - streamlined desktop experience with all the cloud sharing and apps that come with it. If they'd of just kept their head on making using their phones as easily and seemless as possible and perhaps kept plugging away at targeting gamers, tech heads and generally giving people licence to create apps that can be released to make life easier for sub communities I think they would've pulled way ahead by now. Google havent just stagnated, but actively gone backwards in many facets.
App devs can't kick out any of the big vendors if the big vendors don't wanna budge. There are a handful of big challenges like that which every vendor has to muscle through. Microsoft could have plowed forward and come out of it but instead they exited the hottest market in personal computing.
They gave up.
I got my mother a Windows phone after she found iOS too confusing, and she could navigate around it and use it happily. She was actually upset when it came time to replace her phone and Windows Phone was no longer around. The UI was perfect for older non-tech-savvy folks.
User deleted comment
7mo
Same situation here. I loved how ridiculously big you could make the UI stuff for poor eyesight or grabbing attention. That with it running more stable and smooth than any similar Android at the time, chefs kiss.
Like, here, here’s a box that occupies 1/6th of the screen, that says glaringly loudly with a fat telephone icon “TOUCH THIS TO CALL PEOPLE”
I jumped from Windows Phone to Samsung 8-ish and I was so sad to do it .
Windows Phone was just the best. They had the perfect phone UI and everything else, kind of amusingly, is just a variation of a desktop on a phone.
My Nokia Lumia with Windows was the best smartphone I ever owned.
It was ergonomic, reliable and solid. All i need, since I mostly use PC.
Same, loved it. I was sad when it was discontinued and moved over to Android.
I loved mine because it was dirt cheap and it had an app that had a massive library of subbed and dubbed anime, including full length movies. It was only a temporary phone as I smashed my iPhone 5 in a motorcycle crash. It was fun while it lasted. I kept it around long after I got an iPhone 7.
Agreed. That phone was fantastic.
Meanwhile I'm mostly using my phobne now, which is really weird.
I thought about getting a laptop, but I can't use it where I use my phone and it is bulky (and tablets ironically are too big and unwieldy to use outside a table and support).
I had a Windows Phone 8 that I really liked. The phone and the OS were solid. If you don't have app support, though, you can't succeed.
There was no app support because everything kept changing every 12 months with no backwards compatibility.
The problem was that they released 7.5 first, which was a bizarre frankenstein version of the OS, and then took way too long to release WP8, which had a lot of breaking changes and most WP7.5 phones didn't support being upgraded to 8. Their strategy and execution was so utterly terrible. If they'd released 8 in the first place, they wouldn't have soured every dev on the platform and doomed it.
You mean this?
https://youtu.be/_elqLDSt36k?si=DLYW2KCXmqKR2cqL
MASSIVE Ad campaign to push a new Nokia phone. Like 6 weeks later MS announced Windows Phone 8 and the phone they just spent 3 months promoting wasn’t capable of running it.
🤯
Yeah, it made it clear to me when the whole WP8 bullshit happened that WP wouldn't last. I was so disappointed and upset with Microsoft for screwing up so badly.
There was no app support because everything kept changing every 12 months with no backwards compatibility.
And welcome to the one of the big issues with windows 10+. Shit completely changes every 6 months to a year in random-ass point releases. No discernable documentation or way to deal with that. Like, one day an setting is added, 3 months later the allowed values are changed without warning, and 3 months after that its just gone altogether.
solid? mine didn’t even managed to synchronize the hour correctly
Did you properly set your timezone? Being off an hour?
2 years after they stopped making Windows Phones I saw a guy with a 1020 at CES and we literally spent 15 minutes fangirling over it. He said he couldn't get a ton of apps but didn't really care because the camera was just so good.
He even said he had backups, which reminded me of how runners will get 5 pairs of "their" shoe because the next version might not work as well for them and they want to be sure they have a good shoe for them as long as possible.
The 1020 camera is like the myth of the Sony phone camera except real.
It's weird to think that such a large sensor was in a phone in 2013. If you look at the photos as well they don't look like they came from a phone at all, there's not really any processing to speak of with them like denoise or sharpening. They obviously aren't very good compared to modern phone photos given the lack of image stacking, bad ISP etc but it is a shame that the organic nature of phone photos is lost now.
Sony pretends to be that but ultimately it is just kinda bad lol.
Should have heavily tied it to the office suite, made it the working professional's phone. Sort of like the new blackberry.
User deleted comment
7mo
They had it. I was editing office files stored on onedrive from my windows phone.
Yeah office 365 integration, whatever Microsofts cloud storage is (onedrive?). Most companies use windows and if your work phone was essentially just an extension of your work pc it's a total home run. Files and presentations all in the same place. Everything can be edited on the fly natively without format getting completely fucked
I remember the remote desktop functionality on windows phone was top tier.
Afaik 365 just wasn’t a thing at the time, and maybe not even in the companies sights yet… They were still on the “one software iteration at a time to sell at a fixed cost” mindset
This is how it exist already for 365 users with all the mobile apps installed. I have access to my pc files via OneDrive and can edit them with the associated mobile app using one drive as the storage location. It’s pretty nice.
Also, Microsoft bought the company that had the best iOS Remote Desktop app and used it to maintain a flawless iOS client for more than 6 years.
Windows phone OS was more stable than android back then. It was almost on par with ios. Everything just "worked". Shame it tanked.
It worked silky smooth on an absolute shitbrick of a phone compared to contemporary Android phones, the Lumia 635 was a 512MB phone when Android could barely work on 1GB and THEN it got upgraded to Windows 10 which somehow worked even smoother than 8.1 Mobile did.
Loved my windows Nokia phone. But once my bank pulled their app from the store it felt like I had to switch.
Had a few windows phones. They were awesome. An excellent mix of the best from Android and Apple into one. The "apps" were just glorified links to websites and what killed it for me.
The "apps" were just glorified links to websites and what killed it for me.
An awful lot of web development for any platform has always been, and likely will remain, complicated web pages. Because they're simple, comprehensible, familiar, functional, and portable to other platforms.
The desktop Discord client is still just a fancy web page, for instance
I owned a Nokia Lumia 925, and to this day, I haven't found a smartphone with a camera system that surpasses it. The interface was sleek, quirky action shot features, and, most importantly, it had an exceptional camera.
My most inspired photos were captured with that phone. Unfortunate Mobile photography lost it's magic for me after that phone got damaged.
The tile OS may have sucked on W8 but on mobile it was god tier.
I really liked my Windows phone. I tend to like Microsoft's products, despite knowing they are doomed to abandonment. I'm still pissed they gave up on the Zune.
Iam now a few years into android and i miss my lumia 950 so badly :-(
I really liked the Windows Phone OS but the apps were abysmal.
It's not too late now though? They still could release something really cool. Imagine a Surface branded phone much like an iPhone with their own totally revamped OS. Work with a few of the most popular app developers and make good functioning app for launch.
This is like deeeeeep in the weeds but there was this one dude on Off-Topic (was my Reddit before Reddit) who was a dev for Windows Phone and he used to ENDLESSLY lean into how Windows Phone was going to start massively gaining mobile share. It was like 2.5-3% at the time and iOS and Android were already dominant followed by Blackberry and he would constantly pick fights with people over how the market was about to turn and how superior the Nokia camera/phone were, etc.
It was so bizarre, this dedication to a provably false reality and people endlessly picked on him anywhere he posted. I didn’t stick around to see what happened when Microsoft walked away but I always think about him whenever the Windows Phone comes up. Hope he’s ok lol
I loved my Lumia, one of the best phones I ever had.
At last he admitted it, for god's sake.
Lumia 959 was frakking perfect to me
Best UI of its time. Such a great product throttled by app developers. Should have invested into making life easier for developers and vertically integrated like Apple.
They were so late to the game I don’t see it playing out any way other than the way it did. They had to pay huge sums of money to get windows versions of popular apps and they didn’t have all the features of their respective android/ios versions. It was too bad, I really liked it’s aesthetics an smoothness
Palm Pre and webos was considered better due to the card system and material design. Matías Duarte already had real multitasking between apps with the card system. I wrote a docking config that allowed split screen of two apps.
A lot of us really like Amiga and BeOS just because you felt powerful like webos did.
It was an uphill battle that didn't benefit from the bad transition from 7 to 8. Also there was that period when their phones were a year behind on Qualcomm and TI chip releases compared to Android. Early Windows Phone era, they were smoother than Android even with weaker hardware but had terrible app developer support. It would have been a money sink to this day but I think it would have been worth to continue on with it
It could have solved their Windows on ARM. I don't remember how the dev environment went with Windows Phone but if it was C# with most things just pure in CLR besides some games/apps going native, it would have been a way better software situation for Windows on ARM and maybe in the future Windows on RISC-V. I feel even like 5-10% of the global population of smartphone users on Windows coupled with the 90%+ on desktop/laptop would have been a compelling case for the Windows store and Universal Windows Platform application development. Actual smartphone to desktop convergence like Samsung DEX but with a way more powerful desktop would have been compelling to me.
Now I just wait and see if anything happens in GNU/Linux land or if Google/Linux ever makes a standard desktop mode that every Android phone ships with. Maybe it's better that Microsoft didn't make it in smartphones with another locked down app ecosystem like iOS. At least Android you can side load. Windows Phone was more of a threat to Android than iOS.
Supplanting Android would be difficult though because by like 2017, Android and hardware had progressed pretty damn well to make general user performance a wash between Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Nowadays entry level chips are pretty damn great and everything is UFS storage rather than eMMC. If you're not in the US, you can get some pretty flagship type specs from Chinese and probably Indian smartphone vendors.
God damn right it was
Windows Phone was actually an awesome operating system. Its just that Microsoft didn't understand smartphone ecosystems and had no idea how to encourage app development.
They also move the goalposts like this on desktop every time a new version of visual studio comes out and seem to think it's acceptable.
"Giving up" and "fucking it up massively" I guess she interchangeable.
I only swapped to Android because i had to.
I was a Windows Mobile / Phone user for a while. There were dozens of us!
The thing that really ruined it was that they kept changing it with no backwards or forwards compatibility. First it was PocketPC / Windows Mobile which actually had a good catalog of apps and support (at the time, all things being relative) because it was continuously developed and updated for 12+ years. Sure, it was objectively not a good OS but it had support and a history on PDAs. But relative to PalmOS or BlackberryOS, it had decent third-party support!
Then they nuked it and started fresh with Windows Phone 7. This was a decent OS but clearly way behind (at the time) iPhoneOS and Android in terms of functionality. But it was a good base to start from, and had some 3rd party support. Too bad they threw out the baby with the bathwater...
For some reason, they nuked it again just 2 years later and started fresh again with Windows Phone 8. No 7 apps worked on 8, and 8 could not run on any phones released with 7. What little good faith Microsoft built-up with developers and users was burned.
For some reason again, they nuked it yet again just 4 years later and basically started fresh again again with Windows 10 Mobile. Most 8 devices couldn't be upgraded, and what little 3rd-party support had to again be rewritten. This, obviously, tanked.
Microsoft should have focused on providing a smoother upgrade experience and backwards compatibility.
basically started fresh again again with Windows 10 Mobile
Tbf I built a couple of apps at the tail end of its' support and the developer experience was fantastic. Visual Studio was far better than what either XCode or Android Studio can provide today.
Dozens of us? Windows Mobile was the dominant smartphone OS for a quite some time. But they were caught completely off guard by the pace of improvements when iOS and Android hit the scene, they dropped the ball.
They took way too long to come up with Windows Phone 7, and most developers bailed. Say what you want about Windows Mobile, but it's code support and API was pretty good and consistent, there was proper multi-tasking, threading, background processing; the GUI support was terrible, with popular apps just writing their own GUI layers to compensate.
Windows Phone was great for GUI, visual consistency, and touch, but terrible for anything below it, and took too long to improve. But the real reason most developers bailed was that even though Windows Phone ultimately ran on the same base code as the older Windows Mobile, not a single line of code could be ported from Mobile to Phone. Not even the core logic even if it was written in C, nothing. No sharing with other platforms, completely redo from start. Sure they gained some new developers who thought it was new and hip, but all the old ones, the champions of the platform, they virtually all dropped it.
They could have done a transitionary period, letting the first versions of Phone run Mobile apps, as it was perfectly capable of doing so, but they expressly and intently chose against this (Charlie Kindle).
Mobile was big in both business and nerd communities. They were too slow coming up with their improvements, which lost them a lot of users. Then when they do release something, iOS and Android are already big players who took a lot of market share; users don't want it because there's no apps; developers don't want it because it's completely incompatible and requires learning a new platform (lot of effort) for something that has zero market share and they're all salty about it; the power users don't want it because they lost all tinkering abilities (that Android - to an extent - still offered). This really left only some of the business users that were highly integrated with the Microsoft stack, but enough of those jumped ship that it didn't matter.
The moment they decided to nuke Mobile completely rather than transition it, all was lost. WP8, WP10? None of that mattered, the entire thing was already lost in the Mobile to Phone transition, they were never going to recover from it and it was painfully obvious to everyone aside from Microsoft itself and the dozen holdouts. Thousands of developers begged them to do it differently but they held fast, and willfully shot themselves in the face.
You can't drop out of a race from the lead position, build an entirely new car, then show up with it half the race late, and expect to win.
Wow this is a first. People talking good about a Microsoft product. I guess I missed out.
Still be best phone UI I've ever used.
I tenaciously clung to WP for as long as I possibly could. I only switched when it was no longer available, but got a surprise two extra years out of my final WP when I found one still being manufactured when it was time to replace my phone. It was wonderful.
I miss HTC phones that were all metal cases and WP. I miss WP desperately and dislike Android quite a lot.
I'd go back to WP in a heartbeat if I could. Once I handed my phone to a student who was with me on a field trip. I was driving the van and they were in the front seat, so I informed them that they were on navigation and tossed them my phone with the mapping app up. They looked at it and looked back at me in shock - They asked "Why don't you have a lock code on your phone? Everyone has one. Aren't you afraid someone will steal it?" I looked back at them and said "Really? Did you happen to notice what kind of phone it is? It's a Windows phone. Do you know anyone who would steal that?!" He responded with "Good point." And off we went to the field trip. That was my moment of mirth. It was fantastic. And I still miss my WP.
I was at Microsoft for this period and as much as I respect Satya, I would disagree tbh. It was the failure in mobile that pushed Microsoft to go all-in on Cloud. And that's driven massive growth and success over the past few years. Mobile would have always been a dogfight against Android and iOS, and there are no guarantees MSFT would have ever achieved the kind of defining success they would need to make the venture worthwhile. Whereas in Cloud they're basically in a 2 horse race with Amazon, and doing incredibly well. They're also in business where the barriers to entry are so massively high. Building hundreds of global scale datacenters the size of multiple football fields just isn't something most companies can compete at, especially now that AWS and Azure are so far ahead of the pack.
Personally, I think failing at mobile was the best thing to happen to Microsoft. It humbled them for a period and made them fight harder for whatever came next. It changed a lot of attitudes internally about success not being a given, and I think that's where most of the better, leaner more focused work has come from and why they haven't slowly faded away like IBM has.
they should have just bought Nokia
I remember really liking my Lumia but switching to apple because it didn't support Pokemon Go when it first came out
They still had Windows Phones when Pokémon Go came out?
The Lumia 950 came out only a few months prior to Pokemon Go.
What's more surprising, how long Windows Phone lasted, or how old Pokemon Go is? Because when Pokemon Go hit, we found this middle school girl in our back yard. My wife knew her and she said she was there cuz she HAD to get Squirtle and she knew we wouldn't mind. Today she's married, they're independent, kinda thinkin' about kids someday soonish maybe.
Or the fact that I played OG generation 1 on the Game Boy when it came out in the U.S. and now my nephew plays them on the Switch 25 years later.
I loved Windows phone.
The Nokia Windows were fine. I did not buy it at that time as I was looking if Microsoft commits to developing phone-tablet-pc but they did not.
The mistake was Nokia
I loved my Lumia 920 and is still one of my favorite phones next to the Samsung Transform. It had one of the best cameras at the time especially in low light situations. Only reason I finally switched to iphone was due to the lack of app support, got tired of not having even half the apps that android or iOS had.
The Lumia 920 is still my most favourite phone I've owned. It's too bad that Lumia line of phones didn't continue, even if under Android instead of WP. They just scrapped the line entirely shortly after.
Judging by the quote they used from him maybe their exit was a good thing. The only thing that killed Windows Phone was their idiotic strategy to have all their best phones exclusive to one carrier in USA.
loved my nokia windows phone
That's an extremely polite way of phrasing "Microsoft's complete debacle of the Nokia acquisition was a mistake".
Bill gates publicly said he gave up on Windows phone several years ago. Is this an old article?
I used a Nokia phone for 3 years(2013-2015). Thought it was great, liked the live tiles. The quality of the device was impressive. A las the lack of apps and support did it in.
In about 30 years exclusively using Apple product, the Windows Phone and their Nokia (forgot which model) was the only time I have switched to a different model / brand. It was particularly good, especially the UX / UI (much better than Android right now) the only issues is that loads of apps weren’t available (Instagram for instance), that was the main reason to go back to iPhone.
hes talking shit man. isn’t the edge browser based off chrome? it would’ve eventually become an android based phone with a windows skin.
i loved my zune HD.
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Not making such giant mistakes from the beginning might be a better strategy.
Windows Phone had potential, they fucked it up in a giant way by not even ensuring one major OS upgrade.
Now desktop Windows is just an ad vehicle and Office apps are asking me to rate them on the Microsoft store...
They have lost the plot if you ask me.
Now Azure and dotnet on the other hand are amazing!
This captures it so succinctly. I wanted to add Powershell as an amazing creation but that's just another (beautiful) facet of .NET.
Can't they just release new surface phones powered by Android? They already have their own app launcher on the app store, might as well make a phone that targets the business/professional crowd like with their laptops
It still disappoints me that they gave up on it. I loved my Windows phone. :(
Loved my windows phone. OS was super clean and fast. Very customizable. Lack of apps is what killed it for me, and apparently everyone else
On this same track - the Microsoft band 2 was superior to the Apple watch (at the time) and I'll die on this hill. A very capable smart watch and it had all the goodies of a top tier fitness tracker of the day plus GPS. This feature set was unrivaled and the price was GOOD
They have great products but just can't take it the rest of the way. A shame really because the competition drives the other companies forward, like how Apple is getting bullied by the EU to adopt usbc which wouldn't happen if other phones didn't make it as ubiquitous
I loved my Windows Phones; started with WP7 Titan and ended with Nokia 1020, by far my favorite phone I've had. I stuck with it pretty long since I didn't use social media, so I didn't really need apps outside of Office and maps.
But even if they came out again with full app support, I'd never buy one. They make great Hardware too but Microsoft has abandoned everything but the Xbox at this point (maybe the Surface, if it's still around) so you could never trust them. I have a Zune, ZuneHD (still use it,) Band2, Kinects, and a Windows 8 Nokia Tablet in the drawer that will still run.
I worked in cell phone sales from 2007 to 2018. Windows phones completely sucked in sales. I would sell maybe 1 windows phone out of every 100 phones I sold.
I remember they tried to sell a watered down version of a windows phone called the “The Kin”. It sucked too. I think The Kins’ market was a more simple smartphone for older people, kids or less than tech savvy people. It was a cheaper dumb-smart phone.
It served no purpose. The problem was windows had no chance at getting market share.
Business people gravitated a lot of the time to Blackberry because of their enterprise email.
When windows really tried to push in yes Blackberry was fading but IPhone and Android had already taken over.
I personally found windows mobile OS as clunky and not nearly as intuitive as a android or iPhone. When digging through settings I would always struggle to find what I was looking for.
Unless you had a very specific need or niche the average consumer didn’t have any reason to pick windows over iPhone or Android.
In hindsight I personally don’t think there was anything windows could do different.
No it wasn’t. They didn’t have a viable product and no idea how to get there.
Ehhh… as someone who used a Windows phone, and we’ll aware of it’s short-comings, I think kits best they cut their losses
No it wasn’t.
It was the best phone I’ve had especially given its era. Notable exception: could not turn off toast notifications, so the phone would occasionally open itself in my pocket and wreak havoc
I loved my windows phone. It had slick hardware and visually distinctive OS in a world of Android and iPhones. It had horrible app support though.
They could have kept it going. Like Bing is a perfectly competent search engine but Google already exists and most people just use that.
No it wasnt
I really liked windows phone. It was super fast, stable, loved the interface. Felt like you got a ton of bang for your buck as far as how well phones performed for the price. It felt ahead of its time but was also way too late to market to ever succeed. Didn’t really have a ton of complaints about apps not being on the platform either, except maybe some banking stuff wasn’t there. I didn’t want Android because I’m not a fan of google, and didn’t want iPhone for the reputation of being proprietary and closed off, stupid stuff like proprietary cables etc. When windows phone died off I begrudgingly bought my first Apple device, an iPhone 4s. I remember back in those days widgets were unheard of on iPhones, felt like a huge step back from an OS perspective. But, the app support is top notch. I stuck with Apple ever since and have been pleased with their ecosystem, but if windows phone had stuck it out I’d probably still be using it.
The top comments are "I loved the windows phone" but with no concrete examples why. Android has tile UI launchers, what else made the windows phone good?
Because it was snappy right up to the last half year or so of W10M on a Lumia 735.
I really, really wanted Windows phone to work. The Nokia devices I used felt great. The UX and lack of third party apps sucked, though.
It really wasn’t.
As someone who had multiple windows phones: No it fucking wasn’t! They literally barely functioned and crashed if you opened certain apps including the camera or texting. Until Microsoft can actually ship a functional UI/UX inside one of their products I wouldn’t be caught dead relying on a windows phone.
Nah, I think that they were right. What they SHOULD give up on is creating shittier and shittier versions of windows that arbitrarily work on less and less PC's with built in ads and "app stores" and just go back to making windows 7 and 10 versions of the OS.
Uh...I think ditching the failed phones was a good idea
Anything Microsh!te doesnt do is a win for the greater good of the world.
That decision made total sense and was brave to do for a new CEO at that time. Now that things are better, it seems they need something to be humble about.
Oh lets give up on the surface duo phones
Know when to fold. They knew and probably saved billions. I didn't know anyone with a Win phone
The problem was that most app delivered services wouldn't give any third platform a chance.