To this day, my Nokia windows phones were the best phones I’ve ever had. Insanely good cameras, battery life, use experience, and they came with wireless charging before it was cool. If there were still at least basic app support, I’d still be using it
Same! My two Lumia phones were really great imo. The final straw was when my banking apps stopped working. By that time ios got
tileswidgets on the home screen, so I went with an iPhone.
Can you imagine how bad Windows phone would be today if it had survived? Co-pilot infested shit.
They were amazing in their day though.
Hard to say, actually.
- .NET took an unexpected turn towards cross-platform FOSS
- A third major player in the smartphone market may have abated the enshittificatory forces for a bit longer
- Having a platform that’s consumer-oriented, in contrast to their mostly business-oriented offerings today, might have clued them in to consumer sentiment a little better
- Having a viable path towards profitability outside of enterprise services might have made the all-in gamble on OpenAI less appealing
- Butterfly effect etc.
I think you’re on to something here honestly. Windows Phone was Microsoft’s last big new bet in the consumer market (you could argue Game Pass here, but the scope is more niche than a general compute platform), and I am sure that if it succeeded there would’ve been a significant cultural shift at Microsoft, similar to how the success (and subsequent revenue stream dominance) of iPhone/iOS did at Apple.
Sadly, we don’t live in that reality, so now everything Microsoft makes (again, with exception of the aforementioned and dreadfully mismanaged Xbox/Game Pass efforts) for consumers needs to have some kind of enterprise revenue angle to get greenlit at all. From experience I can tell you that a large number of great product ideas wither on the vine at Microsoft simply because management doesn’t consider anything that won’t move the needle on enterprise revenue.
Now I’m even more bummed out it didn’t survive. Still a good thought experiment.
You might just be the most optimistic person… ever… lol Reading this is like watching TNG, and seeing a version of the future that could be, but never will be.
Honestly, I was only interested in the hardware. Nokia made most of the phones that ran Windows phone and they made bricks.
Only good thing about them. Apps were all functionally the same and always half broken, all the time. But the phones looked pretty cool.
At least there would be some competition against Google and Apple.
I had a Windows Phone and I loved it. Fight me.
I get it. I owned a Zune and two models of windows phones. They were actually pretty great at the time.
Fight you? I feel sorry for you.
IMO Microsoft made a decent mobile OS. I will give them that.
You know what else kicked ass and died too soon? Zune.
I really think both these were only bad because not enough people got them. Trying to enter a saturated market that already has two really big, established players is not easy.
Microsoft just really can’t go against Apple or Google.
I had a Zune. It was a phenomenal product. It was just priced too high and trying to compete in a market flooded with cheap MP3 players.
I think the video player functionality wasn’t as big a selling point as they thought it would be to the average user since you either had to purchase films from the store …or acquire them in other ways and convert them to a supported file format.
I still have my (working) Zune
Same
It was a good phone
Nah those phones were cool, they just needed more apps, I loved my one I had untill I broke the screen.
Worst or better, I had an ASUS Zenfone 2, with an intel x86 processor, was able to install Windows on the phone, natively.
The hardware was way ahead of its time. My 950 had USB C, wireless charging, a OLED WQHD display and a removable battery. You could even run the desktop edition of Windows 10. And that was in 2015!
Okay but an OLED wasn’t exactly ahead of it’s time. Every smartphone had an OLED since like 2011 barring iPhone and crappier androids.
You could even run the desktop edition of Windows 10. And that was in 2015!
If I recall correctly that was called “Continuum” and was a big goal for MS at the time. It’s why they kept the Windows 8 tiling style for the phone and kept the option to use the tiling style in Windows 10 early on because they wanted every version on every device to functionally work the same. That way, whether you were using a tablet, a phone, a laptop, a desktop, or some other as-of-yet-not-defined form factor, you’d have a “continuum” of experience that was unchanging. The goal was to have a phone you could plug into a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and use just like a PC.
I never had a Windows Phone, but I messed around with a friends, and I have to say, I never understood why they dropped their plans, it was ahead of it’s time and would have been a literal game-changer in the PC-use-space. I actually had really high hopes for the whole program at the time and was quite disappointed that they bailed on their plans and stopped developing the Windows Phone entirely, and by extension, their plans for Continuum. To this day that’s still my dream phone, one that’s essentially also a desktop computer in disguise.
Samsung toyed with this idea with DexDock and there is support directly on some modern phones with most USB-C docks.
I just tried this out on my Pixel 8 Pro…“Enable Desktop experience features” in Developer Options, reboot, plugged in Dell dock…got an android “desktop” on two monitors. They were mirrors of each other, but they were separate from the display of the phone, and they were in the monitors native res. Keyboard and mouse worked. Ethernet off the dock worked, too. It didn’t use the USB webcam I had plugged into the dock.
The UI could use some polish. Android doesn’t really have great mouse support or really any keyboard shortcuts, and the apps themselves are built for a handheld, touchscreen experience.
For example…Firefox for android…pages would default to mobile view, text scaling would be way high (can’t pinch-zoom to make it smaller) and well-known shortcuts like Ctrl+MouseWheel, Ctrl+L, Ctrl±, etc wouldn’t work.
It could be great.
I would personally love for my “desktop experience” to be a low-power, silent, cool-running system (especially nowadays, with Moonlight and Steam streaming and various “cloud gaming” services getting to be pretty damn decent if your network can handle it…and being docked means not needing wifi).
It was actually kind of eerie, sitting at my desk, browsing the web with keyboard/mouse/monitor and absolutely no fan noise around me.
I would love to have my laptop experience be nothing more than a dock with integrated keyboard/touchpad/screen/battery pack.
I would love for these to be the same system.
These would all be killer features and absolutely justify the $1000+ pricetag of a phone upgrade every few years, especially if you want high-end processors like the latest Snapdragons.
But it’s not there yet.
Oh yeah, it’s unfortunate how far behind Android is on this when Microsoft basically had it ready to go nearly 10 years ago and then dropped it because they were losing money on their phone department and not capturing any market share.
I honestly think Android isn’t cut out for it to begin with, because it was always a mobile-first OS.
They had a pretty okay thing going with ChromeOS and now they’re killing it in favor of moving Android to their PC line… which I personally think is the wrong move, but hey, I’m not that smart so what the fuck do I know.
https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googles-android-pc-merger-incredible
I literally haven’t had wireless charging or an OLED screen since my windows phone. Man, I miss it
Zune HD was amazing too
Fight me.
No, you already have some strange inner demons you apparently need to fight.
Counterpoint: Windows back then wasn’t as reviled as it is now. I also wonder how many of the people upvoting you ever even put their hands on one
I truly believe everything after Windows XP has been bad.
Are you aware that every windows update pushes a fraction of its user base to Linux/osx? Windows was Def always reviled. I personally quit after XP SP3 and first glimpses of Vista.
Nice. The first computer I had all to myself had Vista, it thought me how to fix my own stuff after random crashes. I ditched Windows shortly after the end of support for windows 7, after having entirely skipped 8, and then witnessing Microsoft themselves skipping 9 for the shitshow that was 10.
I sold phones in that era and had a coworker that loved them. I’ve been a tech guy the whole time, so I thought they were ok, but I didn’t trust Microsoft to not fuck it up. Stalman is always right and all that jazz…
Counter counterpoint: Windows back then was Windows 8.
I think windows 8 got more hate than it deserved. Having cross platform metro apps was a genuinely good idea. Smaller OS size was a genuinely good idea.
Windows store and a bunch of changes to settings menus fucked it up along with questionable aesthetic changes.
Removing the start button was a bad idea.
It had an interface that was supposed to be compatible with desktop and tablets at the same time, and as a result it wasn’t good at either.
The power off button was hidden behind the settings menu, which in turn was hidden behind some corner gesture menu. They seem to have taken the wrong lessons from Vim.
Eventually the worst things were fixed with 8.1, but that was too late to repair the reputation.
Counter counter counterpoint: Nothing stopped anyone from continuing to use Windows 7
Counter point: uh, yeah they did? A couple years after windows 8 came out they stopped supporting windows xp and 7. Afaik they dont support the latest versions of directx either, so there is literally no way way to run a modern game on anything prior to windows 8. Even windows 8 is no longer supported, meaning it doesnt get new antivirus updates and merely connecting it to the internet is a security risk for the device and the home network. Theres a reason you can right click on any program and select “run in compatibility mode” for legacy systems. And most of the time that compatability mode doesnt work either.
Could be wrong on any of this, im on a computer scientist as a hobby. Feel free to correct me and ill update or delete the post.
Support for Windows 7 (SP1) was not pulled until January of 2020 for ordinary users. Extended support contracts ran until 2023.
For reference, Windows 10 came out in 2015. Users could, and absolutely did, completely skip Windows 8 entirely. Windows 7 was supported throughout essentially all of 8’s viable lifecycle because nobody wanted to use 8, and five additional years into Win10’s lifecycle.
The problem with windows 8 is that with the initial release they wanted everything to be a mobile OS, even your desktop.
“Metro Design” lol
But it seemed decent for tablets and phones.
It was actually pretty great for phones, but in true MS fashion they fucked that all up
Actually, the first iteration of that interface was Windows Phone 7 and it was pretty terrific.
Oof
I had this Lumia 1020 and loved it.
No fighting here.
Still the best UI of any smartphone. Pity no one picked it up.
The lack of a real app store with real apps is what killed it imho.
Yeah, it’s probably the most professional smartphone UI I’ve ever seen. Super clean and straightforward.
There is this, if you’re into the look: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ss.squarehome2
Been using the premium version of the launcher for years, absolutely love it. Won’t use anything else at this point, I’m even starting to make my own full tile images
That’s amazing! What a unique style choice
It doesn’t have to be that style. That launcher is so flexible, you can customize your phone like crazy. Apple’s glass look, windows phone look, … But that’s me. People don’t touch my phone because they can’t operate it anymore.
You can still have it! Check out the square home launcher for android.
I loved my Windows phone… the lack of quality apps was their real downfall IMO.
Loved this phone. I had the Nokia Lumia 920 in yellow. Fantastic user experience back in the day, but unfortunately no apps.
Them trying to make Windows 8 UI match this was a bad move
Except how bad was it for Microsoft?
They didn’t lose share. For the people that rightfully saw Metro as a painful dumb direction in Windows design language, they just stuck with Windows 7. Microsoft didn’t have upside they wanted, but they didn’t have the downside.
They tried to pump life into their mobile platform by throughing their desktop platform under the bus. Because they have zero competitive pressure, they attempt to do that with essentially zero downsides. Just like now they can make their OS little more than an advertising platform for the Microsoft Store and Microsoft services without real repurcussion.
I meant more it was a bad experience for the user. It clearly didn’t work as they scrapped it for 10.
Did they lose market share anything? Nah.
They scraped most of it in 8.1 lmao
This was a time period when I willingly shilled Microsoft because they were the underdog option. I didn’t want Google to have monopoly on web design or non-Apple phones, and I think I was right to.
Of course, now Microsoft holds its own unholy monopolies, and I can regret that all I like…
Microsoft has been a monopolist since before United States vs Microsoft. That’s why Bill Gates is just another billionaire piece of shit - he stole and destroyed more than he can ever give back, because monopolies create a deadweight loss.
Microsoft is the original tech monopoly
Didn’t have Grindr, useless
Mike Johnson?
Or “his son”
What do you mean no apps, it had Internet Explorer and Skype, that’s practically the whole internet! /s
To be fair most apps are just a browser.
Instagram, YouTube, reddit, etc.
A browser with added data collection.
I remember the Zune Touch. I remember the squircle.
Personally I always hated the UI. Big bold ugly boxes of bright colors and a little text in a corner? Ugh
The best phone hardware and best phone UI, Nokia N900 with Maemo. Will never forgive Microsoft for grabbing Nokia and fucking it up, although Nokia managers were doing great on their own on destroying the company.
And special mention to the OpenMoko project. Pity it died.
Shoutout to the Palm Pre.
Why do the design remind me of Teenage Engineering? Same people are responsible for both?
Yeah, but Noika, IKEA, and no IKEA
Yes, and I distinctly remember people going around believing that Microsoft was going to save us all from the Apple/Google smartphone duopoly with this and deliver us unto freedom and the promised land. Fucking Microsoft, of all people.
All of us nerds who were involved in the prior Windows CE/Mobile/PocketPC debacle saw the inevitable coming from a mile off.
