I actually liked the Windows phone that I had for a short while. It just didn’t have the app support.
Same boat, loved my Windows phone. I didn’t even use apps very much back then, but when it came time for an upgrade, it was gone.
This is why I never had one. I kept saying “Maybe my next phone.” Then they were gone.
about the same. My current phone back then had a few good years in it still, and I wanted my next one to be a Windows phone. And then they were gone.
The UI is very simple and the performance on the phones using it was very good compared to the contemporary Android phones.
For some apps, quite intentional. I remember some app makers hating Microsoft so much that they’d refuse and also block API access when MS made their own versions of apps for their users.
YouTube was a big one for this. The Windows phone app worked better than its Android and iPhone counterparts and Google blocked API access.
Why not block iPhones api access?
Too many users, too established of a brand. It’s easier to kill off newcomers
Microsoft’s YouTube app didn’t show ads, and that was Google’s gripe with them.
I am still upset that iPhone and Android have not even come close to matching the simplicity of Windows Phone. I feel like I had to take a huge step backwards when my Windows Phone died.
It just didn’t have the app support.
It just didn’t have the app support.
I’ve seen like, one Windows phone in my life.
A phone shop managed to palm one off on my FIL around the same time MS threw in the towel. He was using it until last Christmas when we got him a replacement due to it not having LTE and the 3g signal being switched off in the UK last month.
When I say he used it, I mean he could make and receive calls, and could read (but not send) texts. The lack of app support never bothered him because he never needed a smartphone in the first place. We got him a flip phone with physical keyboard and VoLTE. I had to use the WP a bit while dealing with the network to get a new 4g SIM and the UI, while alien, was surprisingly snappy for such an old device.I think one of your characters in gta 5 had one
I owned two! One died after several years of service, so I bought another, then MS dropped support a few months after I bought it with Windows Phone 8/7.5 and I never bought another one again.
It is was an awesome OS that Google tried really hard to strangle to death.
Successfully!
Aged like milk.
Windows phone OS was so good, but Microsoft bungled it every step of the way.
2010, wow
I still miss WP8 and WM10. Great OSs that were way ahead of their time. I still hate android’s/iOS lackluster keyboards and autocorrect.
Steve Ballmer lacked two things: vision and taste, - and his personal lackings ended up coloring all of MS’s efforts and products during his tenure as CEO.
Don’t forget respect for human beings. He implemented particularly brutal stack-ranking.
Yeah, I think the only thing Ballmer has ever respected is money, he seems to me just a bean counter and obnoxiously hyped up “salesguy” in his personality, with not much depth beyond that.
I heard he’s pretty enthusiastic about developers, developers, developers, developers…
Even though Ballmer was ceo during release, it was definitely the fucking moron Satya that buried Windows Phone.
I low key love this, but I also like Scott’s Tots, so maybe I just like extreme cringe.
Such cultish behavior!
Aren’t there still “tiles” in modern windows? These things that don’t really fit on a desktop system.
MS’ revenge because we did not throw away our phones and bought their product.
This is what happens when you spend your whole existence corporate brown nosing. Every forced chuckle at the bosses bad joke, every falsely optimistic outlook, eventually rots your soul.
You end up so dishonest that you become unable to tell reality from your own manufactured optimism, and it spreads to all parts of your life.
You become unable to acknowledge hard truth about your relationships with other people, and instead just optimise for the aesthetics of tedious niceties instead of anything with substance.
Your kids think you are a loser, Your wife loses respect for you. You still merrily greet them every morning, but are unable to see the disinterested response.
She seeks emotional fulfilment elsewhere, you are unable to see the signs, you wallpaper over your own instincts with “maybe she’s tired” and “she can have her own friends!”.
She divorces you after hoping for years you would get the hint and do it first.
You are alone in your new economy apartment after downsizing from the house sale. You like it, it’s all you need really after all!
You look at your Windows phone on the bare table. The battery died after you were on it to the utilities people all day. You pick it up.
You see the face of an old, broken man smiling vaguely back at you.
You cry.
I like your writing.
I miss those days. Back then, cell phones were far more affordable and there was real innovation. Back then there were so many different vendors and so many OS’s, things were actually exciting.
Now it’s just Apple or Android prices are out of control, features get removed so they can sell you something, and there’s no innovation.
I don’t know about more affordable. I’ve paid around the same price for like 15 years and while cheap smartphones used to be total shit now even the cheaper ones do a fine job. I think the price on “adequate” stuff has gone down but the upper tiers have just gotten more expensive.
Yea people forget you don’t have to buy the latest more expensive phone. I have a nord, about 300 to 400 bucks. It’s great. My mom has the latest Samsung, paid a grand and she doesn’t use 90 percent of the features. It’s ridiculous.
I got a Pixel 7 for $400 last year. There are tons of deals to be had
I got a Pixel 6pro for €280 the year before. That will be fine for many years to come.
I stopped buying flagship phones when they went above €500 or so. And these days I wonder why I ever wanted them.
There are a lot of cool fairly cheap Android phones these days.
No innovation?
Over the last few years they’ve innovated ways to do away with removable/replaceable batteries, headphone ports, and SD card slots while also making the phone entirely out of glass and sticking the front facing camera obnoxiously right in the middle of the top of my screen. If that isn’t progress, what is?
Apple:
Where’s Ballmer
I think they cut support for Windows Phones too soon, honestly. Should have stuck it out for longer.
They killed a good product that people liked (CE) to push a bad product that no one liked and then blamed everyone else when that product failed. Reminds me of a primary from a few years back…
The people who used Windows Phones loved them. The UI was great, live tiles were legitimately the best, and integrating social media apps into your “people” feed was genius.
It just sucks that it didn’t get third-party app support from developers.
I can’t refute that, I’ve never met anybody who used one.
Yeah even though it would’ve never beaten iphone it could’ve been a decent contentor.
Remember the Zune? Pretty sure they did the same thing then.
