Microsoft to finally lay Windows 10 Mobile to rest on December 10, 2019, recommends users switch to iOS or Android

[GoodBytes]

Just now, Nowak said:

Try telling that to every Windows Phone owner who was left on the Anniversary Update or even Threshold because their phones got abandoned by Microsoft. Remember, the Creators Update was offered to only 11 devices, and then the Fall Creators Update was offered to 9.

 

That isn't including hacky workarounds, which isn't "support" because that involves tricking the update server into thinking you were using a Lumia 950, rather than an officially Microsoft-sanctioned way of updating your phone.

Lumia 950, 950 XL, and 650 are the only official Windows 10 Mobile devices

The one you mentioned are select Windows Phone 8, so for them they got past or got ~4 years of support.

[Nowak]

3 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Lumia 950, 950 XL, and 650 are the only official Windows 10 Mobile devices

The one you mentioned are select Windows Phone 8, so for them they got past or got ~4 years of support.

Didn't Acer, HP, Alcatel and a few no-name Chinese companies make Windows 10 Mobile devices as well, though? And then WileyFox is trying to sell a Windows 10 Mobile phone with horribly outdated specs this year, for some reason.

[Silentprototipe]

[mr moose]

I can't but wonder if the people who are glad to see WP go and have less competition are the same people that whinge Intel and Nvidia are screwing consumers because of lack of competition?

 

Anyway, (barring app support) my experience of WP was always better than android and ios.

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, Nowak said:

Didn't Acer, HP, Alcatel and a few no-name Chinese companies make Windows 10 Mobile devices as well, though? And then WileyFox is trying to sell a Windows 10 Mobile phone with horribly outdated specs this year, for some reason.

HTC mozart was windows, reasonable phone too.

 

EDIT: just meant by way of being in the budget realm.

[Nowak]

Just now, mr moose said:

HTC mozart was windows, reasonable phone too.

 

EDIT: just meant by way of being in the budget realm.

HTC never released any Windows 10 Mobile phones. They released a few Windows Phone 7, 8 and 8.1 phones (my first one was a HTC Windows Phone 8X) but never any 10 Mobile phones.

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, Nowak said:

Surface Andromeda is real tho guys!!!!!!!!

Another tech unicorn or vaporware imo 

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by captain_to_fire

[Nowak]

tbh I hope that someone comes in and learns from the failures of microsoft, mozilla, RIM/blackberry and whatnot and makes a viable "third" smartphone OS
 

maybe sailfish OS, by jolla? maybe.

[I-r0k]

A good idea in theory, a bad execution in the end.

[aezakmi]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Lumia 950, 950 XL, and 650 are the only official Windows 10 Mobile devices

The one you mentioned are select Windows Phone 8, so for them they got past or got ~4 years of support.

Nokia made them too

 

Back on topic there were a lot of bad things about windows mobile but the ONE really good thing was the way the developers managed to optimize it, W8.1M and even 10 could run smooth on a device with 4GB storage and 1GB RAM, there's literally no Android device can do that without hanging and crashing every time you try to run a program, Google itself and the manufacturers just keep adding more and more stuff over an already poorly optimized base, and they just "solve" the slowness problem by adding more RAM and putting faster CPUs on the things that lead to having to ask for bigger batteries to power them, instead of trying to solve it by optimizing the code, I guess at this point that would be impossible anyways, Google would had to create a whole new OS which is way too expensive

 

Kind of what happens with PCs anyway every time a new OS version is released except a quality PC can last 10+ years and an Android phone less than 2, even less if it's a low end one. The Lumia 6XX phones were aimed at the low end market but still performed perfectly even if you shoved a ton of programs and files into them, I personally have a 640XL, thing's a beast and costed me, read this, HALF of the price of a similar specced Android based phone (5.5" screen, quad core, 1GB memory, 8GB storage, and 4G although the network doesn't even exists in my country yet) bought a 128 gigs card for it and use it almost like a second computer when I'm studying or at work, originally came with 8.1 but I've updated it to W10 and works even better, I could even overclock it in the future since it has that option.

 

Haven't tried iOS since, well, the prices.. I don't want to end up like that chinese boy who had to sell a kidney to buy an iPhone, even if I sold one and got the iPhone I'd probably end up hanging of a bridge or cut into tiny little pieces because of it if some thugs or drug dealers find out.

 

Good idea and good OS that came out too late when Google already had over 90% of the world market because let's be real, iPhones are just popular in the US/Canada and Europe, after all you gotta sell a kidney to get one outside these two regions.

 

F Windows Mobile

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 hours ago, syn2112 said:

sure if Windows 8 was only for touch devices, but it's not, it's supposed to be for everybody, no one doing serious work would be touching their devices, it's not accurate and much slower.

I found the Windows 8 experience to be way better on a touchscreen than a normal desktop/laptop.

 

Windows 8.1 only exists to bring a better touchscreen integration to Windows 8 after all.

[captain_to_fire]

11 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I found the Windows 8 experience to be way better on a touchscreen than a normal desktop/laptop.

 

Windows 8.1 only exists to bring a better touchscreen integration to Windows 8 after all.

Tbh if you strip away the Metro UI, the desktop improvements in Windows 8 surpasses Windows 7 on many things. 

• Native ISO mounting 
• Native USB 3 support 
• Fine tuned Task Manager 
• Managing cut, copy and paste conflicts and file collision  
• Faster boot times (basically skipping error checking) 
• Built in antivirus with Windows Defender 
• Better update management (something Windows 10 took away) 
• Hyper-V for Windows 8 Pro 
• imo, Windows 8.1 memory management is just better than Windows 10 
• Out of the box Exchange support (With Windows 7 you have to buy an Office license) 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, captain_to_fire said:

Tbh if you strip away the Metro UI, the desktop improvements in Windows 8 surpasses Windows 7 on many things. 

• Native ISO mounting 
• Native USB 3 support 
• Fine tuned Task Manager 
• Managing cut, copy and paste conflicts and file collision  
• Faster boot times (basically skipping error checking) 
• Built in antivirus with Windows Defender 
• Better update management (something Windows 10 took away) 
• Hyper-V for Windows 8 Pro 
• imo, Windows 8.1 memory management is just better than Windows 10 
• Out of the box Exchange support (With Windows 7 you have to buy an Office license) 

The GUI was what drove me away from Windows 8. I love Windows 10, though.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, captain_to_fire said:

Hyper-V for Windows 8 Pro

Hyper-V is also a feature of Win 7 Pro.

[captain_to_fire]

7 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

The GUI was what drove me away from Windows 8. I love Windows 10, though.

Personally, Windows 10 is quite a hit or miss. Of all the Windows 10 releases, the Fall Creators Update is the least problematic. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, captain_to_fire said:

Personally, Windows 10 is quite a hit or miss. Of all the Windows 10 releases, the Fall Creators Update is the least problematic. 

gUeSs ThEy NeVeR mIsS hUh

/s

 

Fall Creator's update was nice.

I didn't have any problems with 1809 deleting Windows.old data because I did a clean install, though

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Nowak said:

HTC never released any Windows 10 Mobile phones. They released a few Windows Phone 7, 8 and 8.1 phones (my first one was a HTC Windows Phone 8X) but never any 10 Mobile phones.

it was 8 from memory.

[Nowak]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

it was 8 from memory.

Mozart was 7.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

best explanation why it failed 

 

[LAwLz]

40 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

best explanation why it failed 

 

 

Quote

In a time when iPhones and Android were stuck with static icons, the Windows phone gave you tiles with live information

iOS and Android icons did provide the user with information. For example if you got a mail there would be a little counter showing how many unread mails you had.

For bigger information dumps such as weather information, Android had widgets which dynamically changed.

 

Quote

And because Microsoft had very strict requirements for the hardware used by phone manufacturers, all of the early Windows phones were very powerful machines for their time.

No they weren't. Microsoft had strict hardware requirements because Windows Phone did not support more than a handful of SoCs, screens or other hardware.

The hardware Windows Phone did support was actually not that impressive at the time of release, and it very quickly got outdated. Because of the poor hardware support and slow updates from Microsoft to support new stuff, Windows Phone devices were almost always one generation behind Android and iOS in terms of hardware.

Just look at the hardware shown in the video for the devices that came out.

1GHz single core Scorpion CPU.

Around 512MB of RAM

8 or 16GB of storage

5 MP camera

1500 mAh battery or less

 

And what was announced just ~3 months after those phones came out? The Galaxy S2, which had a dual core processor with a better architecture (Cortex A9).

Something like 3-4 times as powerful GPU.

Way lighter and slimmer. The Windows Phones felt like a brick in comparison.

1GB of RAM.

A much larger screen.

Much larger battery.

16 or 32GB of internal storage.

 

Not to mention all the small stuff like dual microphones with active noise cancellation.

A front facing camera (something that Windows Phone did not even support).

Support for recording 1080p.

USB host support and video out from the USB port.

Dual-band WiFi.

Higher screen to body ratio.

Support for microSD card (the early Windows phones did not have this).

 

The list goes on and on and on.

Anyone who says Windows Phone were very powerful for their time is completely wrong. They could claim to be high end for about 3 months and then they were very outdated in pretty much every regard, and that would be the trend until sometime around Windows 10.

 

 

Just look at the first Nokia phone, the Lumia 800. It was released over half a year after the Galaxy S2. It was still stuck on pretty much the same hardware as the Windows phones released 1 year earlier though.

Still the same processor, except now clocked at 1.4GHz instead of 1GHz (still single core though).

Same resolution and screen size.

Still 512MB of RAM

Still no 1080p recording.

Still no dual-band wifi.

Still no microSD.

Still no front facing camera.

Etc etc etc...

 

And then, half a year later, Samsung released the Galaxy S 3 with a quad core CPU, a large 720p display and a ton of other goodies.

 

 

On top of that Microsoft were extremely slow with software updates, and the software was pretty awful too.

Gonna throw in some quotes from myself where I explain this more:

On 10/8/2017 at 11:37 PM, LAwLz said:

Oh come on. Windows phone 7 was awful.

Here is an article from back when it was launched that described it as "a throwback to the smartphone dark ages" because it was lacking so many crucial OS features. Missing features such as:

• Copy/paste
• Support for a front facing camera
• Being able to save settings in the camera app 
• Use custom ringtones
• Notifications
• Screenshot support 
• VPN support
• File uploading from the browser 
• Putting apps in folders 

I could go on but you get the point. Windows phone 7 was not good if you compared it to iOS and Android at the time.

 

Quote

What do you think Microsoft should have done to gain big market share with mobile Windows?

1) Much faster updates. When Windows Phone 7 launched they were promising "machine gun like updates" or something along those lines. What we got were very long periods between updates, which made the gap between WP and iOS/Android just grow over time.

 

2) Less restrictions on hardware from the get-go. In the early days of WP, Microsoft had incredibly strict guidelines for what hardware handsets should have had. It only supported a handful of chipsets and screen resolutions, and things like buttons and button placements were also dictated by Microsoft. In the end all phones felt more or less the same which did not give handset makers much incentive to develop new hardware. 

 

3) Don't dump support over and over again. Microsoft have at several points in Windows on mobile's life cycle decided to axe support for a large portion of devices (No WP7 device got updated to WP8). That did not help confidence. 

 

4) Focus on third party developers a lot earlier. It took quite some time before Microsoft started incentivizing developers to develop on WP. They were too confident that they could just release an OS and have developers instantly jump on board and support them just because third party developers support Windows. 

 

5) Microsoft designed Windows Phone to be annoying to use. While that sounds strange Windows Phone was not designed to be a "first class citizen" in the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft viewed phones as an accessory to the PC, and wanted people to first and foremost use their PC to do things. Or to quote Brian Klug (I still miss you):

Quote

There is so much friction that I literally don't want to use my phone anymore, and it drives me to the desktop. At first I thought that was sort of like a side-effect, but now I believe that's actually exactly what they are going for. [...] They even had that in their messaging for a while, they had like "stop pulling your phone out so often, only do it to glance at it".

 

On 11/2/2017 at 9:41 AM, LAwLz said:

Well, this is doomed to fail.

It was horrible.

It lacked a ton of basic features, the hardware was always one or more generations behind, support for phones was dropped left and right (dare I say it, the update situation was even worse than Android). 

 

The forum I used to browse made a list of missing features in Windows Phone 7. That list was then updated for Windows phone 8 when that was out. I think everyone just gave up after that. 

It was not a list of things like "we are missing this app. We are missing that app". It was a list of things like "can not charge the phone while it is turned off", "no support for VPNs", "can not copy and paste", "can not use custom ringtones" and so on. The list was something like 100 items long. 

I have tried to find the list again but it was just pastebin links so maybe they have expired. 

 

I got to borrow a HTC Radar when that was fairly new, and it honestly felt like using a phone several generations behind my Galaxy S 2 which I used at the time.

 

 

Edit:

Found the Windows Phone 7 version!

https://pastebin.com/etgFeYhv

This was written in late 2012 by the way, so things like copy/paste had been fixed. It had a lot more issues at launch.

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Nowak said:

Mozart was 7.

I bought that phone for my brother in law, I remember the big tiles on the home page.

[Nowak]

Just now, mr moose said:

I bought that phone for my brother in law, I remember the big tiles on the home page.

Yeah that was the best part of Windows Phone tbh.

 

But, as beautiful as live tiles are, boy are they clunky to use.

[suicidalfranco]

after getting burnt twice (Lumia 800 and Lumia 920), my fault for giving that platform a second chance tbh, good riddance.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

-snip-

The channel's name is business "Casual", while you might you can nitpick details, it's sufficient for people to get educated about, it's like a techquickie video, nothing they ever say is absolute truth but you get the bullet points, the more details you try to make it, the less interesting the video becomes. 

[Thaldor]

Finally it's dying, took some time. I actually tought Windows Mobile was done a long time ago just because bad choices, just awful marketing (towards software developers) and so many broken promises that the Windows Store was more like Google+ but an app store and all that led to scarce user base. I still remember too well the one time I went to Microsoft developer event and it was just a full day of lectures about how great Windows Mobile will be and how it will destroy everything and everyone will use it and it all came down to one question: "Appart from Nokia, how many phone manufacturers are behind Microsft to provide Windows phones?" and the answer was more or less "None, but they hoped for more" (and this was around 2008-2010 when Nokia was already a joke and as joke it continued).