I'm amazed by how much MS messed up Windows Phone. At a certain point they were right to give up, but only because of their own incompetence.

I bought a Windows Phone 7 device. Loved it. Still the best mobile UI I've experienced. It had a ton of smart ideas too, like integrating different messaging services into a central app - totally breaking up the app-centric model of iOS and Android.

...except they didn't provide any hooks for third party apps to integrate. Said it was coming. Along with multitasking and other stuff that was already common in other OSes. It never did. Instead they announced Windows Phone 8, and stated that almost all WP7 devices would be ineligible for an upgrade, thus burning their relationship with early adopters. I believe they did the same with some devices from WP8 to 10. Nowadays they've given up everything that made WP unique, so there's no need to use it.

Sad thing is, their initial timing was great. Google had dropped the ball on Android - developing an entire version specifically for tablets (3.0) while the phone OS floundered. Compared to Android 2.3, Windows Phone was a breath of fresh air. But by the time they'd decided my phone was EOL less than a year later, Android 4 was out. I switched back with no regrets. Don't get me wrong, it would have been an insane uphill climb for anyone, but MS, with their resources and XBox etc., if anyone could have entered the market, it could have been them.

I would LOVE to go back to a Windows Mobile phone, like when it was Windows Mobile 6, that I HAD CONTROL of my device, I could access my registry, my autoruns, my hosts, MY NOTES WOULD SYNC (bad-bad-Apple) and there was plenty of software/games/utilities in the WM6 ecosystem.

I had asked the MS community a few weeks back whether W10(mob) is anything like the 6, and surprise-surprise, it was not. No option for a "firewall with learning-mode", no ability to modify OS to my liking/specs. They tried to mimic iOS "close-ness" in the worse possible way. At least iOS has the JB community which works miracles (e.g. Firewall IP)

I think MS was better when they were licensing a very nice WM6 OS to O2, Qtek, and more. Now that ship has sailed.

ps: I think that W10 is more of an attempt to get a piece of the "all your bases are belong to us" (telemetry, snooping on everything, move every-bit-possible to THEIR cloud. I see the/their convenience into doing so, but that makes it a no-buy for me.

Yes, instead of having two OSses with one application API during the transition with Windows 95 and Windows NT (Win32), with Windows 8 they made one OS with two different API's, costing almost two years and bringing no benefits to users, throwing early adopters and developers under the bus.

Like the GP, I also miss my Windows Phone, but Windows 8 killed the opportunity they had.

Blackberry OS 10 has an integrated hub for all communications as well. I've never tried Windows Phone, but I can't see anything me much slicker than that. Didn't do them any favours either, and they started off with a larger base. The lack of an app ecosystem, and some unfounded sentiments of it being obsolete did them in.

I'm on my 2nd BB Classic, and will likely stock up a couple more to last me some years, as there's no better phone for email and ssh. And the few apps I do need that aren't supported I can still run using the Android runtime.

Microsoft and mobile has been a disaster every time they've tried. Not sure why but it's just something they are not good at from end to end, even if some of the pieces are technically pretty good.

> Microsoft and mobile has been a disaster every time they've tried.

Not true. Windows CE was a solid offering.

I'm going to agree with this. People forget how spartan Palm OS was in comparison, and the balkanized Linux mobile offerings as well as the lack of a good mobile UI toolkit. Making mobile apps for Win CE was a breeze compared to Palm OS.

By what metrics?

Every implementation of this I've seen has been a slow burn disaster. It's still deployed, and it still sucks.

I assume they meant the original release/products. In the late '90s, CE palmtop computers were a joy. I had no idea it was still deployed; it can't have any real connection to those little pocket PCs I loved.

They were loved by extreme early adopters. In practice they were a nightmare: Limited software options, terrible battery life, brutally awful screens, ridiculously big and heavy. They were like a laptop computer crammed into a brick with all the useful features stripped out.

I knew a few people that loved them, but they were not ordinary people.

That's rather overstating things. They were limited, yes, but they were fine for doing email, taking notes, and playing text adventures, which was pretty much what I wanted them to do. This was the late '90s; nobody expected a pocket device to have a full-featured web browser and a massive library of apps. The batteries in mine were for good several days to a week of normal use. 480x240 greyscale was plenty for text-only work. They were certainly less powerful than a laptop, but they were also a lot cheaper, at least at the prices I was seeing in late '97. And they did well enough that several different manufacturers released several generations of machines each, over a period of years.

The Windows CE devices I saw had color screens with a comically narrow viewing angle, incredibly huge batteries that lasted a hilariously short amount of time, and required a fussy little pen to use since most operations could not be done by keyboard alone.

I'm not saying it was totally useless, or that people didn't find it "fine" for some tasks, but it was like a crippled notebook that could barely do any of those things. The only advantage it had was size, and even then it still weighed vastly more than any of the phones from that era. They still cost a small fortune, maybe half the cost of a decent laptop, but since they weren't a laptop or a phone you still had to get one of those anyway.

Compare with two competitors from that time, Danger Hiptop and Sharp Zaurus, took a very different approach: Keyboard centric, good battery life, limited functionality but focusing on specific things rather than trying to do everything.

I never used the later/color models, so that may be the difference. I'm sure it jacked up the battery burn. The B&W ones ran for a good while, and you could find low-end models for $150 or so.

As I recall, the pen was fiddly but not necessary; the screen was pressure-sensitive, so you could use a fingertip just fine, or the eraser end of a pencil. Modern capacitative touchscreens are much more accurate, but I sometimes miss being able to use any object as a stylus. :)

Those are hardware issues with devices from that era, and have little to do with the OS. The iPhone 1 was far more powerful than the CE devices.

The technical underpinnings of Windows Phone 7 were total crap because it was based on Windows CE. If they had started with NT then things might have been different.

The phones and the operating system were great, but the ecosystem was not there and that was a problem. I used 920 and 930, but then switched to iPhone due to lack of 3rd party software (either the software was completely missing or the features arrived late).

I'm typing this on a 925, and I'll use it for as long as it works. I've come to see the ecosystem problem as a blessing in disguise. The promise of windows phone in the early adverts was that you would get in and out quickly, and not waste time that could be spent socialising, or with family. They delivered on that, though not the way they intended. The lack of apps means I don't waste time on my phone. The latest games aren't there. Major apps are unavailable. No pinterest. No ebay app. Crappy youtube experience. These are all good things. The temptation to install timesinks is far less, because even when they are available, they're generally quite poor quality compared to the IOS or android alternatives

I have more free time because I'm on windows phone, and that's worth a lot

Why even get a smartphone if all you want is the basics? Might as well get a feature phone and enjoy the extra battery life.

I browse HN, take a lot of photos and make notes on OneNote. But to be honest I've often been tempted. The camera is probably the thing I'd most miss - I take a lot of photos of my kids and a feature phone camera won't cut the mustard

You can get a feature phone for $20; that leaves quite a bit for a decent point-and-shoot.

yes, but then you have to carry two things in your pocket, and you still can't browse HN or take notes on OneNote with either of them.

Microsoft rebooted the platform so many times there was no opportunity to grow the ecosystem. The only way to build an ecosystem is slow and steady but Microsoft was too impatient for that. When they didn't immediately get success they just threw everything out and started again... twice!

Somewhat agree, I have a 950 and a lit of android/ios apps are here just not all. Last time I checked out of the top 20 on android windows phone has 17/20.

I find most games pointless battery life on all phones already sucks.

I felt the same about my Lumia 630. I broke the screen and ended up switching to some HTC abomination because I needed Android, but the 640 was cheap, smooth, fast, well ahead of its time in mobile UI and it was actually pleasant to use.

I can't believe how badly MS have handled Windows Phone. Splitting the market between WP 7/8/10 was insane given how small a user base they had.

Try a Blackberry KeyOne when it's released in May. It runs the latest version of Android without any lags, has a physical keyboard for simple use (shortcuts for everything), has the same camera as the Google Pixel (v.good) and packs a 3500mAh battery that will last more than a day with moderate use.

I'm using one now and it's nothing short of excellent.

It may use the same sensor as the Pixel, but it doesn't have the Pixel camera processing algorithms. Those Pixel algorithms are a big reason why it's considered to have the best smartphone camera.

I heavily considered purchasing a Lumia 950 when looking to upgrade my Android phone. Unfortunately, the community pretty much drove me away, not because they were toxic, but because they claimed the platform was dead and no one suggested getting into Windows Mobile 10. If Microsoft releases a new WM 10 phone with a fingerprint sensor and a decent set of specs, I might consider picking one up and bearing the "app problem". I like the fact that Microsoft updates the devices directly and I can go into a Microsoft store if I have a problem.

The HP Elite x3 has a fingerprint reader (also an iris scanner, like the 950 and 950 XL)

If it was bill gates or ballmer's microsoft they might have gone on. They lost billions on Xbox and Bing, but they still kept at it. I guess Xbox turned out pretty good, but they sunk a ton of money on it. I guess the new Microsoft management is not interested in losing money. Google realized their core business is search and getting google search on phones was paramount even if they had to pay manufacturers to put their search engine there.

I remember getting a pamphlet at GameStop or something around the original XBox launch with all the reasons I should get one. They actually spent some time saying, essentially, "Microsoft is rich as hell and doesn't give up, so even if it's not successful immediately there will be new game support for years." I guess that worked out for them.

This would be the same Ballmer who laughed on national TV at the iPhone announcement?

Persisted = Burn millions of $ because some insignificant minuscule minority happens to like their phones.

Billions of dollars. Windows Phone has been failing for years, and the same chorus has been saying "just a little bit more!" while Microsoft dumped billions and a large amount of goodwill into a clearly failed venture. They put more effort into it that the overwhelming bulk of businesses on the planet could ever imagine. There's a point where it's just a lot of good money and effort after a futile cause.

People's discussions about Windows Phone -- the invariable commentators who talk about how great it is -- is the sort of thing I'm incredibly wary about, having been misled by it before in this field. The people professing love for Windows Phone almost invariably spent very little time with it (and haven't dealt with the enormous number of flaws and gaps), or have a profound bias to like it regardless.

As a developer across a number of platforms, and with no affinity or vow of loyalty to any of the makers, I think it was a terrible platform that had tiny nuggets of promise, but never a compelling enough reward profile.

I have had my 950 for almost a year, I always read "bugs that have never been fixed" I haven't seen anything as such.

I'll agree it has gaps and the settings is all over the place, wallpapers in personalise and not under display. I get it, its just not like any other mobiles os, even screen time out isn't in display its in lock screen.

It also has annoying links to faq at the bottom of every single page.

I believe many people would argue that 'computing in the 21st century happens on the phone' not on the desktop or laptop for a large fraction of the population. And because of that, it would seem the worlds leading software vendor would want to participate there. So persistence here is not perceived as throwing away billions for a small minority, so much as investing billions so that you're a credible alternative to tens if not hundreds of millions of users. That keeps your company tuned up in the most dominant software delivery mechanism of our time and avoids overall company death by irrelevancy.

Yeah, I can't find the article now but there's always a group of consumers out there that have a strong affinity for products that have failed in the market. Anything from soft drinks to candy to fast food to electronics devices - they're among the greater predictors of a product failure than any focus group could offer. I'm someone that was all about alternatives to MP3 such as Ogg Vorbis and VQF and ripped nearly 300 CDs to them before giving up and just going with... FLAC, which at least lets me pick and choose whatever I want in the future.

Were you thinking of the following article?

Eric Anderson, Song Lin, Duncan Simester, and Catherine Tucker (2015) Harbingers of Failure. Journal of Marketing Research: October 2015, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 580-592.

It was posted to HN in July 2015[0] and a PDF is at [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9839344

[1] http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/staff/song_lin/song_lin-jmr-2015.p...

Thanks for that. I wonder how many of us in this readership have "flop affinity", given often very particular tastes and goals?

The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year.

There is room for them to carve out a niche of Microsoft Phones earning them a couple of billion in revenue, and a couple of hundred million in profit. However for a big company like Microsoft that money is a drop in the ocean, and they want to own the market which at this point in time is unrealistic for them unless they can produce something truely groundbreaking.

It's the ecosystem. My friend swore by his Android, always telling me how he could never switch to iOS. Until one day one app that he REALLY wanted to use had a nice polished iOS version but the Android version was clearly total crap with no obvious intention to improve, since then he's switched to iOS and isn't talking too much about Android anymore.

So even if you have a small following, those people eventually drop off too one by one over things like this.

That could be said for any phone system, the photo gallery and editing on windows phone is extremely good.

Your friend could have easily gone from iPhone to android for the same reason.

I think the point is that any given person is more likely to find an app they "can't live without" on Android/iOS than on WinPhone, just because there's so many more to choose from.

But new phones are incredibly sophisticated devices requiring a lot of investment to create and bring to market, so maybe even billions a year of revenue might not be enough.

That's true hence from that revenue they might only be able to squeeze tens or maybe hundreds of millions in profit from it. Which for Microsoft is in their eyes probably not worth the effort.

>>The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year.

Ah yes, the good old "even if we captured only 1% of this huge market we would make billions!" argument.

And the native app model for WP was a pleasure to code against, compared to Android or iOS.

I agree, I had a windows phone and I actually liked the UI, simple clean, the 5 things I used the most often in nice big blocks, easy for me to find quickly. Too bad, I just feel like the whole phone scene has fallen into a duopoly, Apple iPhone and Samsung Android. I liked the idea of having a strong #3. Maybe it is my soft spot for the underdog, but I miss having a richer phone space. I know, I know, this is HN so someone will bring up some obscure thing I am supposed to know about like an Ubuntu phone or something, but let's keep it real guys, there are 2, keepin' it 100, K?

I think that Nokia would have been better off had they devoted their resources towards the Meego OS (along with providing an easy way to use existing Symbian applications on the new platform.

I'm still using my Nokia N9 and am pretty satisfied with it. Unfortunately, there won't be any updates (and, as far as I know, I can't hey a Jolla phone here in the US).

you can have smooth tiled experience in Android as well, as for battery if you use it same way as windows phone with almost zero apps and killing background processes you can have same battery life

windows phone used pretty low end low power CPU which don't eat much

or you really think windows can manage resources better than Android?

Two flavors of phone, plus however many flavors of Android.