I had a windows phone when I was a kid and that shit sucked lol, everyone in my school used Snapchat and my windows phone couldn’t download it so I hated life lol
My friend actually got caught up in a lawsuit with Rudy Huyn & 6snap when they tried to port snapchat to windows phone using the apk. People tried to make apps for wp, but more often than not it would result in permanent bans & lawsuits for developers. Gotta love corporate lawyers.
@@zephyr139 Agreed! It was my first smartphone (a Nokia). The GUI was so amazing! I loved my Windows Phone. But slowly, then very quickly, the app ecosystem just collapsed. The last straw was when I couldn't download a Bank of America app for it. Too bad. I miss the live tiles and smooth as butter interface.
It is really a shame as it had so much potential. The design of the phone is unique, I remember it running very smooth almost never encounter any crash and the phone price is affordable back then
The design of the lumia is beautiful and WP keyboard is still leaps and bounds better than Android or iOS. The team put tons of R&D into making the keyboard and it's insanely accurate and responsive.
Nokia was already failing massively. They didn't think touchscreens were useful and the way to go. Their phones were clunky, focussed on having a gazillion features but not making them easy to access or use. They had buggy firmware too. We had some Nokia phones at work which would randomly go into speakerphone mode when you answered a call, blasting your phone call across the office.
As a former Nokia Lumia user the system was pretty good. But there was NOTHING on the app store compared to the other systems. That is what convinced me to switch to an Android phone.
Blackberry was the same. I always had a Blackberry but back then it was email and messaging and a little "mobile" internet browsing which was honestly shit. Then phone power and screen size blew up FAST and true computer like internet browsing and apps become essential. Blackberry and Windows failed in these areas and people walked away.
@@loyal4theway159 I've actually looked into app development in windows phone and it was fucking horrible. Side loading required a dev account and there were other hurdles I can't remember. They needed to be the best operating system for developers but instead they went for being another apple. Tells you a lot about the desktop business.. they were always against innovation and tried to lock everything down. Bill gates was famously litigious. This time it bit them in the ass and I was glad about it. Otherwise I agree the UI was dope but the direction was shit. Going for an open platform with a focus on developing markets would've been perfect. As this video shows this isn't just hindsight.. Nokia thought so as well.
@@geoffmooregm Remember getting a playbook some years ago and its virtually useless even more so today where as even the old iPad models you can still technically use them for a few odds and ends.
Wasn't the android system essentially based on the windows phone system format? Prior to that we still had those small flip phones that had only rudimentary cameras,no video capability and no mp3 capability and if not for those later features the cellphone fad (or palmtop as I call it ) would have died out altogether as the older adults can't even turn a cellphone on to save their lives and the kids (at whom the phone's are primarily marketed toward to this day) don't use them to make actual phone calls but instead simply use c ellphones as a palmtop computer for the sole purpose of accessing their social media which also probably wouldn't exisr today if social media access was entirely dependent on using a desktop or laptop computer.
One of the reasons not mentioned is that MS kept rebuilding the OS from scratch and making past versions incompatible. As a developer you would have to rewrite your app multiple times to support the newest OS. For the market share it just wasn't worth it. Another huge issue was the license fees to 3rd party hardware makers. Google was giving Android away for free. MS thought their existing Windows licensing model would be a good fit. Which immediately ruled out low margin phones.
Yeah. The MS licensing policy where main reason why the EOM phone makers and also app-programmers, did not wanted to cooperate. In the end, MS dropped the licence fees, but it was too late...
This. I had a Lumia 800 and thought it was a fantastic phone. Then Windows 8 came out, and made my windows 7 phone practically useless, with no new apps being ported and older ones not getting the updates. Seeing as I only had that phone for a few months it left a bitter taste in my mouth, and moved to iPhone.
@@sloppynyuszi And though a solid phone that's simple to use, it doesn't do half of what an android can do, and the things it CAN do, it does at half the speed and twice the commands as an android.
@@sloppynyuszi Yeah it was pretty frustrating. I had a Dell Venue Pro running WP7 and it is still one of my favorite phones ever but it was also rendered mostly useless after WP8 was released. Not having Google apps like gmail and Google maps was also a problem for me but it wasn't in Google's best interest to develop them. I still love the Windows Phone interface though.
Windows could have a monopoly on the mobile OS if they copied Google's model of free personal document tools. Having basic versions of Microsoft Office available across all platforms with some free cloud storage would be very nice for consumers. It would familiarise them with the software so that commercial businesses would only want to use Microsoft products, which they pretty much to have a monopoly on anyway.
I have a stripped down version of MS Office on my Android phone. It's a bit clunky but lets me open stuff when I'm away from my desk. I wouldn't create documents on my phone but it would be handy to make opening and minor editing seamless.
@@SomeRandomPiggo maybe using a dock to connect to an external monitor, and they also had the capability to go for full convergence so you can use both phone and desktop features simultaneously
Still miss my HTC 8x, it was so nice to use and honestly the design stands up today. The lack of apps and the stupid *Bing button* absolutely ruined it... 😭 Awesome deep dive.
Man, the 8X was one of my favorite phones. It felt great in the hand and absolutely zoomed. Also, mine was a very pleasant shade of blue/purple. It’s a shame it couldnt have lasted into 2022.
I loved my Lumia 950, I have 2 in pristine condition in my museum drawer alongside a few other M$ dead ends (Band 1 & 2 anyone). My surface Studio 2 will be joining them too one day. M$ really know how to f*ck up a product line, actually I am surprised their Surface line is still going considering the Apple competition.
I had several Windows Phones and I loved them. The only problem I had with the OS was the lack of apps. Its customisability was top-tier but yeah, lack of official apps and support from Microsoft themselves is what fucked everything up. Funny thing: My husband: My wife would like to get a Windows Phone. The salesman: ...why?
My mother's first smartphone was a Lumia 532. I bought it for her on her birthday. She loved the phone and it was much more usable than the entry-level android phones that had a 3.5 inch screen, no front camera and were very slow. It was the best phone I could buy with my budget of a broke teenager and the lack of apps didn't really matter to her, as she only used it to browse the internet, use messaging and social networks. I said it and I will say it forever, Windows Phone was very fluid and optimized, it ran like a charm, even on entry-level phones.
I remember getting the Lumia 640 and feeling like I was in a sci-fi movie. The phone was ridiculously smooth, the camera was alright for the time, the screen was gorgeous, and the ui was unparalleled. I honestly wish they would bring this back with proper app support.
Still today such a great phone, wish Microsoft would release a Loader that has full Windows Mobile just updated. Even if I had to pay for it... I would be all over it. Android is modular and this could be done...
@Reality well I did, I was a big fan of Nokia Lumias, because with a little bit of money I get a great experience like no one else can give me, iPhones always are expensive and Android’s of the time sucks, Rest In Peace WP Hail the King, IOS.
I am curious how it feels to work on a dev team on a dying project, knowing that the competition is slowly winning the game... When did you guys realize that this project is done?
Windows phone had a great UI. The problem was OEM's didn't want to put it on their devices because Microsoft was asking for a licensing fee (about 40 bucks per device). Android on the other hand was free, with Google realising they would make their money on services and advertising. That was the original sin for Windows phone. Lack of sales meant developers didn't build apps.
I didn't realise they charged a licensing fee for it, its taken a while but with linux gaining popularity maybe we will see this happen on desktop too. As it is I find very little these days tying me to windows especially if they are going to charge a license fee to collect marketing telemetry.
@@vincentohanlon Yes. Now. Now that even in MS they understand that people either will go for free or for a subscription model or simply pirate the shit out of everything. When you have basic office for free (Google docs) and when everyone and their dog are building their own viable alternative to Windows, with people being more and more fluent in Mac where beneath the GUI it's just a Un*x-OS, now of course they give stuff for free. If they don't they will lose their own part of the pie. Sure, MS dominated the pre-massive-access-to-internet era because back then they had the most variety of supported hardware and some killer apps. But ever since Google went massive in search + applications and people were ok with that, and when the server/cloud space was already dominated by Amazon what could MS do? What was the best alternative? Of course they would offer everything and the kitchen sink for free, as long as they could keep their Enterprise contracts and have everyone adopt the MS ecosystem - and Satya actually pulled the rabbit out of the hat with his ideas and initiatives. Now everyone uses Teams for remote work and they even opted for personal Teams, they bought all the open source and they sell services and telemetry data. Sure, Google knows what you look for, Facebook knows who you are (or pretend to be), at least Microsoft knows everything about your work life and if you are in IT, your work too.
The app gap was real. There would always be that one app that you'd miss out on. I loved my windows phone but unfortunately I eventually gave up before the release of Windows Mobile 10. I'm happy that I did because based on all accounts Microsoft had also given up at that point.
The app gap disappeared for a while, it was great, but because the damage to its user base had been done. Developers quickly started withdrawing support for apps. No more online banking, no ebay, no amazon... that was the point that my next phone wasn't going to be Windows.
Microsoft tried everything to get the top apps. We offer to pay, to make them ourselves, etc but most app owners just weren't interested for various reasons. Eventually just ran out of time.
I remember one of my friends having Nokia Lumia back when I had an android yeaaars ago, it was so insanely smooth, loved it a lot, mom got a nokia lumia afterwards too, it was a good experience if you didn't care much about apps/games, really wish it survived.
I've been using my old Lumia as an iPod, the UI was too damn nice for me to give up on. IMO it still stands up to phones from this year. Also, the headphone jack is on the top, as God intended!
I had Nokia Lumia 800, I understand what you’re talking about. It still works smoothly! Even though I haven’t used it since 2014 and haven’t charged it for years.
My dad had a Windows Phone a few years ago, and even though it had its downsides, he 100% swore by it. On thing he would do to prove how tough it was, was to basically skip it across the floor without a case like you would with a stone on a lake, full force. Every time the phone would come out unscathed. He really didn't like the fact that he had to switch to an android as far as I know.
Same here, I was like your dad, but it was not few years a go it was like 7 years ago or so. Though Lumia 1020 did not like to be thrown away, since it had huge camera and me being clumsy I eventually broke the camera. AF stopped working, but phone is working even today. I still have it and it was absolutely best phone for user that needs a tool, and not a toy for gaming or wasting time on social networks. It had absolute best out of box driving mode, perfect email app, document viewers, and it was fast. It was so good for me that I am still feeling bad to know that there is a perfect phone for me, but it was killed by people who needs phones for wasting time.
I actually found you back in those days when you were dual booting and creating launchers for Android. Good times. You're an awesome content creator, I'm happy to have stuck around all this time 🙂.
i remember rooting and running custom android roms and bootloaders because the factory setup was pretty garbage. sure it's better now, but they are hell bent on locking you out of your own phone as the end user
I remember how my grandma used to have a Windows phone. I was supposed to help her figure it out and I was struggling myself with it. Even now the memory of that phone feels like a fever dream lol
I LOVED my Windows phone...I had a couple of them during their run...yeah, it was the lack of apps that finally drove me away, but other than that ..it was my favorite operating system
@King of All ButtocksLOL... wow, you've clearly been waiting months to make a NAMBLA burn...congratulations...and don't forget to register yourself with the local police department
I remember playing around with the early Microsoft windows phones during the early 2010s. They were well designed with the potential to become successful. Basically, Windows was too late to enter the smartphone market and unable to attract mobile operating system app designers who predominantly went to Apple and Google Android .
My first smartphone was a Windows phone. Now, I'm no early adopter - this was well past 2010. But I loved it, mostly. Sadly, like other comments here noted, the lack of software hurt. People were saying hey look at this app, and lo and behold it was Android/IOS only. So I can say that as a layperson there was nothing wrong about the phone itself per se... it was just the lack of software that other phones had.
@@nokz5591 I had an early windows mobile phone. The early windows mobile is was way ahead of their time. I was watching UA-cam, had video game emulators. Thought of picking up a mogul just to use for emulation because the keyboard was so fluid for NES games.
One of my friends had a Windows Phone in about 2014. He said he loved the phone itself, but all of the apps felt like bootleg versions of the iPhone/Android apps. I feel like Microsoft really could have had something with this, if they had gotten the developers on board.
There is not enough room for 3 major players. Having to develop every app for 2 OSs is already a pain, let alone 3. Microsoft come too late to the game for this to happen, so unless they managed to beat Android and become the only big player other than Apple there was no way they could succeed
@@impulsiveurge5837 they did, but it was not enough, it was a vicious cycle, everyone was on IOS and Android, so they had to develop for IOS and Android regardless of the incentives and most didn't bother
Nokia Lumia 1520 was my first Windows phone and my first smartphone. I still remember the promise the ecosystem it had, and for 3 years it preformed like a champ. Followed it up with the Microsoft Lumia 950XL, and stuck with it until the OS went EOL. Switched to Android since then, but I miss the productivity I had with those phones.
My only Windows Phone was the Samsung Omnia 7, one of the first Windows Phones to be launched, that I bought in 2011 and I loved it. But the lack of applications made me switch to Android the following year.
i still have a lumia 920, lumia 1020 and lumia 950xl. unfortunately only the 920 still works (i broke the screen on the other 2) but the 920 is useless these days, not only because it is now 10 years old and dog slow, but because no online features work anymore. lack of apps never bothered me as i dont use facebook or instagram etc anyway, so everything i needed was there (there were even great 3rd party devs that made apps for youtube and such which were superior to the official apps on the other platforms). im happy with my current samsung phone running android which is perfectly fine compared to how android was 10 years ago, but neither ios or android have come close to matching how good windows phone was to use.
I have used Android, iOS and Windows smartphones. For me personally, Windows phone OS was the most beautiful, simplest and friendliest operating system. Too shame that Microsoft did a masterpiece like this, although didn't had a good strategy to stay on course.
@@mrcoolandroid The lack of apps was not surprising: developing for the windows mobile 8+ was _horrible_. I loved the OS, but microsoft really screwed themselves with the fundamental design of the OS, it was just too damn restraining. For a while I was playing around in the early scene (hackathons, developer events, etc.) as a means to grab some minor income or shinies as a student. The tools available were lackluster to say the least. Working with UI felt almost like coding a powerpoint presentation. The few basic options you were offered were ok but extremely rigid and hard to combine. The moment you needed something other than the basic *grid of buttons* -> *list of text* UI, you were SOL. For anything else you had to roll your own from _extremely_ low level primitives. To sidestep this insanity you could embed a webpage as your 'app' and nearly everyone did that. But as you likely noticed, such apps were _slow_ and kinda clunky to use. Direct access to hardware features of the phone was also immensely limited making it hard to implement custom functionality. Due to this, it was almost impossible to support 3rd party accessories (using the phone as a video remote for a drone, smartwatches, additional sensor modules, 'smart' cases, etc.). Heck, even the NFC could not be used to read generic cards and could only do rudimentary BT/Wifi pairing iirc! As such, the OS never supported anything worthwhile. For a while Microsoft dangled a carrot of hope in the form a soon^tm android emulator, allowing to run android .apk's. It was meant to come with the Win mobile 10 but never did. Microsoft poured insane resources into promoting the OS to the developers, most as bounties for porting or releasing apps. But it was just too damn hard to port any actually decent app and people could grab the same paycheck with any 15min hodge-podge shovelware. Queue 100+ themed todo list apps! In the end, the platform was simply too basic and restraining. It did not even offer a way to work around its limitations, let alone allow for feature innovation. Maybe if tech like webasm was more widespread it could have succeeded.
@@MrZhilvinas Very true, Microsoft made the OS very closed so you couldn't access it's hardware features, and yeah it seems that it was hard to develop apps for it sadly, it could have of been a good competitor to Android and iOS
they had no chance. Balmer was an idiot. it was all about being first to market. Google got there first, even with an inferior product, getting there first was the key
I rolled out Windows Phone 7 in a previous IT job. People adored it. But as the video implies, two words describe its failure: Steve Ballmer. He completely blew the entire thing with his meddling and dated vision and I'm still annoyed about it. Microsoft is far better with him gone.
Yeah, the failure of Windows Phone is entirely Ballmer's fault, he's an arrogant short-sighted prick that brought the decline of Microsoft during his tenure.
Microsoft under Satiya Nadella is much better indeed, but I still miss when Microsoft had the tenacity to hold on to their vision. Both Xbox and Surface were a laughing stock at the beginning, and I can't see Microsoft under Nadella soldiering on with the projects until they made the magic. Who knows, maybe a couple more tries and Windows Phone could be the third major player in the market. After all, it is clear most of the users loved the OS, and it was the just the apps that ultimately lead to its demise. Things could be much different if MS gave enough funding and time to the appstore for it to grow, and time and money are what the company is known to have in abundance.
@@kyouhyung Yeap Microsoft sure could have invested way more into the project. I feel some of their plan to drag their feet not adding the features obviously lacking and drawing in developer support. I hold particular resentment that they basically orchestrated the killing of the most influential phone manufacturer Nokia. Phones have gotten boring since then. And yea I put some blame on Nadella too.
I used one for a while, I started with an iPhone 3G in terms of first modern touchscreen phone (i'd had windows mobile before, but I call that old school design) and felt that Android was a rip-off of iOS, so I went to Windows Phone to be different, loved the UI and the people hub. I felt like as the OS progressed some things started to get worse, people hub especially. In the end I found that the OS was not getting better in speed and the handsets weren't as good as rivals. I went Android and have stuck with it ever since.
actually, WP10 was the beginning of the end... 8.1 was the best version of the OS. It lacked some features but was the most stable and had the best performance. My lumia 920 with WP8.1 was by far the best WP experience I had. I hated WP10 on the Lumia 950, it was buggy, unstable and choppy as hell.
I still remember the great OS experience: 1. the colorful interactive live-tiles, giving info about all the apps. that was the best 2. the contact live tiles showing the pictures of all ur contacts and when u open the contact app it gives all my contacts social media notifications. 3. the UI of Zune player is still the best. 4. the Xbox app that has all the game integrations like a real xbox. 5. the messaging app was integrated with facebook and it was soo good. 6. the camera app was soo polished and the photos were really nice. 7. great battery life. 9. at that time Cortana was ahead of google assistant and siri it was such an amazing OS. i wish they could have survived.
AC it was an awesome and cool phone I had a Lumia once I forgot the model. But it looked like a candy colored theme. Its look was unique compare to the phones at the time, the OS surprisingly buttery smooth af (wish Microsoft could do their PC OS the same) the downside, there where few dev apps that support it. Specially the financial apps like banks that is already blooming during that time.
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bought a used 525 and then my first brand new 640 in 2015 - which I have resurrected and the video will be up soon! Windows Mobile was so smooth and ahead of it's time, I have no freaking idea why a software giant would abandon such a great thing!
@@suryasusanto89 to this day, windows as the most popular OS for computer's, have failed to build a solid marketplace too. By now they must be very focused on that!
I remember many tech reviewers reviewed Windows Phone back in 2013-2014, and yes, that OS runs very smoothly even with only dual core SoC and 1GB of RAM, and with that level of performance many people were very excited Windows Phone could be on par with Android & iOS someday. But later more and more critics came to WP because of the lack of apps in Windows Store, and after that, the market share for Windows Phone was dropping significantly before Microsoft decided to completely shut down the support of Windows Phone
"Consumers had spoken" - For what it's worth, consumers never really had a choice as you just mentioned, the app developers made that choice for them. Everyone I knew who had a windows phone loved it. I am not a fan of Microcrap. But their phone OS was a solid competitor to iOS and Android.
Exactly. I remember back in the days comparing phones and ultimately dropping Windows as a choice purely due to the app availability. Its honestly what pulled Iphones so far in front, because even Android had a slowish start in the first years in their app store.
@@NgolaNalane it’s a chicken egg situation. Consumers won’t use a OS that doesn’t have apps while developers won’t develop apps for OS without a user base.
Windows phone was truly ahead of it's time and still looks good to this day. It'd be nice if they tried again since windows 10/11 now has phone integration with android and Samsung built right in. They now have more of a chance to get an ecosystem going and with Windows 11 able to run APK's, it could make it easier to have apps on Windows phone.
Well they banned this stupid tiles from windows 11 :) But windows 11 on tablets and phones could be interesting, but only in far future when hardware performance is not a problem anymore so it can run desktop os. But Microsof doesn't care anymore, they earn mony from services from cloud and subscription like office and it's not important is it their windows os or android, ios
They tried by rebranding Windows Phone to just Windows 10 (implying it's the same OS) but really nothing changed from the upgrade except they broke Cortana, and in PC the mobile influence felt tacked on at best
LOL Dude, Windows 10, 11 are not mobile OS. This is why Windows OS failed so hard and even in 2022 people just don’t get it. If they decide to put Windows 11 on a phone your battery would be death in 4hr. Not even the Surface have good battery and they are wayyy bigger.
@@sys935 Why? You want IPAs instead? Just because you have not found some good apk packages doesn't mean others don't have a folder of apks which they feel are "advances".
I had a Nokia Lumia 620, it was different from what everyone had and I loved it. I switched to Android as WhatsApp dropped its app from windows app store. But Lumia was way ahead of its time.
Never got a Windows phone but remember considering it after playing with one of buddy's Windows phone. It really was smooth, looked awesome and the usability was great. What did it for me, and probably the main reason of its demise, was the lack of apps. Ended up going with Android, instead.
I remember finding out about the Instagram DM function only after switching from Windows Phone to android and reading 50 missed DM's 😄 It wasn't built into the Windows Phone version of the app. It's a shame there was such little support for app development, I loved my Windows Phone, but the lack of options made me switch eventually.
I love my windows phone, it was all metal and heavy as hell and I love the interface i think Microsoft should’ve just used Google play instead of trying to create and move developers to that one ecosystem. That was all the change they needed to make, to make sure the phone became very popular and useful but they didn’t and I call that bad Management.
They had the most beautiful and fluent UI at that time. On the other hand, making apps for the platform was tremendously difficult, which you can judge by the fact that it took them 6 months to add an autorotate off switch. Only if Microsoft had better developer support, this could have been a very successful platform.
As someone who had a windows phone and developed windows phone app I can confirm. The SDK was built on top of silver light and it absolutely sucked to build on!
@@edwardfletcher7790 they even openly lied to consumers with false promises of updates, got 920 which was slated for windows 10 update, then they blocked it
Sprint carried only one Windows phone and it had a slide out keyboard. I absolutely loved it. I could text quickly and the phone was so enjoyable to use. It was rock steady and I absolutely loved the sounds of the phone when using it. The sounds were so soothing. I also had an early version of swipe to text on the keyboard which I loved to use. It was my last phone before I switched to iPhone. If that apps had been there I would still be using a windows phone today.
I had a Windows phone up until the end. I loved it and was rooting for their success. It was sad when it all ended but yes the lack out apps was a huge issue for a lot of people.
@@TheTimeProphet It can only function as a basic phone since most of the important apps don't work. So made a switch from my Nokia Lumia 730 to Nokia 5.3
Microsoft, for a very long time, never understood that a mobile device like a phone or tablet can't run a desktop OS. If it couldn't run Windows, then Gates and Ballmer weren't interested. Ironically Microsoft made the exact opposite blunder with Windows 8 when they tried to force a UI clearly designed for mobile devices with touch display onto PC users using a mouse and keyboard.
What's crazy is that I've had every single interation of Windows phone. From 7 to 10. To this day, my Nokia Lumia 1020 is still one of my favorite phones.
Windows phones was hands down awesome devices. I had several Lumia phones, and they still are functional. Just no updates, and with the failure of the Microsoft Eco system, well apps are no longer that available. Still I use my old phones at home, and have a couple Android phones as my primary devices. Love this breakdown though of that time which now seems like ages ago. You probably should do one on Nokia Symbian phones too, as my symbians still run just the same. I just need to charge them up.
Dropped my old Nokia 920 while motorcycling through Geiranger (Norway) and filming. Cracked the display so I repaired. Still works in December 2022 for home use, original battery and all, and also the 1020 with the better camera still holds its battery charge quite well. Sadly most of the apps could not be upgraded and thus don`t work. Still love them and use them at home... and hate that new clumsy Samsung Android work phone with its clumsy OS.
The biggest disappointment for me and many others was that 'Continuum' dream disappearing of plugging your phone into your dock, and having your phone apps become desktop apps. Phones have so much raw horsepower that they could do this easily now.
That's still a dream. I'd love to carry a single device instead of both a Laptop and a Phone. Great as Samsung Dex might be, it still can't replace my work laptop for productivity.
@@owenmcdonald8342 Microsoft and Samsung made some sort of partnership to develop Microsoft apps for Samsung devices. They are making specialized Microsoft apps for Samsung devices. Tbh I got the Samsung tab S7. It has Dex with it. Awesome experience to be honest. With the fold and S series devices you get that portability. Microsoft is coming back to phones with the help of samsung. But not a full fledged OS. Let's hope they get play Store on windows 11, just like Amazon app store. And a few years down the lane they sneakily develop a windows 11 that can run on both phone and PCs. But the tiles and the fluid motion of the windows Phone was the one thing that was making it stand out. Windows 11 did bye bye to that exact thing from windows 8/10. So I wonder if it would even stand out apart from iOS and Android.
I know this is probably the wrong venue to say this kind of thing, but I'm holding out hope that we see this in a few generations of the iPhone. They've laid a lot of groundwork, with the M1/M2 (same architecture now on mobile and desktop), and SideCar pulls off a pretty decent wireless desktop. We're not far off from having all the technology in place already. I've been wanting this since that old Motorola convertible phone with the laptop dock, but realized that we weren't quite there yet in terms of performance. I think we may be pretty close now.
I had two Windows Phone devices and used them for near on three years. I absolutely loved the UI, the ease of use and really just the 'personality' of the system. I understand why the ecosystem failed but I'm still sad to see it gone. Maybe I'll install a Windows Phone-like launcher in my android phone - but I'm aware that this will be just a 'fake' of that happy memory.
I had a Nokia Windows phone 10 years ago. It was cheap and I used that phone mainly for work (lots of site based stuff), so it helped that it was built like a tank. Cloud storage was also really useful.
The Lumia 830 was the best phone I've ever had, hands down. Great optimization, ergonomic apps, excellent build quality and that was all on a mid ranger
I was at college, studying computer science, when it was first released and microsoft send an expert to introduce microsoft phone to us. they gave free lessons for microsoft phone programming. they gave away free microsoft accounts where you can use (almost) every product of microsoft for free. I went to that classes and I was thinking microsoft phone is really going to be huge, because the os itself was really good. it was optimized well, easy to code, privacy enhanced and developing was way faster than android. Also I was seeing people are interested, I had no doubt it will succeed. It is a shame it didnt work out for microsoft and nokia. I think maybe if they didnt shutdown the program, it would be more successful today.
When I've first received my Nokia Lumia 800, I was blown away. A perfect unibody design with a beautiful integrated OLED screen. An OS so well designed, almost alive with these dynamic tiles. I loved it. So sad it was lacking some key applications...
I remember being so excited when they announced it. I'm a .net developer so it would have been easy for me to develop for it and I had a few ideas for apps. I started as soon as the development tools were available but I reached a point where I needed to test on a physical phone. That's where they lost me ... I live in Japan and somehow, nokia/Microsoft decided they would not sell devices here so I just gave up.
Same problem here in Brazil. With no expected date of announcement of any device, customers and developers were left without Windows Mobile devices on the market. We waited as long as we could, but we migrated all apps to Android, because iPhone has always been expensive here for small businesses. They announced Windows Phone on Feb 15, 2010 (many customers thought high-end Windows Phone 6.5 devices would get the update, but it didn't), they only launched on Oct 11, 2010 in a few markets. When the first HTC arrived on November 24, 2011, here we already had everything on Android at more affordable prices.
I had a Windows phone, and loved it. Just lacked a lot of major apps. Very underrated OS. Even mobile IE wasn't too bad. The two things that killed it were the lack of apps, and when they tried to bring the mobile experience to the desktop with Windows 8. I still miss my old Lumina sometimes
I got a windows phone for christmas and i hated it. I hated that the menu titles werent capitalised, i hated the randomness of the US, the inability to organise anything, the random fucking squares with no particular sequence. What were they thinking, it had no intuitiveness at all..
Windows phone nailed everything. I had a Lumia 920 in 2012-2013. My camera, battery life, and keyboard was far superior to my friends' iPhones and Androids. Never had to restart it. I had my first screen of tiles perfectly tuned, I could take one glance at my phone and only see the things I wanted. The phone was ultra durable, I didn't even have a case on it and it help up perfectly. It was such a well made product, but the lack of all the good apps apps was the nail in the coffin for me. And in a time where not all web pages were mobile friendly, there was no alternative. As a software developer, I even played around with trying to build a 3rd party version of the apps that didn't exist on it yet, but having a robust API back in 2013 wasn't a priority for most companies. I must say, getting up and running to build apps on a Windows Phone was a far superior experience to the Android and Apple counterparts.
Had the exact same experience with the same phone. I absolutely loved the UI and i honestly still believe if they had just gotten the widely used apps on there they wouldve thrived
Yeah the phones were amazing and a funny story comes to my mind when you mentioned the durability. I was once at a festival that took place in an old factory. They had huge swings installed in one of the spaces as a little fun gimmick. I remember going on one of the swings and going across the vast industrial hall at a quite a fast pace. Suddenly I realized that my phone slipped out of my pocket, I look down and I see my phone sliding across the concrete floor like a hockey puck screen down. I was 100% sure my phone is either broken or severely scratched to the point of being unuseable. I rush to pick up my phone and press the unlock screen button. Not only did it turn on and work without any problem, it also only had a few minor scratches on the display even though I didn't have any screen protection or cover on my phone :)
@Keys for Wealth I had one for a while, I felt they should have started giving them away basically esp to anyone who pretended to be an app developer to improve their eco system. They should have had a huge software/app advantage esp for business and totally blew it, but the azure cloud thing is working out ok at least.
Same! The Nokia Lumia 920 was way ahead of its time. Best camera, best for emails, best SMS, best calendar, best screen viewing in sunlight, can use while wearing thin gloves.
I think something else that might of been overlooked as well. Was windows has always been the highest hacked os in history. Possibly people felt the phones wouldn't hold up to security vulnerabilities.
Actually it's show that misstreathing external developer is the wrong way to go. If you are already in a dominant position you might get away with it, but if you are s new entry it will kill your project. Apple has an established and valuable market share. They are getting sued fof their practices, but dev will still work with them to a point. Example Netflix app on ios. Microsoft has an established market share on pc. Porting their policies from pc to mobile was risky and didn't pay off.
I used to have Nokia Lumia 720 and I loved that phone even if it didn’t have many apps. While my android/iphone friends were searching for their chargers, my Lumia just went all day no problem. Not once has the OS crashed and keyboard and animations were just beautiful 🤩. Really miss it.
I had a Zune HD, which had the interface of Windows mobile, but strictly for music. It was different and the UI was beautiful, yet simple. Some of the coolest features was the slideshow effect of the artist when you played a song from them. Most artists had their own bio, and photos provided by Windows that would hover in the background and change while the song played. It still works to this day and honestly had so much potential. It’s a shame things never worked out in the long run.
I remember back in 2013 going to my network operator with my mom to renew our plan and there was a person with a Windows phone stand promoting the new devices which caught our attention. We saw the Lumia 720 and in addition to the super smooth OS and very decent camera it looked beautiful compared to our iPhone 3Gs which convinced us to buy it. When we got home and started configuring our cool new devices I soon found out that several apps I needed for school were not available for Windows phone and neither were many of my mom's favorite apps so we ended up returning them and getting iPhone 4s. Windows Phone would have been unstoppable if they had the same app support or at least some sort of emulator to run android apps.
Ultimately, I loved my Windows Phone's UI and hardware features, but the lack of apps really killed any interest in me keeping it long term. If they just ported apps from Android or gave devs freedom, I feel they would still be around.
Good video. I worked on the networking stack on those for every release. The one thing I think you're missing is that it was always the intention to buy Nokia and sell it for pieces. They made a bet on that acquisition, predicting that it would fail, and made something close to $40 billion on the sale of the pieces of Nokia. So it was never a financial loss for Microsoft, only a public image loss.
As someone who’s used all 3 platforms, I say this with full conviction- in terms of appearance,look, feel and overall fluidity windows is STILL the best. Absolutely the best,the other two don’t come close. I have such fond memories of the time spent on this beauty of a product
I used a Lumia 730 for six years until 2021. It was beautiful. The live tiles is something I miss. It's keyboard is the best I've ever used. But there're no apps to use. Now I use that phone as a night lamp😁
Completely agree Srikar, this is what happens to a company which has no vision to see where it's product is going. The lack of apps was really sad when i used it but felt atleast Microsoft should have paid a few developers to make Lumia today's blackberry!
I stuck with Windows Phone long as I could, I really enjoyed how they were set up since 7.0. I agree their keyboard setup was fantastic, and even the autocorrect was better on my Windows Phones compared to even the latest Android I'm using now. I miss how those phones were set up in general, but it really sucked especially toward the end when the apps began going away.
The autocorrect on Android is just awful. Especially when you try a bit more technical or IT related stuff. The keyboard was great for my big fingers as well. I'm all up for an revival
I never had a Windows Phone, but I was following them and wanted to get at least a second phone, but they folded too quickly. 3 smartphone choices would have been much better than 2. Apple could have even been forced to add removable storage had Windows Phone been more successful. Running out of storage on iPhones STILL is a problem for some users. ... I don't see how a software company could not have foreseen the problem getting third-party apps on the phone. Did microsoft risk everything on success in the market driving development? It was a recognizable catch-22. MS should have had a Plan B for a lack of apps from the beginning. ... And how about from now? I guess Windows Store is carrying a bunch of mobile-capable apps now. MS Surface Duo was a foray into the mobile device market, but it was not mainstream at all. Dual screens are just a gimmick at this point in their evolution. They're still too expensive and problematical. I wish ColdFusion could have commented on that. ... Couldn't MS make/contract a mid-to-upper tier Surface single-screen Mono with a really good camera now? That's where the market is. As long as it could still connect to an external display, it would have a somewhat small but guaranteed market. And there are enough Windows users who'd go from android to Windows now if the apps and cloud sync for user data was there (migrating from old phone ecosystem) to make it at least moderately successful. And then the catch-22 is done.
I concur with the app store as the Windows Phone's achilles heel. I remember back in 2013-ish when I had a Lumia 610 and I was envious of my friends playing Respawnables and Flappy Bird on their iPhones and Galaxies lol.
I agree the keyboard and auto-correct were amazing. Friends and family were really impressed about my speed when they were seeing me typing on my Windows Phone. Now they're just sitting in my drawer, maybe one day I'll turn them on just to have this sense of nostalgia 😢
Google killed the Windows phone, not Microsoft. They notoriously refused to develop their must-have apps for the platform, fearful of a 3rd smart phone operating system competitor. Many other notable companies also never developed for the Windows phone. As a young tech enthusiast in middle/ high school I didn't fully realize this, so I really wanted a Windows phone at the time given how much the OS stood out from the crowd. To this day, it still looks beautiful. The design was incredibly ahead of its time. An absolute shame they aren't around today as more competition in the space would have been appreciated.
I worked (and was fired at Microsoft) in the early 2000's and I had an opportunity to work with Windows CE. When I said this isn't going to work in the real world they looked at me like I was nuts. I heard all the blah blah blah but I was the odd man out in the M$ cult. It was an interesting experience. I had the mis-fortune to work with CE 6.0 and it was still crap, always seemed to be years behind. I remember hearing a M$ Exec saying all our focus groups want a resistive screens where Apple did capacitive screens. We all know what happened. In the end the M$ operating systems failed at the driver level - they were sloppy and drivers have to rock solid. Many of the critical Windows drivers were supplied by 3rd party vendors or were bought, internally very few at M$ understood drivers and stayed at the Win32 event layer. Android came about because of the failure of Windows CE, Google was surprised how many vendors wanted Android, that is how bad CE was. If you go against the M$ cult you are simple pushed out that is why they can't innovate anymore.
@cantin8697 It wasn't that bad. Eventually fans started creating apps for the OS. I remember I had a Lumia back in 2015, basically shortly before WP shut down. The most relevant apps were there, including UA-cam, made by fans. Most people I've talked to back in my WP days weren't put off by the lack of apps, but by the general look of the phone's interface.
When someone says "Google killed Windows Phone" you know that person never had used Windows Phone. Every Windows Phone user used MetroTube or at least the browser. The WP Browser is actually very good with background music player, you can argue that Windows Phone had better UA-cam experience than Android users.
Having used both Android and iOS over the past dozen years, I do wish Windows Phone had thrived; it’d be fascinating to see what the mobile world would be like today as a three-player market.
I wrote apps for Windows Phone at Microsoft HQ. Frankly, Microsoft just never threw quite the resources at it that it needed. Given the clear app gap, instead of relying on third party devs to write apps, they should have put their cut to 0%, and wrote as many apps as possible in house until third party devs caught on. After all, they are the biggest software company in the world. But the thing that really killed WP is that Google refused to let Microsoft run their apps, whilst it did let Apple. It was a anti-competitive as hell and regulators are only now finally look at this. It's the sort of thing that, had Microsoft done it, it would have immediately been up on anti-trust charges.
Apple was tiny compared to Microsoft when the iPhone was first introduced and Google is within their rights to choose which platforms to support. I’m not sure why you think _not_ sharing technology with a behemoth like Microsoft makes you anticompetitive but you sound really confused on the matter.
@@CAHSR2020 "Google is within their rights to choose which platforms to support" Not if it's exclusionary and designed to be anti-competitive. The whole point was to prevent Microsoft from competing in that market, and it was highly successful. Lack of those critical apps was a crucial reason consumers did not buy Windows Phones. "I’m not sure why you think not sharing technology with a behemoth like Microsoft makes you anticompetitive but you sound really confused on the matter." And you're being intentionally obtuse.
@@Christobanistan Google had the right to deny Microsoft access to their software. If you disagreed you should have asked Microsoft’s council why they did not sue to force Google to support your phone and maybe they could have explained it to you.
I had a 920, a 930 and a 950XL and I absolutely loved them. My fave thing with the 950XL was you could swap batteries out just like you used to be able to do before Apple came along. I busted my phone once and bought another, so always had a spare battery in my pocket in case I started running low on power. It's just a shame the apps were not as well supported as other OS as it was great that my PC, Phone and Tablet were all running Windows as they linked up so well.
I was a member of the iPhone 1.0 team. While I can’t speak for everyone, I agree with many of the points expressed in this video. Windows Phone was, at the time, by far the most well designed and crafted competition - and helped push the industry forward. I say this despite having little positive to say about most Microsoft products prior to that time (and precious few since, too). This was the product of a very special team, even though I never met any of them.
A Win 10 phone was the best phone I ever had. Android is a ducks breakfast of an operating system in comparison. I loath Apple phones and cannot believe that we are stuck with two crappy OS'S and let the Win phone die.
@@rodpettet2819 I found Apple software quality to be a thing of the past, too, when I bought an iPad. That said, the hardware turned out to be as rugged as it gets.
„Consumers didn’t see the value in the WP package“… well, we did! It was the best OS so far for mobile devices in my opinion and I loved using it back in 2015. However, without apps - and they were becoming more scarce over time - your hands are tied. And that’s a tragedy I will never understand. How is it possible, that one of the biggest enterprises in the entire world just couldn’t motivate at least the more important developers to create apps for this platform? I mean, come one, there wasn’t even a Snapchat app
there was a 3rd party snapchat app that was better than the official app, but eventually snapchat decided to ban the accounts of everyone using it and block the api's.
Watching this video made me very sad - windows phone remains very under-rated. As pointed out in the video, the killer blow was the lack of apps, which limited the user base. My Lumia 940 remains THE best phone I have ever had (started out on iPhones, switched to Windows, and a number of iterations on Android since ... none of them have come close to the Lumia). The UI was stunningly good and the keyboard sublime (not sure why the MS keyboards on iOS and Android haven't used the same technology). Ahh well at least I have fond memories :)
BTW, the Windows Mobile OS actually still exists and is actively developed. It runs on Windows tablets, which are strong in the business market. If regulators ever force Google to allow Microsoft access to their services, Microsoft could make a phone again in no time.
@@joythwrld I don't recall. It was a long time ago. But they were even checking user agent strings and blocking our devices. Third party devs tried making knock offs using unpublished APIs directly for use by Google's apps. Google would inform Apple of API changes ahead of release, but wouldn't let ayone else know. Our app devs were then forced to frequently adjust, leaving apps dead or barely working for sometimes a week at a time while they worked out the changes, which were usually designed to thwart third party devs.
@Cam D Windows does not deserve to die. Over the entire course of Windows, it has been a great operating system. I've been using it in some capacity since "Windows 3.11 Windows for Workgroups" and it has been great for productivity, gaming, software development, mobile (I miss my Dell Axim), etc. It's been great for businesses as well. And now you can run Android apps native on Windows, which opens up a lot of possibilities. Maybe you don't like Microsoft for whatever reason, or you don't like Windows or Windows Phone for whatever reason. That's cool. Gates isn't exactly a saint, so I get it. But Windows doesn't deserve to die. And yes, I have used Macs. My first ever machine was a Mac.
Definitely, the only one that came close, for me, was the one on BB10, but that is dead in the water too. Really do hate how BB10 and WP were definitely the best phone OSs out therd but no one wanted to make apps for them.
I remember seeing specs for this device boasting 32mp cameras at that time. Imagine having windows phone and windows pc. That should have been an amazing ecosystem.
MS shot themselves in the foot there. You could connect an android phone seamlessly to your windows PC and use it however u wanted but you couldn't do the same with their own windows Phone connected to a windows pc. You needed another external app which was clunky and horrid and have you all the freedom that Apple gave.
My friend in school had bought a Windows Phone as he wanted to "try" something new. Within a month dude was depressed as hell as we all were playing games like subway surfers and Clash of clans on our iPhones and Androids while all he could do was watch UA-cam videos on his 'oled' screen lol. Ngl felt bad for him though.
I had an amazing game on my windows phone called chaos rings. It was made on the final fantasy 7 engine and was a turn based rpg that had an amazing story.
The fact Microsoft thought the solution was to make a slick interface and then solve the app shortage by throwing clunky Android apps on there, speaks for their lack of vision. They needed to go all in on the app development tools. Software development is supposed to be Microsoft's bread and butter, what the hell were they thinking. This is why companies need people with long term vision and not executives in boardrooms making short term decisions.
I liked my Windows phone...but yes...the lack of apps killed it. I went from Blackberry Storm to Iphone 4 to Windows phone....to Samsung Note. I've been with Samsung Note ever since.
Yes Windows Phone was ahead of its time. Dark mode, people social media hub, live tiles, the first material You like implementation... You can get a Windows launcher in Android but let's face it if Windows Phones had survived cell phones right now would be 5 years into the future.
Man, I loved Windows Phone so much! I held on as long as I could before switching to Android. Intuitive yet simple software, and let's not forget the BEST CAMERAS on a phone at the time. The live tiles and multitasking were ahead of its time as well. Sadly, it came down to the lack of apps. This video made me miss my Lumias 😢 Just like legacy Nokias, they were also built like a tank. And the hardware stood out from the crowd too
lack of app? Back in November 2014, the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store combined had over 500,000 apps. did you ever try install 50000000 applications on that small screen? how many do you use daily?
@@userwest626 you're sounding worse than a Windows Phone fanboy back in the day. Or even worse, a Blackberry fanboy. That's coming from someone who used and loved both platforms. Don't kid yourself with silly arguments like that. Windows Phone has massive app gaps. An official UA-cam app never came. Instagram took forever. I don't believe there was one for Vine (if it did, it took forever). No Tinder. No Snapchat. No Pinterest. I remember banking apps were severely lacking. And in certain situations where WP did have the official apps, they lagged behind in functionality from Android or iOS. Personally, I wasn't affected much by the app gap, but I won't deny there wasn't one
@@ajst22 absolutely. i had a 640 xl and later the 950 xl. kept it till almost 1 year after the end of an era. even when whatsapp canceled the support for it. i miss it still. microsoft just royally failed years ago. they had the best mobile os there was. but they never understood the importance of app support. they made it inherently hard to develop. so they got stuck in this devils cicle of noone wants to use it cause there are no apps and noone wants to make apps cause noone uses it. and especially the young generation hops from one trend to another. facebook, twitter, insta, etc. if you can't install the latest shit everyone uses right now you are done. and i mean. they had already next to no market share and then they fuckin release the 950 and 950 xl in a very beta state of windows 10 mobile so absolutely every tech review channel and magazine just destroys the product for the buggy mess it was. and the sad part is that a few month down the line the phone was awesome. just that it was far too late and noone gave a fuck about it anymore. and even worse is that in december 2021 i bought a note 20 ultra and the friggin android works just way better with windows 10 and the phone companion app than the friggin windows phone ever did even when it was supported. it felt like they gave up before it even launched.
There’s a couple missed things in this video: WP version updates 8 AND 10 changed some fundamental underlying stuff in a way that the previous versions of WP could not update to. Had to buy a whole new phone to get WP 8. And again for WP10. Killed a lot of enthusiasm for the platform in the tech forums I frequented. Microsoft should have licensed it for free too. They are receiving a cut off every Android sold at the time, and WP with its licensing fees could stand up to a free Android.
It would be interesting to see a video on the Nokia N9. The development of that started before Elop became boss, so he couldn’t kill it off right away. But he was able to put a stop to further development after the initial release. So this device was released into a limited number of markets, got rave reviews, and then after it was sold out you couldn’t buy any more. Instead, Nokia bet itself on Windows Phone, and lost.
I remember these. Great phones. I got my mum one becuaue it was so easy to use and easy to read compared to the others. But when it came to apps, there was nothing. I really wish developers would have given this phone a chance. It would have been a great alternative to just Android and iOS.
I loved this phone and I still believe that it was ahead of his time and yes for a normal consumer Apps were the biggest problem. Rest in peace , from the owner of all flagship windows phone until 2015
Lots of factual errors. - Elop was elected AFTER THE APPROVAL OF Nokia's board of directors to adopt Windows Phone. He was part of the plan, not the plan maker. - The interface was ok, but 90% of the functions needed were missing. Even third-party car navigation could not run in the background. - Microsoft has always been several seasons behind in adapting the system to new processors. - microsoft lies about upgrading older models to the new version of the system.
Apple has always been late in adding requested features in their phones IMO what didn’t work for them in computers worked for them in mobile devices I.e posh brand and Microsoft on the other side just failed to build a community.
They really dropped the ball. I was definitely about to get one cause my sister got one and it impressed me how clean it all ran. Up till I figured out there were no apps for it. Most that had one had to use their iPods for apps.
As a student, turning my phone into a functional PC would be an amazing feature as it would mean the ability to travel light, and with micro sd card having high capacity it would be possible to have enough storage on them too this is a sad loss to the phone industry
I'm a windows user and as the windows phone does not exist this is not entirely possible, you are suggesting to use workarounds, albeit they may work, they will have major limitations that turning a phone into a full-blown PC functionality would not have.
I had small netbook with intel atom processor. It was good enough. I had extended battery for it so it could last me 1 day of use. I could even code with it on the go walking from home to work.
@my burner google account yea but overall its preety stable they features that i want are there like secure folder one handed operation plus and dex but i see where your coming from
When I was transitioning from Symbian to a newer technology, I remember having the dilemma of choosing between a Windows Phone and an Android (I would have considered iPhone but it was simply too expensive for me at the time, so it's not an option). My initial choice had actually been a Windows Phone as I remember liking its interface very much. I eventually did not push for the idea and instead opted for an Android device sometime later because it made more economical sense to me during that time. I've had plenty of Android devices since. Yet, even from one upgrade to the next, there is still that lingering curiosity as to what would the Windows Phone become if it survived the market to this day.
I had the Lumia 800 and then the 1020, loved so many of the features and the experience of the UI, but that app gap caught up and when I finally moved to iPhone in 2014 I didn’t look back.
Dude, you hit the nail on the head. I loved my Windows phone back in the day, until I switched to Android and saw how many more and useful apps there were. The lack of android app compatibility is what killed an otherwise neat phone.
I strongly believe Windows phones would have been second, if not THE best phone today had it not been for the people running Microsoft at the time when the iPhone was launched that were so cocky in thinking that the competition would never catch up. With great email, office apps, great Nokia cameras and a VERY smooth operating system for its time there’s no doubt they would still be in the game. But showing up late to a race that was almost over completely destroyed them. Microsoft shot themselves in the foot in the mobile phone department and its sad considering how great their phones were.
Microsoft should have beaten Android for Windows phone to survive. There is not enough room for 3 major player. Having to develop every app for 2 OSs is already a pain, let alone 3. But they come too late to the game for this to happen
The interaction between some of the social apps and the phone were next to none, the experience was so smooth and so pleasant, there was nothing that could compare to it. Unfortunately locking the OS, like apple, killed the vision.
I still have it at work. I use it to take pictures for documentation. I was a Nokia fanboy since I was a teenager. Unfortunately the app gap eventually made me switch to apple.
Couple of friends had these. I always found that quite good: nice designs, long battery, easy to use. I assume this APP issues was the problem then. The phones simply faded away and nobody spoke about them since.
Writing apps for Windows Phone was so quick an easy... I remember learning C#, Silverlight and the SDK and making my first app in just one weekend. A breeze compared to android and ios. Ironically, I had to learn this as a preparation for a job interview (what was going to be my first job in the UK). I got the job, and I accepted it. The day I went to sign the contract (in Bristol), they told me that they could not offer me the job in the end because the client they were going to write an app for had cancelled the port for Windows phone - they were eventually only interested in iOS and android.
@@ChristopherGray00 that was 11 years ago and I can't quite remember now. But I remember they solved the app going to background with something super simple they called "tombstone state". I remember comparing that with the activity lifecycle nightmare in android and thinking it was super simple. I also remember that lists of items were made by a very straight forward binding of the c# code to the view XML, also much simpler than android
Finally a video that I can show to people whenever I talk about windows phone OS. I still miss the keyboard, live tiles, parallax animations and the bold look of windows phone OS. It was fun to use the OS not just a utility.
i never had a windows phone but i remember just a few of my friends had it when i wast in university. I never liked the square app icons on windows phone which was the same design of windows 8 desktop os. the square app icons was a huge push away for me. both iPhone and android have more compact app icons and the screen is more neat when it comes to organizing apps and seeing them all in one place. even microsoft themselves didn't like the windows 8 style big app icons, they slowly changed them
Lumia was the best phone I've ever used everything about it was perfect. I didnt know about app support issues as I was young and had no interest in social media and stuff but the design and interfrance was far superior to androids or iphone. Wish they kept making it I would switch to it without a second thought.
Yep, I would go back to a Windows Phone without a thought. It's really hard to describe to people how slick it was to use. Android and iOS are so mediocre but there's no other options, people don't know how good it can be. I had a friend that gave me crap for ages because I had one. At some stage he got given one as a work phone and after a few months with it he messaged me out of the blue to say "ok, you win. I love this thing."
Three things that put me off: Ongoing frustration with Windows. I found the live tiles and animation to be really distracting and confusing. The interface was not information-dense, everything took up much more room than necessary and required excessive scrolling.
As I see with a lot of comments, I LOVED the windows phone. They should have done what win11 is doing now, and enable android apps natively. That would have fixed all their app issues. The OS itself was amazing.
To put it simply....they were too arrogant and thought they could dictate the rules for everyone...developers and users. Turns out...it was the other way around. It was the people that decided it's fate.
@@danielhandika8767 google are not the bad guys in this, especially when you notice the sales MS made by tying in all their pc partners to Word and the ecosystem. when you have a strategic advantage, you don't just concede that. MS didn't anticipate the need for an ecosystem with a large user base, because they had tried hard and succeeded in the gaming platform business, which possibly made a lot of people forget the mistakes of the zune
@@danielhandika8767 android is open source. They did not need googles permission to do anything. If they wanted to support android apps, they could have. But they did not
I had a Windows phone from work and man one thing they did right was the predictive text, still the best I have ever used even to this day. You could just about write an entire quantum mechanics thesis with your thumb while juggling your coffee. It was so insanely good, sometimes almost supernatural, in how well it chose words.
When I was getting my first phone, I was really confused between an Android and Windows. Since, apple was too expensive. The lack of apps was the real reason I denied and brought a Xperia neo. I was amazed that how many apps and games were for androids, but only handful for windows. Some friends who even brought a windows phone, really regretted.
Thanks for sharing this. I used WP from 7 to 10 and if they ever bring WP back with Android app compatibility I will be the first in line (actually somewhat likely considering Android apps run on Win11 now). I've tried the iPhone keyboard and nearly every Android keyboard and they just don't compare, not even SwiftKey. Additionally Android and iOS design doesn't make sense with the huge phone screens where all the menus are still at the top and hard to reach and for years I used an Android launcher that emulates live tiles because I missed them so much. WP even had the Facebook profile image sync with your contacts built in which is surprisingly hard to do these days. Lastly everything was just so much more responsive on WP. Please bring it back MSFT!
I still don't get why no other keyboard software implement the Thinkpad-style nipple cursor on their on-screen keyboard. Much better than Google's swiping spacebar one.
Thanks for this episode., I learned some new things! Also, some feedback from me as a dev. First off, Windows CE is NOT based upon Windows 3 code. It has the Win32 API, but that's purely an interface - its kernel was written from scratch with realtime in mind (which likely helped Windows phone later). I actually received a Nokia phone for development as a loaner, and was very keen to develop also for WIndows phone as I do for iOS (I didn't like Android's shuffled-together API). The issue was that I waited for Windows phone to gain traction - which it ultimately never did. I was freelancing for a larger social app a little later, and Microsoft contacted them to ask to develop their app for Windows phone - they asked in turn to be installed by default on the devices (which was a bold move, and probably too much to ask, they were not Twitter), but that was declined. I think, if MS did it just a year earlier, maybe two they could've succeeded.
I had a windows phone when I was a kid and that shit sucked lol, everyone in my school used Snapchat and my windows phone couldn’t download it so I hated life lol
Damn, for highschool that's tragic! You just have to sit by and be out of the loop from everyone else. 🥲
epic fail
My friend actually got caught up in a lawsuit with Rudy Huyn & 6snap when they tried to port snapchat to windows phone using the apk. People tried to make apps for wp, but more often than not it would result in permanent bans & lawsuits for developers. Gotta love corporate lawyers.
Late years of Windows Phone was brutal. Respect. LOL
@@zephyr139 Agreed! It was my first smartphone (a Nokia). The GUI was so amazing! I loved my Windows Phone. But slowly, then very quickly, the app ecosystem just collapsed. The last straw was when I couldn't download a Bank of America app for it. Too bad. I miss the live tiles and smooth as butter interface.
I owned a Nokia Lumia. Even today, it was the most fluid mobile experience I've had. The lack of apps is really what killed it.
Same, i had a nokia lumia when i was 15-16 and i hated miasing out on all the apps my firends had
@@lucignolo8333 I was accessing both Insta and Facebook via the browser back then 😅
true. I had nokia Lumia and I really enjoyed it as a phone, but for work i needed certain applications so had to switch to iphone.
It is really a shame as it had so much potential. The design of the phone is unique, I remember it running very smooth almost never encounter any crash and the phone price is affordable back then
The design of the lumia is beautiful and WP keyboard is still leaps and bounds better than Android or iOS. The team put tons of R&D into making the keyboard and it's insanely accurate and responsive.
The biggest tragedy here is that Microsoft not only failed themselves, but also took down Nokia with them.
Nokia was already failing massively. They didn't think touchscreens were useful and the way to go. Their phones were clunky, focussed on having a gazillion features but not making them easy to access or use. They had buggy firmware too. We had some Nokia phones at work which would randomly go into speakerphone mode when you answered a call, blasting your phone call across the office.
I think they would have gone the way of RIM anyway
Nokia was already a fossil in the smartphone world when this happened.
nokia was already dead when Microsoft bought them.
Windows phone was a last effort to get them back to relevance.
After they basically killed Skype, it was strange to expect much of them
As a former Nokia Lumia user the system was pretty good. But there was NOTHING on the app store compared to the other systems. That is what convinced me to switch to an Android phone.
it was app problem
Blackberry was the same. I always had a Blackberry but back then it was email and messaging and a little "mobile" internet browsing which was honestly shit. Then phone power and screen size blew up FAST and true computer like internet browsing and apps become essential. Blackberry and Windows failed in these areas and people walked away.
@@loyal4theway159 I've actually looked into app development in windows phone and it was fucking horrible.
Side loading required a dev account and there were other hurdles I can't remember. They needed to be the best operating system for developers but instead they went for being another apple.
Tells you a lot about the desktop business.. they were always against innovation and tried to lock everything down. Bill gates was famously litigious. This time it bit them in the ass and I was glad about it.
Otherwise I agree the UI was dope but the direction was shit. Going for an open platform with a focus on developing markets would've been perfect. As this video shows this isn't just hindsight.. Nokia thought so as well.
@@geoffmooregm Remember getting a playbook some years ago and its virtually useless even more so today where as even the old iPad models you can still technically use them for a few odds and ends.
Wasn't the android system essentially based on the windows phone system format? Prior to that we still had those small flip phones that had only rudimentary cameras,no video capability and no mp3 capability and if not for those later features the cellphone fad (or palmtop as I call it ) would have died out altogether as the older adults can't even turn a cellphone on to save their lives and the kids (at whom the phone's are primarily marketed toward to this day) don't use them to make actual phone calls but instead simply use c ellphones as a palmtop computer for the sole purpose of accessing their social media which also probably wouldn't exisr today if social media access was entirely dependent on using a desktop or laptop computer.
One of the reasons not mentioned is that MS kept rebuilding the OS from scratch and making past versions incompatible. As a developer you would have to rewrite your app multiple times to support the newest OS. For the market share it just wasn't worth it.
Another huge issue was the license fees to 3rd party hardware makers. Google was giving Android away for free. MS thought their existing Windows licensing model would be a good fit. Which immediately ruled out low margin phones.
Yeah. The MS licensing policy where main reason why the EOM phone makers and also app-programmers, did not wanted to cooperate. In the end, MS dropped the licence fees, but it was too late...
This. I had a Lumia 800 and thought it was a fantastic phone. Then Windows 8 came out, and made my windows 7 phone practically useless, with no new apps being ported and older ones not getting the updates. Seeing as I only had that phone for a few months it left a bitter taste in my mouth, and moved to iPhone.
ua-cam.com/video/inUPE8Jx3x4/v-deo.html
Finally it's here YES
@@sloppynyuszi And though a solid phone that's simple to use, it doesn't do half of what an android can do, and the things it CAN do, it does at half the speed and twice the commands as an android.
@@sloppynyuszi Yeah it was pretty frustrating. I had a Dell Venue Pro running WP7 and it is still one of my favorite phones ever but it was also rendered mostly useless after WP8 was released. Not having Google apps like gmail and Google maps was also a problem for me but it wasn't in Google's best interest to develop them. I still love the Windows Phone interface though.
Windows could have a monopoly on the mobile OS if they copied Google's model of free personal document tools. Having basic versions of Microsoft Office available across all platforms with some free cloud storage would be very nice for consumers. It would familiarise them with the software so that commercial businesses would only want to use Microsoft products, which they pretty much to have a monopoly on anyway.
I don't know many people who use office suites on their phones though
I have a stripped down version of MS Office on my Android phone. It's a bit clunky but lets me open stuff when I'm away from my desk. I wouldn't create documents on my phone but it would be handy to make opening and minor editing seamless.
They did
@@SomeRandomPiggo maybe using a dock to connect to an external monitor, and they also had the capability to go for full convergence so you can use both phone and desktop features simultaneously
Remember Free is not Free
Still miss my HTC 8x, it was so nice to use and honestly the design stands up today. The lack of apps and the stupid *Bing button* absolutely ruined it... 😭 Awesome deep dive.
Man, the 8X was one of my favorite phones. It felt great in the hand and absolutely zoomed. Also, mine was a very pleasant shade of blue/purple. It’s a shame it couldnt have lasted into 2022.
I loved my Lumia 950, I have 2 in pristine condition in my museum drawer alongside a few other M$ dead ends (Band 1 & 2 anyone). My surface Studio 2 will be joining them too one day. M$ really know how to f*ck up a product line, actually I am surprised their Surface line is still going considering the Apple competition.
My HTC Mozart still works!!
I remember the sleep/wake button on the top. I don't miss that.
Samsung have that usless bing bixby button to lol
I had several Windows Phones and I loved them. The only problem I had with the OS was the lack of apps. Its customisability was top-tier but yeah, lack of official apps and support from Microsoft themselves is what fucked everything up.
Funny thing:
My husband: My wife would like to get a Windows Phone.
The salesman: ...why?
right
My mother's first smartphone was a Lumia 532. I bought it for her on her birthday. She loved the phone and it was much more usable than the entry-level android phones that had a 3.5 inch screen, no front camera and were very slow. It was the best phone I could buy with my budget of a broke teenager and the lack of apps didn't really matter to her, as she only used it to browse the internet, use messaging and social networks.
I said it and I will say it forever, Windows Phone was very fluid and optimized, it ran like a charm, even on entry-level phones.
I remember getting the Lumia 640 and feeling like I was in a sci-fi movie. The phone was ridiculously smooth, the camera was alright for the time, the screen was gorgeous, and the ui was unparalleled. I honestly wish they would bring this back with proper app support.
Exaclty, L640 XL was for me, L800 from the beginning ❤
I had the same phone loved it.
Everything was near perfect. If only it had more apps
@@roteschwert Google not only refused to make apps for windows mobile but actively sued app developers who brought google services on windows.
I too bought lumia 640... however i returned it because of poor app support ☹️☹️☹️
As someone who worked on Windows Phone literally to its dying breath, this both pains me, but also instills a bit of pride that people still love it.
You guys did a wonderful job.
A shame that the innovation wasn't supported by the ecosystem it needed and deserved.
Still today such a great phone, wish Microsoft would release a Loader that has full Windows Mobile just updated. Even if I had to pay for it... I would be all over it. Android is modular and this could be done...
@Reality well I did, I was a big fan of Nokia Lumias, because with a little bit of money I get a great experience like no one else can give me, iPhones always are expensive and Android’s of the time sucks, Rest In Peace WP
Hail the King, IOS.
@Reality were you even born back then?
I am curious how it feels to work on a dev team on a dying project, knowing that the competition is slowly winning the game... When did you guys realize that this project is done?
Windows phone had a great UI. The problem was OEM's didn't want to put it on their devices because Microsoft was asking for a licensing fee (about 40 bucks per device). Android on the other hand was free, with Google realising they would make their money on services and advertising. That was the original sin for Windows phone. Lack of sales meant developers didn't build apps.
I didn't realise they charged a licensing fee for it, its taken a while but with linux gaining popularity maybe we will see this happen on desktop too. As it is I find very little these days tying me to windows especially if they are going to charge a license fee to collect marketing telemetry.
@@gamedeathmatch come on Microsoft giving away their os for free or at measly rate? Lmao, when hell freezes over.
@@gamedeathmatch windows is already free on smaller screen sizes. 10.7inches or something like that
@@vincentohanlon Yes. Now. Now that even in MS they understand that people either will go for free or for a subscription model or simply pirate the shit out of everything. When you have basic office for free (Google docs) and when everyone and their dog are building their own viable alternative to Windows, with people being more and more fluent in Mac where beneath the GUI it's just a Un*x-OS, now of course they give stuff for free. If they don't they will lose their own part of the pie.
Sure, MS dominated the pre-massive-access-to-internet era because back then they had the most variety of supported hardware and some killer apps. But ever since Google went massive in search + applications and people were ok with that, and when the server/cloud space was already dominated by Amazon what could MS do? What was the best alternative? Of course they would offer everything and the kitchen sink for free, as long as they could keep their Enterprise contracts and have everyone adopt the MS ecosystem - and Satya actually pulled the rabbit out of the hat with his ideas and initiatives.
Now everyone uses Teams for remote work and they even opted for personal Teams, they bought all the open source and they sell services and telemetry data. Sure, Google knows what you look for, Facebook knows who you are (or pretend to be), at least Microsoft knows everything about your work life and if you are in IT, your work too.
@@gamedeathmatch where I live there's an easy way to get a license to make Windows 10 run legit.
The app gap was real. There would always be that one app that you'd miss out on. I loved my windows phone but unfortunately I eventually gave up before the release of Windows Mobile 10. I'm happy that I did because based on all accounts Microsoft had also given up at that point.
The app gap disappeared for a while, it was great, but because the damage to its user base had been done. Developers quickly started withdrawing support for apps.
No more online banking, no ebay, no amazon... that was the point that my next phone wasn't going to be Windows.
Microsoft tried everything to get the top apps. We offer to pay, to make them ourselves, etc but most app owners just weren't interested for various reasons. Eventually just ran out of time.
Agreed. I didn’t think the OS was bad, but I had a handful of friends with them and they were usually grumbling about some app they couldn’t get.
I remember one of my friends having Nokia Lumia back when I had an android yeaaars ago, it was so insanely smooth, loved it a lot, mom got a nokia lumia afterwards too, it was a good experience if you didn't care much about apps/games, really wish it survived.
My friend had one too. Honestly it was smooth for sure, but the app support was a HUGE problem.
I've been using my old Lumia as an iPod, the UI was too damn nice for me to give up on. IMO it still stands up to phones from this year. Also, the headphone jack is on the top, as God intended!
I had Nokia Lumia 800, I understand what you’re talking about.
It still works smoothly! Even though I haven’t used it since 2014 and haven’t charged it for years.
Sativa Gnutella from Microsoft shut windows phone down 👇
Saaaame! My most favorite phone of all time.
My dad had a Windows Phone a few years ago, and even though it had its downsides, he 100% swore by it. On thing he would do to prove how tough it was, was to basically skip it across the floor without a case like you would with a stone on a lake, full force. Every time the phone would come out unscathed. He really didn't like the fact that he had to switch to an android as far as I know.
Well that's Nokia for ya
Same here, I was like your dad, but it was not few years a go it was like 7 years ago or so. Though Lumia 1020 did not like to be thrown away, since it had huge camera and me being clumsy I eventually broke the camera. AF stopped working, but phone is working even today. I still have it and it was absolutely best phone for user that needs a tool, and not a toy for gaming or wasting time on social networks. It had absolute best out of box driving mode, perfect email app, document viewers, and it was fast. It was so good for me that I am still feeling bad to know that there is a perfect phone for me, but it was killed by people who needs phones for wasting time.
That doesn't say anything about the OS though.. that's just him liking the build quality of a Nokia hahaha
The Lumia 930 was what it was. I could bang on every surface and that aviation-grade aluminum edge was triumphant as it is.
@@thevegastan pretty sure there were an android version of that range out there somewhere, probably India.
I actually found you back in those days when you were dual booting and creating launchers for Android. Good times. You're an awesome content creator, I'm happy to have stuck around all this time 🙂.
I came across during the Coldfustion time. Just went back to noticed it was 7 years ago. I was 15 then lol
Me too.
This just makes me miss my HTC phones
i remember rooting and running custom android roms and bootloaders because the factory setup was pretty garbage. sure it's better now, but they are hell bent on locking you out of your own phone as the end user
good old days
I remember how my grandma used to have a Windows phone. I was supposed to help her figure it out and I was struggling myself with it. Even now the memory of that phone feels like a fever dream lol
The Lumia was my first smartphone. It was honestly one of my favorite smartphones. Ran perfectly, but it didn't have the apps I wanted.
At least you didnt help them try to create another monopoly using one of their existing monopolies.. Oh wait.
I had the lumia 720. I couldn't download even vlc media player
*Steve Ballmer: “IPhone won’t succeed”*
*Almost 15 years later: watching video on an iPhone about how windows phone failed*
🤣🤣
Add the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch to the list of things Ballmer probably laughed at.
The Dinosaur Syndrome.
@@bryanjensen2614 IBM laughed at the PC. "Who needs a computer in their home". Throughout history people laughed at something new. i.e. the car.
This!
I LOVED my Windows phone...I had a couple of them during their run...yeah, it was the lack of apps that finally drove me away, but other than that ..it was my favorite operating system
@King of All ButtocksLOL... wow, you've clearly been waiting months to make a NAMBLA burn...congratulations...and don't forget to register yourself with the local police department
@King of All Buttocks judging by your NAMBLA comment , she would be entirely too old for you...you know, anything over 12
network effet at its finest
I remember playing around with the early Microsoft windows phones during the early 2010s. They were well designed with the potential to become successful. Basically, Windows was too late to enter the smartphone market and unable to attract mobile operating system app designers who predominantly went to Apple and Google Android .
My first smartphone was a Windows phone. Now, I'm no early adopter - this was well past 2010. But I loved it, mostly. Sadly, like other comments here noted, the lack of software hurt. People were saying hey look at this app, and lo and behold it was Android/IOS only. So I can say that as a layperson there was nothing wrong about the phone itself per se... it was just the lack of software that other phones had.
Me too we got our first smartphone as Lumia 520 in 2015.
@@nokz5591 I had an early windows mobile phone. The early windows mobile is was way ahead of their time. I was watching UA-cam, had video game emulators. Thought of picking up a mogul just to use for emulation because the keyboard was so fluid for NES games.
First smart phone Treo 700, my friend
At least a Linux phone would compensate this by privacy.
One of my friends had a Windows Phone in about 2014. He said he loved the phone itself, but all of the apps felt like bootleg versions of the iPhone/Android apps. I feel like Microsoft really could have had something with this, if they had gotten the developers on board.
There is not enough room for 3 major players. Having to develop every app for 2 OSs is already a pain, let alone 3. Microsoft come too late to the game for this to happen, so unless they managed to beat Android and become the only big player other than Apple there was no way they could succeed
If users base increase the app become more super by time
It didn’t have app support, but it was a great phone outside of that
Why didnt Microsoft give incentives to developers to port apps for them?
@@impulsiveurge5837 they did, but it was not enough, it was a vicious cycle, everyone was on IOS and Android, so they had to develop for IOS and Android regardless of the incentives and most didn't bother
Nokia Lumia 1520 was my first Windows phone and my first smartphone.
I still remember the promise the ecosystem it had, and for 3 years it preformed like a champ.
Followed it up with the Microsoft Lumia 950XL, and stuck with it until the OS went EOL.
Switched to Android since then, but I miss the productivity I had with those phones.
My only Windows Phone was the Samsung Omnia 7, one of the first Windows Phones to be launched, that I bought in 2011 and I loved it. But the lack of applications made me switch to Android the following year.
i still have a lumia 920, lumia 1020 and lumia 950xl. unfortunately only the 920 still works (i broke the screen on the other 2) but the 920 is useless these days, not only because it is now 10 years old and dog slow, but because no online features work anymore. lack of apps never bothered me as i dont use facebook or instagram etc anyway, so everything i needed was there (there were even great 3rd party devs that made apps for youtube and such which were superior to the official apps on the other platforms). im happy with my current samsung phone running android which is perfectly fine compared to how android was 10 years ago, but neither ios or android have come close to matching how good windows phone was to use.
At least people are free from Microsoft monopoly.
ua-cam.com/video/inUPE8Jx3x4/v-deo.html
Finally it's here YES
My Nokia 925 went out of service because the apps stoped working.
I have used Android, iOS and Windows smartphones. For me personally, Windows phone OS was the most beautiful, simplest and friendliest operating system. Too shame that Microsoft did a masterpiece like this, although didn't had a good strategy to stay on course.
Very true, I really liked the UI and everything, the only thing that keep me apart from it was the lack of apps sadly
@@mrcoolandroid The lack of apps was not surprising: developing for the windows mobile 8+ was _horrible_. I loved the OS, but microsoft really screwed themselves with the fundamental design of the OS, it was just too damn restraining. For a while I was playing around in the early scene (hackathons, developer events, etc.) as a means to grab some minor income or shinies as a student.
The tools available were lackluster to say the least. Working with UI felt almost like coding a powerpoint presentation. The few basic options you were offered were ok but extremely rigid and hard to combine. The moment you needed something other than the basic *grid of buttons* -> *list of text* UI, you were SOL. For anything else you had to roll your own from _extremely_ low level primitives. To sidestep this insanity you could embed a webpage as your 'app' and nearly everyone did that. But as you likely noticed, such apps were _slow_ and kinda clunky to use.
Direct access to hardware features of the phone was also immensely limited making it hard to implement custom functionality. Due to this, it was almost impossible to support 3rd party accessories (using the phone as a video remote for a drone, smartwatches, additional sensor modules, 'smart' cases, etc.). Heck, even the NFC could not be used to read generic cards and could only do rudimentary BT/Wifi pairing iirc! As such, the OS never supported anything worthwhile.
For a while Microsoft dangled a carrot of hope in the form a soon^tm android emulator, allowing to run android .apk's. It was meant to come with the Win mobile 10 but never did.
Microsoft poured insane resources into promoting the OS to the developers, most as bounties for porting or releasing apps. But it was just too damn hard to port any actually decent app and people could grab the same paycheck with any 15min hodge-podge shovelware. Queue 100+ themed todo list apps!
In the end, the platform was simply too basic and restraining. It did not even offer a way to work around its limitations, let alone allow for feature innovation. Maybe if tech like webasm was more widespread it could have succeeded.
@@MrZhilvinas Very true, Microsoft made the OS very closed so you couldn't access it's hardware features, and yeah it seems that it was hard to develop apps for it sadly, it could have of been a good competitor to Android and iOS
Blackberry actually had the best OS and best virtual keyboard. But just like Microsoft, they had no apps. It was even worse tbh.
they had no chance. Balmer was an idiot. it was all about being first to market. Google got there first, even with an inferior product, getting there first was the key
I rolled out Windows Phone 7 in a previous IT job. People adored it. But as the video implies, two words describe its failure: Steve Ballmer. He completely blew the entire thing with his meddling and dated vision and I'm still annoyed about it. Microsoft is far better with him gone.
Yeah, the failure of Windows Phone is entirely Ballmer's fault, he's an arrogant short-sighted prick that brought the decline of Microsoft during his tenure.
Yep, Ballmer was an arrogant narcissist. He ruined plenty of things during his time as CEO.
Microsoft under Satiya Nadella is much better indeed, but I still miss when Microsoft had the tenacity to hold on to their vision. Both Xbox and Surface were a laughing stock at the beginning, and I can't see Microsoft under Nadella soldiering on with the projects until they made the magic. Who knows, maybe a couple more tries and Windows Phone could be the third major player in the market. After all, it is clear most of the users loved the OS, and it was the just the apps that ultimately lead to its demise. Things could be much different if MS gave enough funding and time to the appstore for it to grow, and time and money are what the company is known to have in abundance.
@@kyouhyung Yeap Microsoft sure could have invested way more into the project.
I feel some of their plan to drag their feet not adding the features obviously lacking and drawing in developer support. I hold particular resentment that they basically orchestrated the killing of the most influential phone manufacturer Nokia. Phones have gotten boring since then. And yea I put some blame on Nadella too.
People at my work hated it. They revolted and demanded to use iPhones or Android.
I personally wish Windows Mobile/Phone were still around, as a consumer choice. Its design started improving with WM10.
But for some reason they pulled the beta update. After a reset only wp8 was abailable
@@nutzeeer what annoyed me most was the app store having basically nothing
I used one for a while, I started with an iPhone 3G in terms of first modern touchscreen phone (i'd had windows mobile before, but I call that old school design) and felt that Android was a rip-off of iOS, so I went to Windows Phone to be different, loved the UI and the people hub. I felt like as the OS progressed some things started to get worse, people hub especially. In the end I found that the OS was not getting better in speed and the handsets weren't as good as rivals. I went Android and have stuck with it ever since.
Launcher 10 for Android with live tiles. Windows phone on Android. You're welcome. 🤯
actually, WP10 was the beginning of the end... 8.1 was the best version of the OS. It lacked some features but was the most stable and had the best performance. My lumia 920 with WP8.1 was by far the best WP experience I had. I hated WP10 on the Lumia 950, it was buggy, unstable and choppy as hell.
I still remember the great OS experience:
1. the colorful interactive live-tiles, giving info about all the apps. that was the best
2. the contact live tiles showing the pictures of all ur contacts and when u open the contact app it gives all my contacts social media notifications.
3. the UI of Zune player is still the best.
4. the Xbox app that has all the game integrations like a real xbox.
5. the messaging app was integrated with facebook and it was soo good.
6. the camera app was soo polished and the photos were really nice.
7. great battery life.
9. at that time Cortana was ahead of google assistant and siri
it was such an amazing OS. i wish they could have survived.
I agree on everything except Cortana and It was not ahead of Siri
Lol. When was cortona ever ahead? There was more hype. But it didn't justify that.
AC it was an awesome and cool phone I had a Lumia once I forgot the model. But it looked like a candy colored theme. Its look was unique compare to the phones at the time, the OS surprisingly buttery smooth af (wish Microsoft could do their PC OS the same) the downside, there where few dev apps that support it. Specially the financial apps like banks that is already blooming during that time.
❤️
@@Shreejansurya98 Cortana was ahead of everyone ...
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bought a used 525 and then my first brand new 640 in 2015 - which I have resurrected and the video will be up soon! Windows Mobile was so smooth and ahead of it's time, I have no freaking idea why a software giant would abandon such a great thing!
I think it is because of Windows asked them to pay some money if the developers wish their apps to be on windows store.
@@suryasusanto89 to this day, windows as the most popular OS for computer's, have failed to build a solid marketplace too. By now they must be very focused on that!
I remember many tech reviewers reviewed Windows Phone back in 2013-2014, and yes, that OS runs very smoothly even with only dual core SoC and 1GB of RAM, and with that level of performance many people were very excited Windows Phone could be on par with Android & iOS someday. But later more and more critics came to WP because of the lack of apps in Windows Store, and after that, the market share for Windows Phone was dropping significantly before Microsoft decided to completely shut down the support of Windows Phone
@@sihamhamda47 I have my first windows phone back in 2012 yes it was smooth
They have failed in marketing strategy
"Consumers had spoken" - For what it's worth, consumers never really had a choice as you just mentioned, the app developers made that choice for them. Everyone I knew who had a windows phone loved it. I am not a fan of Microcrap. But their phone OS was a solid competitor to iOS and Android.
Developers choose the platform with the most users. Why would the develop for a platform very few people use
Exactly. I remember back in the days comparing phones and ultimately dropping Windows as a choice purely due to the app availability. Its honestly what pulled Iphones so far in front, because even Android had a slowish start in the first years in their app store.
@@NgolaNalane Because not everything in life is about money and greed, you should allow people the freedom to choose what platform they want.
@@NgolaNalane it’s a chicken egg situation. Consumers won’t use a OS that doesn’t have apps while developers won’t develop apps for OS without a user base.
@@ChristopherGray00 lol, people are free to choose any platform, no developers put a gun to user's head and force them to move to ios/android.
Windows phone was truly ahead of it's time and still looks good to this day. It'd be nice if they tried again since windows 10/11 now has phone integration with android and Samsung built right in. They now have more of a chance to get an ecosystem going and with Windows 11 able to run APK's, it could make it easier to have apps on Windows phone.
Well they banned this stupid tiles from windows 11 :) But windows 11 on tablets and phones could be interesting, but only in far future when hardware performance is not a problem anymore so it can run desktop os.
But Microsof doesn't care anymore, they earn mony from services from cloud and subscription like office and it's not important is it their windows os or android, ios
Get rid of apk if you love advances
They tried by rebranding Windows Phone to just Windows 10 (implying it's the same OS) but really nothing changed from the upgrade except they broke Cortana, and in PC the mobile influence felt tacked on at best
LOL Dude, Windows 10, 11 are not mobile OS. This is why Windows OS failed so hard and even in 2022 people just don’t get it. If they decide to put Windows 11 on a phone your battery would be death in 4hr. Not even the Surface have good battery and they are wayyy bigger.
@@sys935 Why? You want IPAs instead? Just because you have not found some good apk packages doesn't mean others don't have a folder of apks which they feel are "advances".
I had a Nokia Lumia 620, it was different from what everyone had and I loved it. I switched to Android as WhatsApp dropped its app from windows app store. But Lumia was way ahead of its time.
Never got a Windows phone but remember considering it after playing with one of buddy's Windows phone. It really was smooth, looked awesome and the usability was great. What did it for me, and probably the main reason of its demise, was the lack of apps. Ended up going with Android, instead.
I remember finding out about the Instagram DM function only after switching from Windows Phone to android and reading 50 missed DM's 😄 It wasn't built into the Windows Phone version of the app. It's a shame there was such little support for app development, I loved my Windows Phone, but the lack of options made me switch eventually.
Lol
I love my windows phone, it was all metal and heavy as hell and I love the interface i think Microsoft should’ve just used Google play instead of trying to create and move developers to that one ecosystem. That was all the change they needed to make, to make sure the phone became very popular and useful but they didn’t and I call that bad Management.
Wow
They had the most beautiful and fluent UI at that time. On the other hand, making apps for the platform was tremendously difficult, which you can judge by the fact that it took them 6 months to add an autorotate off switch. Only if Microsoft had better developer support, this could have been a very successful platform.
It took them even longer to add "cut & paste" !
As someone who had a windows phone and developed windows phone app I can confirm. The SDK was built on top of silver light and it absolutely sucked to build on!
@@edwardfletcher7790 they even openly lied to consumers with false promises of updates, got 920 which was slated for windows 10 update, then they blocked it
@@FirstNameLastName-ib3cp Over promise & under deliver, that's the Microsoft way 👍
i always wonder why making apps for Windows Phone so difficult.
Sprint carried only one Windows phone and it had a slide out keyboard. I absolutely loved it. I could text quickly and the phone was so enjoyable to use. It was rock steady and I absolutely loved the sounds of the phone when using it. The sounds were so soothing. I also had an early version of swipe to text on the keyboard which I loved to use.
It was my last phone before I switched to iPhone. If that apps had been there I would still be using a windows phone today.
I had a Windows phone up until the end. I loved it and was rooting for their success. It was sad when it all ended but yes the lack out apps was a huge issue for a lot of people.
I still use a windows phone. Luckily I don't care about apps.
Same here
I'm still using my windows phone but as an alarm clock
@@avim4896 I am using the Lumia 920 as my main phone. It works great.
@@TheTimeProphet It can only function as a basic phone since most of the important apps don't work. So made a switch from my Nokia Lumia 730 to Nokia 5.3
Microsoft, for a very long time, never understood that a mobile device like a phone or tablet can't run a desktop OS. If it couldn't run Windows, then Gates and Ballmer weren't interested. Ironically Microsoft made the exact opposite blunder with Windows 8 when they tried to force a UI clearly designed for mobile devices with touch display onto PC users using a mouse and keyboard.
I agree 100%. Now you have to see the Windows 11 it is same fault. I have upgraded to win 11 but I don't like it.
@@NightOwlWise excuse me, windows 10 is the last windows
@@fetB nope, running windows 11 here
@@DutchlimitsDesign it's a joke LOL
@@fetB do you live under a rock?
What's crazy is that I've had every single interation of Windows phone. From 7 to 10. To this day, my Nokia Lumia 1020 is still one of my favorite phones.
i still love love lumia 1020,still have 4 in different colours
Best phablet ever made. The camera was so good, and live tile were so much better than the messy interface of the other phones.
Windows phones was hands down awesome devices. I had several Lumia phones, and they still are functional. Just no updates, and with the failure of the Microsoft Eco system, well apps are no longer that available. Still I use my old phones at home, and have a couple Android phones as my primary devices. Love this breakdown though of that time which now seems like ages ago. You probably should do one on Nokia Symbian phones too, as my symbians still run just the same. I just need to charge them up.
Dropped my old Nokia 920 while motorcycling through Geiranger (Norway) and filming. Cracked the display so I repaired. Still works in December 2022 for home use, original battery and all, and also the 1020 with the better camera still holds its battery charge quite well. Sadly most of the apps could not be upgraded and thus don`t work. Still love them and use them at home... and hate that new clumsy Samsung Android work phone with its clumsy OS.
The biggest disappointment for me and many others was that 'Continuum' dream disappearing of plugging your phone into your dock, and having your phone apps become desktop apps. Phones have so much raw horsepower that they could do this easily now.
Samsung does this with Dex. I think some Chinese OEMs have a similar feature.
I used continuum with Alcatel Idol 4s wirelessly; it was blazing fast; no need for any dock of any sort. That's the definition of raw power
That's still a dream. I'd love to carry a single device instead of both a Laptop and a Phone. Great as Samsung Dex might be, it still can't replace my work laptop for productivity.
@@owenmcdonald8342 Microsoft and Samsung made some sort of partnership to develop Microsoft apps for Samsung devices. They are making specialized Microsoft apps for Samsung devices.
Tbh I got the Samsung tab S7. It has Dex with it. Awesome experience to be honest.
With the fold and S series devices you get that portability. Microsoft is coming back to phones with the help of samsung. But not a full fledged OS.
Let's hope they get play Store on windows 11, just like Amazon app store.
And a few years down the lane they sneakily develop a windows 11 that can run on both phone and PCs.
But the tiles and the fluid motion of the windows Phone was the one thing that was making it stand out. Windows 11 did bye bye to that exact thing from windows 8/10. So I wonder if it would even stand out apart from iOS and Android.
I know this is probably the wrong venue to say this kind of thing, but I'm holding out hope that we see this in a few generations of the iPhone. They've laid a lot of groundwork, with the M1/M2 (same architecture now on mobile and desktop), and SideCar pulls off a pretty decent wireless desktop. We're not far off from having all the technology in place already. I've been wanting this since that old Motorola convertible phone with the laptop dock, but realized that we weren't quite there yet in terms of performance. I think we may be pretty close now.
I had two Windows Phone devices and used them for near on three years. I absolutely loved the UI, the ease of use and really just the 'personality' of the system. I understand why the ecosystem failed but I'm still sad to see it gone. Maybe I'll install a Windows Phone-like launcher in my android phone - but I'm aware that this will be just a 'fake' of that happy memory.
I had a Nokia Windows phone 10 years ago. It was cheap and I used that phone mainly for work (lots of site based stuff), so it helped that it was built like a tank. Cloud storage was also really useful.
The Lumia 830 was the best phone I've ever had, hands down. Great optimization, ergonomic apps, excellent build quality and that was all on a mid ranger
Okay, how much did Microsoft pay you to say this?
I was at college, studying computer science, when it was first released and microsoft send an expert to introduce microsoft phone to us. they gave free lessons for microsoft phone programming. they gave away free microsoft accounts where you can use (almost) every product of microsoft for free. I went to that classes and I was thinking microsoft phone is really going to be huge, because the os itself was really good. it was optimized well, easy to code, privacy enhanced and developing was way faster than android. Also I was seeing people are interested, I had no doubt it will succeed. It is a shame it didnt work out for microsoft and nokia. I think maybe if they didnt shutdown the program, it would be more successful today.
When I've first received my Nokia Lumia 800, I was blown away. A perfect unibody design with a beautiful integrated OLED screen. An OS so well designed, almost alive with these dynamic tiles. I loved it. So sad it was lacking some key applications...
Yes widgets is not the same. In Android there is a sea of Windows phone launchers but only a couple of launchers have live tiles.
I remember being so excited when they announced it. I'm a .net developer so it would have been easy for me to develop for it and I had a few ideas for apps.
I started as soon as the development tools were available but I reached a point where I needed to test on a physical phone. That's where they lost me ... I live in Japan and somehow, nokia/Microsoft decided they would not sell devices here so I just gave up.
Same problem here in Brazil. With no expected date of announcement of any device, customers and developers were left without Windows Mobile devices on the market. We waited as long as we could, but we migrated all apps to Android, because iPhone has always been expensive here for small businesses. They announced Windows Phone on Feb 15, 2010 (many customers thought high-end Windows Phone 6.5 devices would get the update, but it didn't), they only launched on Oct 11, 2010 in a few markets. When the first HTC arrived on November 24, 2011, here we already had everything on Android at more affordable prices.
I had a Windows phone, and loved it. Just lacked a lot of major apps. Very underrated OS. Even mobile IE wasn't too bad.
The two things that killed it were the lack of apps, and when they tried to bring the mobile experience to the desktop with Windows 8.
I still miss my old Lumina sometimes
I got a windows phone for christmas and i hated it. I hated that the menu titles werent capitalised, i hated the randomness of the US, the inability to organise anything, the random fucking squares with no particular sequence. What were they thinking, it had no intuitiveness at all..
Always sported one as a secondary phone next to my Android. It's fast and all, but having very little app choices killed it.
Windows phone nailed everything. I had a Lumia 920 in 2012-2013. My camera, battery life, and keyboard was far superior to my friends' iPhones and Androids. Never had to restart it. I had my first screen of tiles perfectly tuned, I could take one glance at my phone and only see the things I wanted. The phone was ultra durable, I didn't even have a case on it and it help up perfectly. It was such a well made product, but the lack of all the good apps apps was the nail in the coffin for me. And in a time where not all web pages were mobile friendly, there was no alternative. As a software developer, I even played around with trying to build a 3rd party version of the apps that didn't exist on it yet, but having a robust API back in 2013 wasn't a priority for most companies. I must say, getting up and running to build apps on a Windows Phone was a far superior experience to the Android and Apple counterparts.
Had the exact same experience with the same phone. I absolutely loved the UI and i honestly still believe if they had just gotten the widely used apps on there they wouldve thrived
Yeah the phones were amazing and a funny story comes to my mind when you mentioned the durability. I was once at a festival that took place in an old factory. They had huge swings installed in one of the spaces as a little fun gimmick. I remember going on one of the swings and going across the vast industrial hall at a quite a fast pace. Suddenly I realized that my phone slipped out of my pocket, I look down and I see my phone sliding across the concrete floor like a hockey puck screen down. I was 100% sure my phone is either broken or severely scratched to the point of being unuseable. I rush to pick up my phone and press the unlock screen button. Not only did it turn on and work without any problem, it also only had a few minor scratches on the display even though I didn't have any screen protection or cover on my phone :)
@Keys for Wealth I had one for a while, I felt they should have started giving them away basically esp to anyone who pretended to be an app developer to improve their eco system. They should have had a huge software/app advantage esp for business and totally blew it, but the azure cloud thing is working out ok at least.
Same! The Nokia Lumia 920 was way ahead of its time. Best camera, best for emails, best SMS, best calendar, best screen viewing in sunlight, can use while wearing thin gloves.
I think something else that might of been overlooked as well. Was windows has always been the highest hacked os in history. Possibly people felt the phones wouldn't hold up to security vulnerabilities.
Had it only had the apps it needed, it'd have been great. Shows how important timing a product determines its success.
Actually it's show that misstreathing external developer is the wrong way to go. If you are already in a dominant position you might get away with it, but if you are s new entry it will kill your project.
Apple has an established and valuable market share. They are getting sued fof their practices, but dev will still work with them to a point. Example Netflix app on ios.
Microsoft has an established market share on pc. Porting their policies from pc to mobile was risky and didn't pay off.
@@eliahabib5111 google didn't help not having apps on windows phone and even shutting down 3rd parties ones.
even when it had the app the developer never really bother to update it.
I used to have Nokia Lumia 720 and I loved that phone even if it didn’t have many apps. While my android/iphone friends were searching for their chargers, my Lumia just went all day no problem. Not once has the OS crashed and keyboard and animations were just beautiful 🤩. Really miss it.
I had a Zune HD, which had the interface of Windows mobile, but strictly for music. It was different and the UI was beautiful, yet simple.
Some of the coolest features was the slideshow effect of the artist when you played a song from them. Most artists had their own bio, and photos provided by Windows that would hover in the background and change while the song played. It still works to this day and honestly had so much potential. It’s a shame things never worked out in the long run.
I remember back in 2013 going to my network operator with my mom to renew our plan and there was a person with a Windows phone stand promoting the new devices which caught our attention. We saw the Lumia 720 and in addition to the super smooth OS and very decent camera it looked beautiful compared to our iPhone 3Gs which convinced us to buy it. When we got home and started configuring our cool new devices I soon found out that several apps I needed for school were not available for Windows phone and neither were many of my mom's favorite apps so we ended up returning them and getting iPhone 4s. Windows Phone would have been unstoppable if they had the same app support or at least some sort of emulator to run android apps.
Sort of like getting a chrome book today vs a windows pc?
Ultimately, I loved my Windows Phone's UI and hardware features, but the lack of apps really killed any interest in me keeping it long term. If they just ported apps from Android or gave devs freedom, I feel they would still be around.
Good video. I worked on the networking stack on those for every release.
The one thing I think you're missing is that it was always the intention to buy Nokia and sell it for pieces. They made a bet on that acquisition, predicting that it would fail, and made something close to $40 billion on the sale of the pieces of Nokia. So it was never a financial loss for Microsoft, only a public image loss.
The greatest failure in all this is Nokia, from giant to nothing
Wow. Cool 😎 msft is a fun company to work for and Redmond is beautiful in the summer.
Elop was basically the world's worst corporate Trojan Horse. It's very sad what he did to Nokia.
$40 billion ? Where did you get that number. They sold everything to HMD Global for $350m only.
Could you provide some source for this?
I had a Windows phone and absolutely loved it... except for the app store. The phone and OS was great, but the lack of apps killed it.
As someone who’s used all 3 platforms, I say this with full conviction- in terms of appearance,look, feel and overall fluidity windows is STILL the best. Absolutely the best,the other two don’t come close. I have such fond memories of the time spent on this beauty of a product
Same, it just ‘felt’ great
I used a Lumia 730 for six years until 2021. It was beautiful. The live tiles is something I miss. It's keyboard is the best I've ever used. But there're no apps to use. Now I use that phone as a night lamp😁
Completely agree Srikar, this is what happens to a company which has no vision to see where it's product is going. The lack of apps was really sad when i used it but felt atleast Microsoft should have paid a few developers to make Lumia today's blackberry!
I stuck with Windows Phone long as I could, I really enjoyed how they were set up since 7.0. I agree their keyboard setup was fantastic, and even the autocorrect was better on my Windows Phones compared to even the latest Android I'm using now. I miss how those phones were set up in general, but it really sucked especially toward the end when the apps began going away.
The autocorrect on Android is just awful. Especially when you try a bit more technical or IT related stuff. The keyboard was great for my big fingers as well. I'm all up for an revival
I never had a Windows Phone, but I was following them and wanted to get at least a second phone, but they folded too quickly. 3 smartphone choices would have been much better than 2. Apple could have even been forced to add removable storage had Windows Phone been more successful. Running out of storage on iPhones STILL is a problem for some users.
...
I don't see how a software company could not have foreseen the problem getting third-party apps on the phone. Did microsoft risk everything on success in the market driving development? It was a recognizable catch-22. MS should have had a Plan B for a lack of apps from the beginning.
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And how about from now? I guess Windows Store is carrying a bunch of mobile-capable apps now. MS Surface Duo was a foray into the mobile device market, but it was not mainstream at all. Dual screens are just a gimmick at this point in their evolution. They're still too expensive and problematical. I wish ColdFusion could have commented on that.
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Couldn't MS make/contract a mid-to-upper tier Surface single-screen Mono with a really good camera now? That's where the market is. As long as it could still connect to an external display, it would have a somewhat small but guaranteed market. And there are enough Windows users who'd go from android to Windows now if the apps and cloud sync for user data was there (migrating from old phone ecosystem) to make it at least moderately successful. And then the catch-22 is done.
I concur with the app store as the Windows Phone's achilles heel. I remember back in 2013-ish when I had a Lumia 610 and I was envious of my friends playing Respawnables and Flappy Bird on their iPhones and Galaxies lol.
I agree the keyboard and auto-correct were amazing. Friends and family were really impressed about my speed when they were seeing me typing on my Windows Phone.
Now they're just sitting in my drawer, maybe one day I'll turn them on just to have this sense of nostalgia 😢
@@kapriolenpfeifer gboard works awesome. iOS autocorrect is trash
Google killed the Windows phone, not Microsoft. They notoriously refused to develop their must-have apps for the platform, fearful of a 3rd smart phone operating system competitor. Many other notable companies also never developed for the Windows phone. As a young tech enthusiast in middle/ high school I didn't fully realize this, so I really wanted a Windows phone at the time given how much the OS stood out from the crowd. To this day, it still looks beautiful. The design was incredibly ahead of its time. An absolute shame they aren't around today as more competition in the space would have been appreciated.
I worked (and was fired at Microsoft) in the early 2000's and I had an opportunity to work with Windows CE. When I said this isn't going to work in the real world they looked at me like I was nuts. I heard all the blah blah blah but I was the odd man out in the M$ cult. It was an interesting experience. I had the mis-fortune to work with CE 6.0 and it was still crap, always seemed to be years behind. I remember hearing a M$ Exec saying all our focus groups want a resistive screens where Apple did capacitive screens. We all know what happened. In the end the M$ operating systems failed at the driver level - they were sloppy and drivers have to rock solid. Many of the critical Windows drivers were supplied by 3rd party vendors or were bought, internally very few at M$ understood drivers and stayed at the Win32 event layer. Android came about because of the failure of Windows CE, Google was surprised how many vendors wanted Android, that is how bad CE was. If you go against the M$ cult you are simple pushed out that is why they can't innovate anymore.
@cantin8697 It wasn't that bad. Eventually fans started creating apps for the OS. I remember I had a Lumia back in 2015, basically shortly before WP shut down. The most relevant apps were there, including UA-cam, made by fans.
Most people I've talked to back in my WP days weren't put off by the lack of apps, but by the general look of the phone's interface.
When someone says "Google killed Windows Phone" you know that person never had used Windows Phone. Every Windows Phone user used MetroTube or at least the browser. The WP Browser is actually very good with background music player, you can argue that Windows Phone had better UA-cam experience than Android users.
Having used both Android and iOS over the past dozen years, I do wish Windows Phone had thrived; it’d be fascinating to see what the mobile world would be like today as a three-player market.
Competition drives innovation, Android and IOS would most likely be better if they had to compete with Micheal Soft.
Shame Nokia and Blackberry fell off, would have loved to see more smartphone operating systems apart from Android or iOS.
same with HTC
@Ching Chong yeah, I LOVED my blackberry, but there were very few apps. Even basic things like weather apps and music apps were slim.
@@volvo09 They should have switched to Android.
nokia is still making phones though and they are pretty good for the price
ua-cam.com/video/inUPE8Jx3x4/v-deo.html
Finally it's here YES
I wrote apps for Windows Phone at Microsoft HQ. Frankly, Microsoft just never threw quite the resources at it that it needed. Given the clear app gap, instead of relying on third party devs to write apps, they should have put their cut to 0%, and wrote as many apps as possible in house until third party devs caught on. After all, they are the biggest software company in the world.
But the thing that really killed WP is that Google refused to let Microsoft run their apps, whilst it did let Apple. It was a anti-competitive as hell and regulators are only now finally look at this. It's the sort of thing that, had Microsoft done it, it would have immediately been up on anti-trust charges.
Apple was tiny compared to Microsoft when the iPhone was first introduced and Google is within their rights to choose which platforms to support. I’m not sure why you think _not_ sharing technology with a behemoth like Microsoft makes you anticompetitive but you sound really confused on the matter.
Microsoft deserves anticompetitive responses because that's what they have been for decades. screw microshit
@@CAHSR2020 "Google is within their rights to choose which platforms to support"
Not if it's exclusionary and designed to be anti-competitive. The whole point was to prevent Microsoft from competing in that market, and it was highly successful. Lack of those critical apps was a crucial reason consumers did not buy Windows Phones.
"I’m not sure why you think not sharing technology with a behemoth like Microsoft makes you anticompetitive but you sound really confused on the matter."
And you're being intentionally obtuse.
@@Christobanistan Google had the right to deny Microsoft access to their software. If you disagreed you should have asked Microsoft’s council why they did not sue to force Google to support your phone and maybe they could have explained it to you.
@@CAHSR2020 Sure, bud. That's why E.U. regulators are looking into this right now. Cuz blatant anti-competitive behavior is fine.
I had a 920, a 930 and a 950XL and I absolutely loved them.
My fave thing with the 950XL was you could swap batteries out just like you used to be able to do before Apple came along.
I busted my phone once and bought another, so always had a spare battery in my pocket in case I started running low on power.
It's just a shame the apps were not as well supported as other OS as it was great that my PC, Phone and Tablet were all running Windows as they linked up so well.
I was a member of the iPhone 1.0 team. While I can’t speak for everyone, I agree with many of the points expressed in this video.
Windows Phone was, at the time, by far the most well designed and crafted competition - and helped push the industry forward.
I say this despite having little positive to say about most Microsoft products prior to that time (and precious few since, too). This was the product of a very special team, even though I never met any of them.
I am very curious what the “precious few” are :)
@@radu19d Not Teams.
A Win 10 phone was the best phone I ever had. Android is a ducks breakfast of an operating system in comparison. I loath Apple phones and cannot believe that we are stuck with two crappy OS'S and let the Win phone die.
@@rodpettet2819 I found Apple software quality to be a thing of the past, too, when I bought an iPad. That said, the hardware turned out to be as rugged as it gets.
@@rodpettet2819 You sound like ducks doodle.
„Consumers didn’t see the value in the WP package“… well, we did! It was the best OS so far for mobile devices in my opinion and I loved using it back in 2015. However, without apps - and they were becoming more scarce over time - your hands are tied. And that’s a tragedy I will never understand. How is it possible, that one of the biggest enterprises in the entire world just couldn’t motivate at least the more important developers to create apps for this platform? I mean, come one, there wasn’t even a Snapchat app
there was a 3rd party snapchat app that was better than the official app, but eventually snapchat decided to ban the accounts of everyone using it and block the api's.
ua-cam.com/video/inUPE8Jx3x4/v-deo.html
Finally it's here YES
people in general are not necessarily consumers, we may love the windows phone ui and all, but who did actually buy it ?
Agreed, it would have helped a great deal if Microsoft had gone to the owners of the top 20 apps and said, "We'll build the app for you."
Google we’re not fond of the competition and saw Microsoft as a threat thus even did not have an official UA-cam app for the phone
Still the smoothest and fluid like ui to ever come out for a phone. I loved my Lumia. The lack of apps was sad.. But the OS was amazing.
Same. I loved mine
The devs are just dumb. What a shame to abandoned this OS.
same here. OS was pretty good.
@@ddosscheck9866 it's just bad marketing. No one would spend time and money developing something they're not sure would sell.
Watching this video made me very sad - windows phone remains very under-rated. As pointed out in the video, the killer blow was the lack of apps, which limited the user base. My Lumia 940 remains THE best phone I have ever had (started out on iPhones, switched to Windows, and a number of iterations on Android since ... none of them have come close to the Lumia). The UI was stunningly good and the keyboard sublime (not sure why the MS keyboards on iOS and Android haven't used the same technology). Ahh well at least I have fond memories :)
BTW, the Windows Mobile OS actually still exists and is actively developed. It runs on Windows tablets, which are strong in the business market. If regulators ever force Google to allow Microsoft access to their services, Microsoft could make a phone again in no time.
That is windows on arm but is kinda different but you can run windows 11 on a lumia 950
so u said that right now google dont allow ms to access their services? can i get the news source?
@@joythwrld I don't recall. It was a long time ago. But they were even checking user agent strings and blocking our devices.
Third party devs tried making knock offs using unpublished APIs directly for use by Google's apps. Google would inform Apple of API changes ahead of release, but wouldn't let ayone else know. Our app devs were then forced to frequently adjust, leaving apps dead or barely working for sometimes a week at a time while they worked out the changes, which were usually designed to thwart third party devs.
@Cam D Windows does not deserve to die. Over the entire course of Windows, it has been a great operating system. I've been using it in some capacity since "Windows 3.11 Windows for Workgroups" and it has been great for productivity, gaming, software development, mobile (I miss my Dell Axim), etc. It's been great for businesses as well. And now you can run Android apps native on Windows, which opens up a lot of possibilities. Maybe you don't like Microsoft for whatever reason, or you don't like Windows or Windows Phone for whatever reason. That's cool. Gates isn't exactly a saint, so I get it. But Windows doesn't deserve to die. And yes, I have used Macs. My first ever machine was a Mac.
@Cam D To be replaced by what worthy desktop OS?
No keyboard has ever come close to what we got on Windows Phone. That keyboard was awesome.
Definitely, the only one that came close, for me, was the one on BB10, but that is dead in the water too. Really do hate how BB10 and WP were definitely the best phone OSs out therd but no one wanted to make apps for them.
@@poeticsilence047 iPhone keyboard is great
@xikarra how so
@xikarra Other languages don't matter.
I remember seeing specs for this device boasting 32mp cameras at that time. Imagine having windows phone and windows pc. That should have been an amazing ecosystem.
For Businesses not using Apple computers it would have been a no brainer.
@@DrRusty5 ないす
MS shot themselves in the foot there. You could connect an android phone seamlessly to your windows PC and use it however u wanted but you couldn't do the same with their own windows Phone connected to a windows pc. You needed another external app which was clunky and horrid and have you all the freedom that Apple gave.
My friend in school had bought a Windows Phone as he wanted to "try" something new. Within a month dude was depressed as hell as we all were playing games like subway surfers and Clash of clans on our iPhones and Androids while all he could do was watch UA-cam videos on his 'oled' screen lol. Ngl felt bad for him though.
I had an amazing game on my windows phone called chaos rings. It was made on the final fantasy 7 engine and was a turn based rpg that had an amazing story.
i love windows phone so much , they had most of the "new" features your current phone has , and the design of the OS is lovely
looked simple but was really effective. I only gave up on windows phone after all the stuff I used stopped working.
The fact Microsoft thought the solution was to make a slick interface and then solve the app shortage by throwing clunky Android apps on there, speaks for their lack of vision. They needed to go all in on the app development tools. Software development is supposed to be Microsoft's bread and butter, what the hell were they thinking. This is why companies need people with long term vision and not executives in boardrooms making short term decisions.
I liked my Windows phone...but yes...the lack of apps killed it. I went from Blackberry Storm to Iphone 4 to Windows phone....to Samsung Note. I've been with Samsung Note ever since.
Yes Windows Phone was ahead of its time. Dark mode, people social media hub, live tiles, the first material You like implementation... You can get a Windows launcher in Android but let's face it if Windows Phones had survived cell phones right now would be 5 years into the future.
Man, I loved Windows Phone so much! I held on as long as I could before switching to Android. Intuitive yet simple software, and let's not forget the BEST CAMERAS on a phone at the time. The live tiles and multitasking were ahead of its time as well.
Sadly, it came down to the lack of apps. This video made me miss my Lumias 😢 Just like legacy Nokias, they were also built like a tank. And the hardware stood out from the crowd too
lack of app? Back in November 2014, the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store combined had over 500,000 apps. did you ever try install 50000000 applications on that small screen? how many do you use daily?
@@userwest626 you're sounding worse than a Windows Phone fanboy back in the day. Or even worse, a Blackberry fanboy. That's coming from someone who used and loved both platforms. Don't kid yourself with silly arguments like that.
Windows Phone has massive app gaps. An official UA-cam app never came. Instagram took forever. I don't believe there was one for Vine (if it did, it took forever). No Tinder. No Snapchat. No Pinterest. I remember banking apps were severely lacking.
And in certain situations where WP did have the official apps, they lagged behind in functionality from Android or iOS.
Personally, I wasn't affected much by the app gap, but I won't deny there wasn't one
@@ajst22 absolutely. i had a 640 xl and later the 950 xl. kept it till almost 1 year after the end of an era. even when whatsapp canceled the support for it. i miss it still. microsoft just royally failed years ago. they had the best mobile os there was. but they never understood the importance of app support. they made it inherently hard to develop. so they got stuck in this devils cicle of noone wants to use it cause there are no apps and noone wants to make apps cause noone uses it. and especially the young generation hops from one trend to another. facebook, twitter, insta, etc. if you can't install the latest shit everyone uses right now you are done.
and i mean. they had already next to no market share and then they fuckin release the 950 and 950 xl in a very beta state of windows 10 mobile so absolutely every tech review channel and magazine just destroys the product for the buggy mess it was. and the sad part is that a few month down the line the phone was awesome. just that it was far too late and noone gave a fuck about it anymore. and even worse is that in december 2021 i bought a note 20 ultra and the friggin android works just way better with windows 10 and the phone companion app than the friggin windows phone ever did even when it was supported. it felt like they gave up before it even launched.
There’s a couple missed things in this video: WP version updates 8 AND 10 changed some fundamental underlying stuff in a way that the previous versions of WP could not update to. Had to buy a whole new phone to get WP 8. And again for WP10. Killed a lot of enthusiasm for the platform in the tech forums I frequented. Microsoft should have licensed it for free too. They are receiving a cut off every Android sold at the time, and WP with its licensing fees could stand up to a free Android.
It hurts how miserably WP failed. It will always remain one of my favourite OSes of all time
Next to BB10.
If Windows Phones had survived, nowadays Android 13 and iOS 16 would have been a lot better because of the competition.
It would be interesting to see a video on the Nokia N9. The development of that started before Elop became boss, so he couldn’t kill it off right away. But he was able to put a stop to further development after the initial release. So this device was released into a limited number of markets, got rave reviews, and then after it was sold out you couldn’t buy any more. Instead, Nokia bet itself on Windows Phone, and lost.
I remember these. Great phones. I got my mum one becuaue it was so easy to use and easy to read compared to the others. But when it came to apps, there was nothing. I really wish developers would have given this phone a chance. It would have been a great alternative to just Android and iOS.
I loved this phone and I still believe that it was ahead of his time and yes for a normal consumer Apps were the biggest problem. Rest in peace , from the owner of all flagship windows phone until 2015
Lots of factual errors.
- Elop was elected AFTER THE APPROVAL OF Nokia's board of directors to adopt Windows Phone. He was part of the plan, not the plan maker.
- The interface was ok, but 90% of the functions needed were missing.
Even third-party car navigation could not run in the background.
- Microsoft has always been several seasons behind in adapting the system to new processors.
- microsoft lies about upgrading older models to the new version of the system.
Apple has always been late in adding requested features in their phones IMO what didn’t work for them in computers worked for them in mobile devices I.e posh brand and Microsoft on the other side just failed to build a community.
@@hannanatiqsiddiqui Very true!
They really dropped the ball. I was definitely about to get one cause my sister got one and it impressed me how clean it all ran. Up till I figured out there were no apps for it. Most that had one had to use their iPods for apps.
I enjoyed the windows phone but they didn't have much apps.
As a student, turning my phone into a functional PC would be an amazing feature as it would mean the ability to travel light,
and with micro sd card having high capacity it would be possible to have enough storage on them too
this is a sad loss to the phone industry
Thankfully samsung has actually done that with dex
There are plenty of 3rd oarty apps that helps with that in addition to cloud storage. This isn't 2013 anymore, searcg this stuff.
I'm a windows user and as the windows phone does not exist this is not entirely possible,
you are suggesting to use workarounds, albeit they may work, they will have major limitations that turning a phone into a full-blown PC functionality would not have.
I had small netbook with intel atom processor. It was good enough. I had extended battery for it so it could last me 1 day of use. I could even code with it on the go walking from home to work.
@my burner google account yea but overall its preety stable they features that i want are there like secure folder one handed operation plus and dex but i see where your coming from
I feel even Blackberry Touch OS was ahead of its time. It has gestures and stuff which was awesome, but it failed.
When I was transitioning from Symbian to a newer technology, I remember having the dilemma of choosing between a Windows Phone and an Android (I would have considered iPhone but it was simply too expensive for me at the time, so it's not an option). My initial choice had actually been a Windows Phone as I remember liking its interface very much. I eventually did not push for the idea and instead opted for an Android device sometime later because it made more economical sense to me during that time. I've had plenty of Android devices since. Yet, even from one upgrade to the next, there is still that lingering curiosity as to what would the Windows Phone become if it survived the market to this day.
I had the Lumia 800 and then the 1020, loved so many of the features and the experience of the UI, but that app gap caught up and when I finally moved to iPhone in 2014 I didn’t look back.
Dude, you hit the nail on the head. I loved my Windows phone back in the day, until I switched to Android and saw how many more and useful apps there were. The lack of android app compatibility is what killed an otherwise neat phone.
If you get the app Square Home, you could make your android phone look and act like it windows phone
@@SwirlyJoe android is never feels like windows tho, something about the other os that was just different… android and iOS feel like us for kids
@@SwirlyJoe square home? I'm guessing it's a launcher
@@meric12131415 yep. There's also a Win10 launcher
@@SwirlyJoe that's pretty cool 😁
I strongly believe Windows phones would have been second, if not THE best phone today had it not been for the people running Microsoft at the time when the iPhone was launched that were so cocky in thinking that the competition would never catch up. With great email, office apps, great Nokia cameras and a VERY smooth operating system for its time there’s no doubt they would still be in the game. But showing up late to a race that was almost over completely destroyed them. Microsoft shot themselves in the foot in the mobile phone department and its sad considering how great their phones were.
yeah i dont see them becoming second with samsung leading the android market, and apple being apple.
"would have been second, if not THE best phone today"
Holy f I lolled to that. NO, but THANKS for the laughs.
Microsoft should have beaten Android for Windows phone to survive. There is not enough room for 3 major player. Having to develop every app for 2 OSs is already a pain, let alone 3. But they come too late to the game for this to happen
Windows phones were garbage
And unique 3rd parties capabilities app with shocking function
The interaction between some of the social apps and the phone were next to none, the experience was so smooth and so pleasant, there was nothing that could compare to it. Unfortunately locking the OS, like apple, killed the vision.
locking the OS
locking os is the dumbest thing Microsoft did by giving up advantages of win32
I got the Lumia 1020 when it came out. Still one of my favourite phones ever and still some of the best pictures I've ever taken! ❤️
I still have it at work. I use it to take pictures for documentation. I was a Nokia fanboy since I was a teenager. Unfortunately the app gap eventually made me switch to apple.
Couple of friends had these. I always found that quite good: nice designs, long battery, easy to use.
I assume this APP issues was the problem then. The phones simply faded away and nobody spoke about them since.
Writing apps for Windows Phone was so quick an easy... I remember learning C#, Silverlight and the SDK and making my first app in just one weekend. A breeze compared to android and ios.
Ironically, I had to learn this as a preparation for a job interview (what was going to be my first job in the UK). I got the job, and I accepted it.
The day I went to sign the contract (in Bristol), they told me that they could not offer me the job in the end because the client they were going to write an app for had cancelled the port for Windows phone - they were eventually only interested in iOS and android.
I don’t really like the c# .net ecosystem but developing for wp back then was indeed better than iPhoneOS and Android.
@@_framedlife to be fair, android development is a LOW bar to set, their api is a jumbled convoluted mess.
@@ChristopherGray00 that was 11 years ago and I can't quite remember now. But I remember they solved the app going to background with something super simple they called "tombstone state". I remember comparing that with the activity lifecycle nightmare in android and thinking it was super simple. I also remember that lists of items were made by a very straight forward binding of the c# code to the view XML, also much simpler than android
Finally a video that I can show to people whenever I talk about windows phone OS. I still miss the keyboard, live tiles, parallax animations and the bold look of windows phone OS. It was fun to use the OS not just a utility.
i never had a windows phone but i remember just a few of my friends had it when i wast in university. I never liked the square app icons on windows phone which was the same design of windows 8 desktop os. the square app icons was a huge push away for me. both iPhone and android have more compact app icons and the screen is more neat when it comes to organizing apps and seeing them all in one place.
even microsoft themselves didn't like the windows 8 style big app icons, they slowly changed them
Lumia was the best phone I've ever used everything about it was perfect. I didnt know about app support issues as I was young and had no interest in social media and stuff but the design and interfrance was far superior to androids or iphone. Wish they kept making it I would switch to it without a second thought.
Yep, I would go back to a Windows Phone without a thought. It's really hard to describe to people how slick it was to use. Android and iOS are so mediocre but there's no other options, people don't know how good it can be.
I had a friend that gave me crap for ages because I had one. At some stage he got given one as a work phone and after a few months with it he messaged me out of the blue to say "ok, you win. I love this thing."
Three things that put me off: Ongoing frustration with Windows. I found the live tiles and animation to be really distracting and confusing. The interface was not information-dense, everything took up much more room than necessary and required excessive scrolling.
Indeed. Their design is not so intuitive.
As I see with a lot of comments, I LOVED the windows phone. They should have done what win11 is doing now, and enable android apps natively. That would have fixed all their app issues. The OS itself was amazing.
To put it simply....they were too arrogant and thought they could dictate the rules for everyone...developers and users. Turns out...it was the other way around. It was the people that decided it's fate.
Well, Google wouldn't let that happen
@@danielhandika8767 google are not the bad guys in this, especially when you notice the sales MS made by tying in all their pc partners to Word and the ecosystem. when you have a strategic advantage, you don't just concede that.
MS didn't anticipate the need for an ecosystem with a large user base, because they had tried hard and succeeded in the gaming platform business, which possibly made a lot of people forget the mistakes of the zune
@@brmbkl Google refused to create a youtube app for WP, and when MS did it for them they issued them with a cease and desist.
@@danielhandika8767 android is open source. They did not need googles permission to do anything. If they wanted to support android apps, they could have. But they did not
I had a Windows phone from work and man one thing they did right was the predictive text, still the best I have ever used even to this day. You could just about write an entire quantum mechanics thesis with your thumb while juggling your coffee. It was so insanely good, sometimes almost supernatural, in how well it chose words.
When I was getting my first phone, I was really confused between an Android and Windows. Since, apple was too expensive. The lack of apps was the real reason I denied and brought a Xperia neo. I was amazed that how many apps and games were for androids, but only handful for windows. Some friends who even brought a windows phone, really regretted.
Thanks for sharing this. I used WP from 7 to 10 and if they ever bring WP back with Android app compatibility I will be the first in line (actually somewhat likely considering Android apps run on Win11 now). I've tried the iPhone keyboard and nearly every Android keyboard and they just don't compare, not even SwiftKey. Additionally Android and iOS design doesn't make sense with the huge phone screens where all the menus are still at the top and hard to reach and for years I used an Android launcher that emulates live tiles because I missed them so much. WP even had the Facebook profile image sync with your contacts built in which is surprisingly hard to do these days. Lastly everything was just so much more responsive on WP. Please bring it back MSFT!
I still don't get why no other keyboard software implement the Thinkpad-style nipple cursor on their on-screen keyboard. Much better than Google's swiping spacebar one.
I had a windows phone back in 2014 and I can say that it was much more polished than any OS back in the day, both desktop and mobile
Thanks for this episode., I learned some new things!
Also, some feedback from me as a dev. First off, Windows CE is NOT based upon Windows 3 code. It has the Win32 API, but that's purely an interface - its kernel was written from scratch with realtime in mind (which likely helped Windows phone later).
I actually received a Nokia phone for development as a loaner, and was very keen to develop also for WIndows phone as I do for iOS (I didn't like Android's shuffled-together API). The issue was that I waited for Windows phone to gain traction - which it ultimately never did. I was freelancing for a larger social app a little later, and Microsoft contacted them to ask to develop their app for Windows phone - they asked in turn to be installed by default on the devices (which was a bold move, and probably too much to ask, they were not Twitter), but that was declined.
I think, if MS did it just a year earlier, maybe two they could've succeeded.