Windows Phone is Dead: What Happened & What's Next?

Microsoft Mobile Windows Phone: What Happened & What's Next? Do you remember the Pocket PC?

STAR WARS STUFF ►

Chris & Diana Pirillo
1420 NW Gilman Blvd 2543
Issaquah, WA 98027

Hello, galaxy! I'm Chris Pirillo, and I love living the #Geek lifestyle - as a family-loving father, as an entrepreneur, as a Star Wars collector, as a retro video game player, as a LEGO minifigure fan, as a pop culture event producer, as a thrifting junkie, as an '80s nostalgia kidult, as a toy seeker, as a coupon clipper, as a consumer #tech advisor, as a person who loves picking up the digital camera that's usually sitting inside his smartphone and recording whatever thoughts happen to be in my head at the time (or experiences that I'm happy to share with the world)!

[panathatube]

I loved my Windows phone my humble Lumia 635... I loved so much the app drawer, how the screen was scrolling vertically to reveal more tiles instead of horizontally, seems so much more intuitive to me, I like the fact there was no dock, a great lock screen and most importantly the tiles made the static icons of the other platforms look primitive... I had to tinker for a year with my new Android phone with the widgets and the apps to get a similar user experience. Needless to say, iPhone is too restrictive, uncustomizable and boring to even consider it as my next phone after Windows Mobile, it would have been a cultural shock.

[jjjustin]

I windows phone! I stayed as long as I could before the fact that there were no apps was too frustrating.

[WackoX]

I had a total of 4 Windows Phones, the 520, 630, 640XL, 650., switched to Andriod few months ago.
I never understood the claim that there ''were no apps'', i had everything i needed on it, it seemed like people were just saying that in order to have an excuse not to buy it.
My biggest problem was bugs and crashes, most of the time i wanted to take a picture the camera app kept crashing and with a LOT of luck i got it to work after a few reboots, that NOT what you want when you need to take a quick pic right now.
Other apps constantly kept crashing too, i kept buying new Windows Phones because i thought it were the specs or the age but nope, it would run fine for the first 3 weeks but after that it went bad again..

[charger]

At the bottom drawer of my desk sits a Nokia Lumia 920 Windows phone. The device I switched to from The Apple Ecosystem. It’s still the “Little Smartphone That Could”. It came with Windows Phone 7 OS, it’s a beautifully built phone and it came with free wireless charging. I had high hopes...such high hopes for Nokia and Windows Phone. App development was atrocious and Windows Phone software crashed ...alot. There were no apps from Google that would work!! DAMN!!! I soldiered on for a year with the Windows Phone. People would look at it and say, “what the hell kind of Phone is that???”.... after about a year, I grew tired of Windows Phone software and the lack of app development and refinement. Went back to Apple and iPhone. Been there ever since. But every time I look at the Nokia Lumia 920, it’s bittersweet. Windows Phone could have been great. By the way, the Nokia Lumia still to this day has the best camera and call quality I’ve ever seen in a smartphone. Yes, even better than all the iPhones I’ve owned.

[CDDK]

The app gap partly killed the windows phone that and poor marketing, no big deal was made of it like Pixel or iPhone.

I loved windows idea that with a dock your phone could become a PC, Microsoft should have pounced on Blackberry’s decline and targeted the business user.

I’d love one device for work, that’s portable and agile.

[mmorales]

I still own a Lumia 950xl as a backup and I love the thing! Camera is still a beast, display is gorgeous, it has a replaceable battery! The keyboard is the best in my opinion, the UI is the best on a phone, no question about it. The smoothness, the way it syncs with your PC, great balance on customization, the Iris scanner is awesome... There's a lot of things and details that when you see them in new Android flagships or iPhones you smile with a sense of pride cause you already had that and it was beautiful. I'll keep it and update it till it dies.

[ChristofRoeyaert]

I'm an iPhone user, but I bought a new Lumia 535 a couple of years ago, a low-end device by any standard. Just bought it as a testing device because I was thinking of switching platforms but wasn't too impressed with Android at the time, and I was really curious about Windows phone. In any case, I was amazed how well everything ran on a low-end device like that : everything was reasonably fast, very smooth, no frame drops whatsoever, very agreeable experience, and this goes for the original Windows 8.1 as the later Windows 10 update I got for the it (had I bought an Android phone at that point in time, I guess I'd still be stuck on Kitkat or Lollipop...). But naturally, because of the app shortage, I had no choice but to return to the iPhone. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have traded in my Lumia 535 for a high-end Windows phone and I'd still be using it today.
What you say about Microsoft releasing their own Android phone sounds interesting and would certainly appeal to me, just as much as the new Blackberry Motion does : a no-nonsense quality device, with decent specs, with optimized security and stable performance.
We'll just have to wait and see, but my iPhone 6S will most likely be replaced early next year with another device, and it won't be an iPhone (unless they fix the abysmal performance of iOS very soon).

[Wandtket]

You're absolutely right Chris. They never gained a foothold because of the constant rebranding. They should have bundled a Windows Phone with every tablet they sold. Flood the market to get people aware. I think they had maybe one Windows Phone 8 ad that was kind of lackluster. Hopefully their retrenchment strategy to get OneCore and Centennial off the ground will pay off for a real surface phone. I don't think they'll ever give into making their own Android Rom. They said they wanted to be different and I find it quite sad how the normal consumer thinks having only two dominant platforms could ever be a good thing.

[sonjadorusa]

Windows Phone 7 and 8.1 were awesome. It just worked. It was smooth, never failed. It's sad that it is gone.

[Matthew-gorh]

I had a Windows Phone. I didn't have a second one.

[schmal]

Microsoft is probably very close to being able to consolidate UWP, .NET Core and Xamarin under a unified framework, enabling a single code library to be used to publish applications on all major mobile and desktop operating systems (including Linux). If successful (which seems likely), a true Windows Mobile relaunch would be easily doable and the "app gap" will have mostly resolved itself quietly.

[JutschHD]

I would have switched to Windows Phone long ago if it wasn´t for the lack of apps. The company I work for uses WP only (except for the executives, they have iPhones ^^) and I know other companies that do the same. It is a great OS that runs perfectly even on really low end devices which makes it convenient for companies to put it in the hands of even low tier employees.

[DaniPodis]

Was a WP user for 2 years, but after force upgrading the 512MB device to WM10, I regretted it. I'm so happy to have left it for my LG G5.

[TheNamd]

Still rocking it and hopefully can cling on to it for a couple more months, hoping something really interesting comes out. For sure going to miss the WP UI, worked great for me and looked gorgeous while instantly had the info needed.

[vannicrider]

Well in Europe there were on average 10% windows phone users at the high point. Some markets such as Finland Italy Spain as much as 40%. Sad Microsoft ignored this.

[robertsantangelogroup]

But ios11 has new emojis!!! It studders, freezes and drains the shit out of my battery on 7 plus but WE HAVE NEW EMOJIS !!!

[Vicki_Benji]

I used to have a Windows phone (Lumia) and a Microsoft Band. Loved them both, but support was crap, then they abandoned their Band users. Very disappointing. I also didn’t really like the Windows App Store.

[MintPicker_]

I had a nokia lumia for 5-6years..working perfectly even now, i recently sold it and got s8

[tomdoe]

I know people who walked into a Verizon/AT&T store to buy a windows phone and the staff would basically try to talk them out of it. That was a big reason right there.

[verlinswarey]

I liked your thought about the first IPhone being the best one. That’s what I’ve always thought! Apple will never again have as much space between it and its competitors as it did back then.