Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Do You Miss Windows Phone? (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: After recently switching on an old Windows Phone to create a silly April Fools' joke, The Verge's Tom Warren discovered just how much he missed Microsoft's mobile OS. Two of the biggest features that are hard to find/replicate on iOS and Android are the Metro design and Live Tiles. "Android and iOS still don't have system-wide dark modes, nearly 8 years after Windows Phone first introduced it," notes Warren. "Live Tiles were one of Windows Phone's most unique features. They enabled apps to show information on the home screen, similar to the widgets found on Android and iOS. You could almost pin anything useful to the home screen, and Live Tiles animated beautifully to flip over and provide tiny nuggets of information that made your phone feel far more personal and alive."
Some other neat features include the software keyboard, which Warren argues "is still far better than the defaults on iOS and Android," especially with the recently-added tracing feature that lets you swipe to write words. "Microsoft also experimented with features that were different to other mobile platforms, and some of the concepts still haven't really made their way to iOS or Android: Kid's Corner; Dedicated search button; Browser address bar; People hub; Unified messaging..." Aside from the competition aspect with Google and Apple, do you miss Windows Phone? What are some specific features you miss about the old mobile operating system?
Some other neat features include the software keyboard, which Warren argues "is still far better than the defaults on iOS and Android," especially with the recently-added tracing feature that lets you swipe to write words. "Microsoft also experimented with features that were different to other mobile platforms, and some of the concepts still haven't really made their way to iOS or Android: Kid's Corner; Dedicated search button; Browser address bar; People hub; Unified messaging..." Aside from the competition aspect with Google and Apple, do you miss Windows Phone? What are some specific features you miss about the old mobile operating system?
...I replaced my Lumia 1520 with a Nexus 6p, and recently replaced that with a Samsung Note 8, but the best phone camera I ever had was in the Lumia. We compare photos taken with it to those we took alter, and the Lumia captured much better images.
I liked WIndows Phone just fine -- and I make my living supporting Windows, so learning that OS was a good fit -- but I did not enjoy the two-year forced vacation from available apps. When I bought the Lumia, I lost access to SiriusXM, Square credit card payments, and other applications I had been using daily. I spent almost two years trying to find replacements with mixed results, and finally solved all the problems by ordering a Nexus 6P from Google.
I'll replace it when it's dead. For a long time nothing beat the camera. I like the simplistic UI, the tiles and I don't give a damn about app stores. Also the confounded looks I get from colleagues are amusing when they realize that... yes, I'm a *nix and network admin who uses a windows phone. Clear phone calls, text with great pictures, I've got everything I need. Only 2 complaints... outdated browser and it phonebook/contact UI isn't very intuitive.
I don't miss it, because I still carry a Lumia 950 as my primary phone. Why do I do this? Because I've used Android, and the OS is slow and clunky and unintuitive to use, even though I've been using Android tablets for several years. And iOS? It looks like a pile of regurgitated icons splattered around a desktop leftover from Windows 95. The hardware may be decent enough, and things might play nice together if one is willing to invest in an entirely Apple household of hardware, but the basic layout and design of the UI on both iOS and Android is rubbish by comparison to Windows Phone.
Microsoft made a LOT of blunders with Windows Phone, for sure... killing Project Astoria was probably one of the last nails in the coffin for the OS, as that would have allowed for the app ecosystem everyone wanted. Letting people get used to nifty features like truly unified messaging, and then pulling them back out, also was a big blunder, IMO, though possibly driven by the companies (facebook, etc.) that they originally had integration with.
Many of the features Windows Phone had are still not in any other mobile OS, and several have even (sadly) been stripped from the current versions of Windows Phone. Even so, if I could by a current handset (say, a Nokia 8) and load Windows Phone onto it instead of Android, I would do so in a heartbeat, because for everything I *really* need a phone to do, it just works.
I never understood the animosity to the Windows 8 start screen. What is the use case for the cramped start menu? You are doing one thing, you are looking to launch an application. Why constrain that function to a corner of the screen? One thing, full screen, maximum real estate given to do that one thing. I am not launching an app and also scanning my desktop for some other reason. I switched my Windows 10 back to full screen start.
The full-screen part isn't the source of the animosity. The source is basically everything else. What you call "cramped", I see as "information density". As a go-to example, let's use Magix Vegas, formerly Sony Vegas. Is the program icon under "Magix", "Sony", "Vegas", or "Movie Studio"? With the multi-column paradigm, I can fit 48 items per column, and 6 columns on a 1920x1080 screen. Whichever one of them it's under, it'll be readily apparent in short order. On that same 1920x1080 screen, the Windows 8 Start Screen shows 35 entries - less than a single column in the older paradigm. Given that Windows 8 was rarely run on a tablet, for 99% of people the reduction in information density wasn't a tradeoff for which they received a benefit. Additional annoyances involved the 'charms' menu for which a UI cue was never implemented, and an unintuitive pinning procedure. Now, the go-to answer is always "just type what you want!" There's no UI cue for that, either, it's been possible since Windows Vista, and if that's the primary way of launching programs, then congratulations, we're all the way back to a command line paradigm.
As for the Windows Metro UI apps, they are still in Windows 10. I have no problems with those either.
That's fine. There are plenty of reasons to not-like Metro UI apps, not the least of which because of how limited they are.
Cant resize it? Again, what is the use case.
The operating system is literally called "Windows". If MS wanted to use a different paradigm, fine, call it "Tiles" and see how well that works. You're stating that you don't understand the animosity, yet you require users to justify their preferences. "Because f'k you, that's why" is the only necessary reason as to why window resizing over tiling is preferred. I may well want to see just the status bar of a background process, which takes 3% of a screen rather than 25. Snapping is helpful, tiling is useful, but to assume every situation lends itself to not-windowing is shortsighted.
You can tile them on the screen. Dock them to the sides. Arrange them to see multiple apps at once. I don;t see the issue.
Few argue the problem. Most argue the requirement.
Unity uses over a quarter of the screen for the launcher, is someone bitching about that? Not as much, because it's "Linux" and we are used to it being schizophrenic in UI design. *SMH*
Well, first off, you just called using a quarter of the screen a schizophrenic UI design while arguing that full screen was acceptable earlier. Second, the Unity UI also spent the last few years receiving its share of criticism. Finally, Linux has options on that front; using Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate are all entirely viable and listed on the main Ubuntu download page, and tutorials for switching between them are incredibly easy to find and follow. Linux makes it far easier to change one's desktop environment than Windows, and while I would love nothing more than to be able to load up a Windows computer and end up in KDE or Cinnamon, the system just doesn't do that.
And yes, I own and use a Windows 10 phone as my primary communications device and it is better by design. I don't need your stinking 'droid apps :P
I'm with you here. I've got maybe three dozen apps on my phone, in total, over half of which are either rooting/backup tools, or apps that could be readily replaced with a website if the developers wanted to put the slightest effort into one.