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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 use my toaster, and wish that it ran Windows. I use my washing machine, and wish that it ran Windows. I use my SmartTV and wish that it... could... be... made... to... Blue Screen Of Death somehow. I miss Windows in my toilet unit the most. How nice would it be to have the Windows Recycle Bin's "undo recycle" function in a toilet?
Your calendar is surely off 7 days, today it is the 8th of April.
Do you really need to ask if we miss Windows phone? Are you NUTS?
That feeling that you were going to wait 30 minutes to do an SMS: "Don't turn your phone off while an update is being applied..."
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
...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.
No, I'm glad it's dead because it killed Nokia.
Are you kidding? I still have my Windows phone, it is called Windows 10. They dropped the phone hardware and moved the "live tiles" to their Desktop OS. However, I have to do all of my text messaging through Google Hangouts. It's a strange phone.
Love my Lumia 950, it works very well, does everything I need. Occasionally there's an app I wish I could use, but not enough to be a deal breaker. Microsoft did a great job making its apps responsive and I enjoy using the same software on my laptop and phone. I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion but there was and still is nothing technically wrong with Windows Mobile. Sadly it looks like it won't be getting any further feature updates but the current version is still supported for quite a while yet.
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.
Today I learnt there are people who not only liked live tiles but actually miss them too. I guess it takes all kinds really.
In retrospect, that might have actually worked. Except for that bit where I don't think Microsoft wants to build platforms that don't run Windows, and I don't think another platform vendor would want to use Windows as a starting point.
When Microsoft tried re-inventing their mobile platform (WP7 through WM10), no one really cared and the platform was allowed to compete on its own merits. Of course because no one cared, it had to be propped up by Microsoft's large bank account and a plethora of dirt-cheap devices. This worked for a time, and temporarily allowed it to grow to a small-but-reasonable number of users.
When BlackBerry tried re-inventing their mobile platform (BB10), the hate was so overwhelmingly strong that the platform was never allowed to compete on its own merits. They constantly had crap thrown in their face, and most people even refused to believe that they had something new. Even though I'd argue they made a better platform, they didn't have Microsoft's large bank account or plethora of dirt-cheap devices. So once they fizzled out, it was with a far smaller user base.
As someone who was hyped for MeeGo back then, the absolute commercial failure of Windows Phone has a bittersweet taste of justice.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I stopped using Google keyboard when I noticed that my e-banking account number (which begins with a letter but is mostly numbers) started to show up in the autocomplete suggestions when I was in other apps. Now I know it's somewhere on their servers, and who knows, it could appear on someone else autocomplete. So nice.
While the interface was unusable on a desktop it worked well enough on a phone. I picked up a phone on clearance and used it for a while. It was a $99 phone reduced to $19.99. For a low end model the interface was fast and never felt bogged down.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
As someone who actively worked on part of the Winamp code base, this is something that always bothered me, much like the hate for Microsoft trying to do something different. The Winamp team came up with an amazing audio processing pipeline interface in Winamp 3. They also engineered one of the most flexible skinning interfaces ever seen on a desktop. Users couldn't use their visualizers and older skins, therefor it "sucked" and everyone bitched and didnt give two fucks about the innovations being created. Even with a compatibility layer added in Winamp 3, it wasn't enough. So the entire thing was scrapped, sadly. In the MS world, it is entirely the same. Just look what happened to WinFS or Photosynth. Just because something is "different" doesn't instantly make it "bad", but that's the general consumer consensus without even trying to try something new.
I was going to say that I kinda miss the Palm platform, particularly the Visors. They worked pretty well for me. Maybe it was mostly Graffiti. I got pretty efficient with that by the time Palm wrapped up. I'd take that over the "keyboard" on my iDevices.
If I ever got a mod point to give, I'd probably give that an extra funny, though I was actually searching for gun-related jokes. Something along the lines of "I never miss my Windows Phone as long as I use my rifle. However it's pretty hard to hit it with my revolver." Projecting since my own aim with handguns was never that good?
Actually I think my first quasi-smartphone about 10 or 15 years back was running some kind of Windows OS. They've rebranded their small OS attempts so many time that I can't even remember what it was called. Fortunately I've mostly blacked out those memories except for lingering fears of Sharp and increased nausea towards my occasional involuntary usage of Microsoft software. Microsoft never understood such concepts as small or elegant, though they are great about stealing ideas and proclaiming "It ain't our fault and even when it is our fault you can't do anything to us. Nyah, nyah, nyah."
Then again, and as hard as it might be to believe, I was actually hoping Microsoft could offer a viable email alternative to Gmail. The EVIL of the google has become so much fresher and more pungeant... Maybe my memory is playing games, but I don't think I ever had such feelings of fear and trepidation towards Microsoft.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
To this people will then say "why would anyone want to run old windows software on a phone"... well, a lot of that software is actually really impressive. Furthermore, it expands the liberary of programs that can be run on the phone beyond what the android and iOS has which would make Microsoft competitive with android for a lot of things that they otherwise can't be due to a lack of software.
The problem isn't that some software can be run on a phone. The problem is that some software shouldn't be run on a phone. For example, it's impressive if you run Photoshop on a phone. But with a tiny screen how effective can someone be at using Photoshop. Then there's the other problem with UI. Fine controls with photoshop at a minimum require a keyboard and mouse, but many pros use pressure sensitive pens and Wacom pads.
If we narrow our software only to type that people generally use and not specialty software like drawing, then how good could Excel and Word be on a phone. Entering in formulas would be a pain in Excel without a major change to UI. But that version of Excel would not be the same version as the Windows version.
And it gets better because there's nothing to stop people from writing new software that is compatible with that older archetecture. And you could ask why anyone would do that, but the easy answer is that there are a lot of people that know how to program programs for that but not for whatever new language your phones are using.
That does not take into account advances that have dramatically changed architecture that necessitate deprecating APIs at the OS level. For example, Windows Mobile 6 -> Windows Phone 7 -> Windows Phone 8. Is there any phone that you can run the same mobile software on all three Windows phone platforms? No. Each OS version requires new versions and adherence to new standards and APIs. A WP8 app will not run on a WM6 machine. You have to at a minimum recode/recompile for each platform even if all you might be doing is displaying "Hello World"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
People didn't revolt, few even had a clue it existed. MS just didn't make it work. According to one of their engineers no one at Microsoft could even clearly define what it was.