The Verge: Windows Phone is dead
- Thread starter giga
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My wife broke her Lumia's screen (for the second time in a year), so I loaned her my iPhone 6 for a couple of days.
She hated it.
(Although I'm not sure if she actually couldn't use it, or was just being contrarian like usual.)
Yup, that's the Verge all right.
Yup, that's the web in the 2010s alright. :/
(The fact that I've been online for 21 years blows my mind.)
Tatsumi Oga
Banned
Hold on... Didn't MS announce brand new Windows Phones during that event where they announced the Surface Pro 4 and Surfacebook as well?
brotkasten
Member
Show me one real person who likes the products, especially Windows Phone. Show me one real Windows Phone user who likes that thing.
They did. The most bland looking plastic Windows Phones since that Acer one from 2011. And they shipped them with a beta OS. For the fans, you know.
sleverfunk
Member
Sad. Lumia was my first smartphone. I really like windows phone but the some important apps are just not there.
I feel like I'm real. Hi.
My wife does. (Although I'm the one who gave her a Windows phone to begin with. It was on sale.)
Selling new phones to the same 2% of the market that already owns their phones. That's a way to increase market share. ��
I loved my Zune HD and it's still the best media player and better than anything Apple or Sony has put out since. The Zune software was miles ahead of any media player today too. Hope I don't give you a hemorrhage.
That and doubling down on all Microsoft products is.. curious, to say the least.
Judging by the sales, not many.
I agree with you on that. And that's the issue MS has. They need better marketing to show the os features (cortana, continuum etc).
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Yo dawg
juliushandle
Member
Plus, old phones actually run new software very well so WP owners don't need to buy phones as frequent.
I am a TMobile prepaid user. I've been on WP for two years until today.
My recent phone was a 635. WP10 on it was laggy/choppy and I was really annoyed with some of the changes they made from 8.1. I rolled back but decided I was done.
I bought a Moto G 2nd gen new for $99. This phone is years ahead of the 635. In this thread alone I can watch a Youtube video inline and see animated GIFs. Those don't work on a low end WP unless you are willing to wait 10 minutes for them to load.
They had a chance and blew it. There is another Android phone out that is $150 with a good Quad core processor, 2GB RAM and raving reviews. There is no longer a need to buy a $100 WP for prepaid or a rarely used device.
I really liked the launcher (the one thing most people like).
My recent phone was a 635. WP10 on it was laggy/choppy and I was really annoyed with some of the changes they made from 8.1. I rolled back but decided I was done.
I bought a Moto G 2nd gen new for $99. This phone is years ahead of the 635. In this thread alone I can watch a Youtube video inline and see animated GIFs. Those don't work on a low end WP unless you are willing to wait 10 minutes for them to load.
They had a chance and blew it. There is another Android phone out that is $150 with a good Quad core processor, 2GB RAM and raving reviews. There is no longer a need to buy a $100 WP for prepaid or a rarely used device.
I really liked the launcher (the one thing most people like).
That's not gonna work all on its own.
They need to tap into dissatisfaction with Android or iOS and exploit that.
If that dissatisfaction isn't there, there's nothing they can do at this point.
Windows Phone 7 users HAD to buy new phones if they wanted to use Windows Phone 8.
Jazzy Network
Member
Michael Fisher from Pocketnow is one of the biggest WP fanboys I've seen and he tore the cover off the 950XL in his review. That's my first and last impression of WP10.
For whatever reason his unit had quite a few bugs so he was understandably rough on it. Personally, I haven't had any of the bugs on my XL. It has worked great thus far and W10M has been fine.
Yea, I get the feeling a lot of these Windows Phone-only users just don't know what they're missing. Browsing/email/SMS/maps....that's like basic stuff. What makes a smartphone smart are apps.
The thing is, on Android and iPhone, there are basically no limits. You want something you'll have it. On WP you're constantly limited in what you can do with your phone. You're at the mercy of the few people developing apps for WP. You have to compromise or find workarounds.
Your bank probably doesn't have an app for you to deposit checks. A WP user may be like "Well I don't use checks that often anyway!" That's not the point. The point is you shouldn't have had to even think about this limitation in the first place.
Not to mention all the popular games you've heard about that are completely unavailable to you.
CurlyHairedMonster
Banned
I know what I'm missing but in the end I'm not missing much. Windows phone OS is just better in everyway to my android and iphones. It's clean, organized, simple to use and a refreshing change from the icon mess of the other two.
My bank app is on here and any app I care about as well. Never found a reason to have 100 apps and phone gaming is...phone gaming, I.e, forcing myself to use my phone cause I'm bored.
I don't think any WP user in this thread has said they don't use, or need, any apps on their smartphone. It's that the built-in functionality plus apps that are on the platform cover the vast majority of what you would need to do while still giving the superior (in my opinion) day-to-day experience.
I took a quick look and I have ~150 apps on my 950 XL so it's not like I only have the bare minimum. I have around 15-20 apps (including OS apps/functionality) that I use regularly (Outlook email/calendar, Edge, Twitter, Readit, sports, news, Nextgen Reader, weather, Groove, Spotify, Podcast Lounge/Pocket Casts, MS Health, Tapped, Ecobee, stocks portfolio, etc), and several are WP-only.
Jumping to iOS or Android wouldn't improve my daily use of most of these apps, and certainly wouldn't increase my happiness x100.
andythinkpad
Member
It was never alive. It was always a walking zombie baby.
Oh stop it. No one is as naive as you're claiming. Go back and read what I wrote about my experiences using both iOS and Windows Phone for many years each.
"There are basically no limits" my ass.
Caayn
Member
I started my smartphone adventures on Android, I've seen the thousands of clone apps first hand. I've used iOS devices for work related things.
I know that I'm "missing" apps. And you know what? I don't care. Everything I do on a smartphone is there on WP. And yes, my bank has a WP app as well. Just because you miss apps on the platform doesn't mean that others share the same issue.
My mother used a Lumia 520 for a long time until the phone's battery simply couldn't hold out any longer. So I went out and bought her an iPhone 5c. Because she wanted to use the apps her friends where using. You know what's the funny part? After six months of using the iPhone I bought her a Lumia 550. Why? Because after the first weeks she realized that she only actually uses Whatsapp/Internet/Facebook. And she couldn't get used to iOS. Never in my life did I need to give someone as much support as I did with her and her iPhone 5c.
Not everyone is in need of one billion different apps. Yes the app gap is there, it's a real thing. But does it affect everybody? It most certainly does not
This is sad but also something I kind of predicted. I bought a Lumia 530 because I like the integration between its OS and Windows 8.1. I chose it because it's cheap and pretty much covers the things I want and Microsoft promised that it'll be eligible to upgrade to Windows 10 until two months after I purchased when they backed down support for it. Now, Windows 10 Mobile has been full of delays and it's obvious that Microsoft is no longer putting much effort in developing it. This is probably the last Microsoft hardware that I will buy. I hope for Xbox fans that Microsoft won't just abandon that console brand especially now that Sony's Playstation is kicking its ass.
Prophet Steve
Member
Hi, looking forward to the new OS when they have worked out the kinks.
Uh okay.
I completely agree with you on the games.
But then again I've had Monument Valley for half a year and played like five minutes.
Also my bank has a Windows Phone app anyway and for many services I can use web apps.
Honestly the only thing that bothers me is that the Adfreetime website is shit for phones and the app is only available for iOS and Android. I literally can't think of anything else.
LiveFromKyoto
Member
Blackberry won.
Well they shut down the Microsoft YouTube app because they were bypassing the advertisements. I know they have removed certain apps from the Android Play Store for the same reason too.
Maybe Windows Phone's market share is so low now they simply don't care.
This, fuck Microsoft.
John Caboose
Member
There's plenty of evidence of Google actively shutting out or worsening their services on Windows Phones and for Microsoft in general. They say "we shut it down because it was not legitimate" but then they don't supply the APIs needed to access YouTube to others. They have implemented checks that block for example Google Maps when using the Windows Phone browser. They removed EAS from Gmail making it harder to properly sync email with competing platforms.
They are actively trying to kill intercompatibility to make sure their market position is protected.
I think it's more about: which apps do I *really* use, and which ones have I installed just because they were supposed to be those cool mind-bending ones but only used them once. I'm a Android user, I use my phone daily, and, to be honest, there are maybe ten or less new apps that I've installed within the last year that I use regularly. Sure, there were more that I installed to check them up, but since I've never used them afterwards, they were quickly uninstalled (it doesn't help that my phone has a mere 2GB designed for apps >_>).
And it's a shame that Windows Phones are dying. The OS, while not perfect, is really good (Win8.1 that is, haven't tried mobile Win10). The start screen with live tiles is something I would love to see Android. My dad had a Lumia 520 phone for over a year, and for a budget phone that it was, it run perfectly: smooth animations, (almost) no lags and crashes. Using an Android phone with the same specifications would be a horrible experience.
However, Microsoft's support is just awful. They abandoned WP7 without any hesitations while promoting WP8. Then they basically left WP8 users while working on WP10. Nowadays they release more interesting, unique apps on Android and iOS than on their own damn system. And finally they released their new flagship phones with a new system that clearly isn't stable enough to be release to public.
dragonelite
Member
Visual studio bad(in what world, maybe vs a custom vim but even then), dam i work with xCode(such a bad ide, minimal swift support) and Android studio(AS 2.0 looks really interesting).
But documentation is still a bit lackluster and i wish it was easier to make a app more programmatically with UWP.
For a lot of things i lose time doing them in XML, XAML or Interface builder, that's quiet easy to do in code where i can customize it easier.
That has more to do with me being better in coding things up then to describe them in XML
My guess is, it has fatten up their IP portfolio a good bit.
Calm Killer
In all media, only true fans who consume every book, film, game, or pog collection deserve to know what's going on.
Why do you need an app? Go to YouTube.com......
There are YouTube apps....
I never understood apps for websites.
I had an iPhone for 5 years and hated it. Had a Droid for 3 years, hated it. Windows phone is amazing. I will never go back.
Which was replaced with another and it still had problems.
That's not why. It was mainly down to MS building it in native code when Google wanted them to do it in HTML5 instead http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/09/microsoft-re-releases-its-youtube-app-for-windows-phone/
EdwardTivrusky
Member
Hi, pleased to meet you. You seem angry, would you like a cup of tea and a nice biscuit to help settle you?
I legitimately enjoy using my Windows Phone. I've used everyone's OS prior to smartphones and i used Android for years before switching and a WP will be the first phones i look at when i upgrade in a few months. I have my Galaxy 10.1 for apps and i have about 5 installed. I'm just not a regular app user, i tend to use them for 5 minutes and then delete them after 6 months of not using them.
My phone and case are bright Orange too
Fuck silver and Black, bleh, BORING! Of course. Zune HD was awesome. Ahead of it's time with that OLED screen.
Caayn
Member
Which was a bullshit reason of Google to pull down the app.
Yes. MS isn't saying it's dead The Verge is.
LOL! That what Google said BUT they own apps on their own phone OS wasn't even HTML. The point is Google didn't want their stuff on WP to give them any sort of traction. Period. Hey, I get it it's business.
brotkasten
Member
Windows phone fans are like those Japanese soldiers isolated on islands after WWII ended, still fanatically fighting for ... something.
I knew you were Thurrott.
You have nearly a thousand posts in the latest Windows phone thread alone...
At least give Thurrott the credit man.
EdwardTivrusky
Member
Ha ha ha ha ha, who's fighting for anything? It's just a phone and people have different preferences. You really take this shit seriously don't you? Wow.
I still don't know what they were thinking breaking app compatibility not once, but twice when moving between major releases of the platform. Can you imagine is previous apps wouldn't work on iOS 9? No, because Apple's not stupid enough to do that.
It all comes down to Microsoft's need to have to shoehorn all its consumer products into alignment with whatever the company mission statement is at the time. The Twist navigation UI on Zune was carried onto the XBox 360 in order to replace NXE. Windows Phone begat Windows 8's start screen and setup, which in turn gave us Snap as a primary feature on the XBox One, which is slow and ineffective. Now universal apps are breaking backwards compatibility for a second time on the Windows Phone platform.
Let your mobile platform stand on its own without having to be co-opted into whatever the Redmond brain trust thinks is "hot" that month.
It all comes down to Microsoft's need to have to shoehorn all its consumer products into alignment with whatever the company mission statement is at the time. The Twist navigation UI on Zune was carried onto the XBox 360 in order to replace NXE. Windows Phone begat Windows 8's start screen and setup, which in turn gave us Snap as a primary feature on the XBox One, which is slow and ineffective. Now universal apps are breaking backwards compatibility for a second time on the Windows Phone platform.
Let your mobile platform stand on its own without having to be co-opted into whatever the Redmond brain trust thinks is "hot" that month.
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