Windows Phone: 15 years later, Microsoft’s greatest mistake

Which phone OS did you use in the early 2010s

  • Windows Phone

    Votes: 36 33.6%

  • iOS

    Votes: 29 27.1%

  • Android

    Votes: 48 44.9%

  • BlackBerry OS

    Votes: 7 6.5%

  • Symbian

    Votes: 7 6.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 7 6.5%
  • Total voters
    107
RetroGamingUK

RetroGamingUK

Member


This came out during the height of Windows 7 and iOS 3/MacOS Snow Leopard, that flat-design "Metro UI" looked dated then and with the resurgence of skeumorphism it looks dated now.

Other than that the OS was nice to use, but devs by then were committed to iPhone and Android.
 
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It took me the longest time to upgrade to a smart phone. I used a flip phone for far too long.

Always wanted a Windows phone but the lack of apps killed it. Tried Android and hated it. iphone is the place to be even though I hate apple with a passion.
 
I sincerely miss my windows phone. It didnt cost as much as an apple and it was a snappier, more competent OS than android. Right at the end they were getting Android apps to work on all windows phones. I tried it out, you just install the apk and most of the time it just worked. Didnt care about the lack of apps as i use the web browser instead which still do to this day because apps require too many permissions.
 
I was onboard with Microsoft's unified app for PC, Phone, and Xbox strategy at the time. It made a lot of sense to me and I was waiting for the hardware to catch up to Android phones, but it never happened.
 
WhiteWaterM00se said:
The biggest mistake Ms ever made was abandoning this project. It was the only phone to ever get me to switch from an iPhone and it wasn't bad. It had serious potential.
Click to expand...
Feel the same. The dwindling app support is what killed it unfortunately.

Also, RIP to one of the greatest phone cameras that existed at the time and was arguably better than anything that released after it for almost a decade, the Lumia 1020.

heres-my-now-fully-working-lumia-1020-i-daily-drive-it-now-v0-9scsbidg73lc1.jpg

use-lumia-1020-as-a-digital-camera-v0-00uoshsai81f1.png

nokia-lumia-1020-v0-hvmqw7ivi7gc1.jpg


There was a youtube channel called 'Will it beat Nokia' that tested nearly every phone that released after it, against it, and nearly all of them failed to match it's quality for years until 2021/2022.



Then the channel finally retired shortly afterwards.
 
I loved the Windows operating system on smartphones so much that to this day, I still customize my Android phones with an app to make them look like it.
 
I loved the concept of the windows phone. If they could have kept it going as a sort of laptop replacement that docked and had full windows support I'd have been in on that 100%
 
Beautiful phone, the lack of traditional apps killed it.

I had a Lumia for awhile and it was sleek as fuck. Really good camera, for it's time, too.
 
I had an HP iPaq a couple of years right before the iphone came out. Is that where Apple got the 'i' from?

found a review (mine wasn't purple but grey/silver)
 
Magic Carpet said:
I had an HP iPaq a couple of years right before the iphone came out. Is that where Apple got the 'i' from?

found a review (mine wasn't purple but grey/silver)
Click to expand...


Back when Microsoft ruled the smartphone market.

They were, seemingly, totally unaware of what Apple were working on though.

Seriously it's hard to emphasise to how much the iPhone nailed multi-touch interface design in 2007.
 
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At the time I was already using Android.
Only met one person that was using a Windows Phone and he talked highly of it.
He showed me how it worked and it looked cool. But even at the time, the writing was on the wall, and a few years later, it was dead.
 
I had Lumia 7xx for like 2 years or something, really liked it. Android at the time looked quite archaic.

Of course app support was poor and that was the biggest downside.
 
Cakeboxer said:
I loved the Windows operating system on smartphones so much that to this day, I still customize my Android phones with an app to make them look like it.
Click to expand...
I did that at one point too but it never felt the same. During those years, Lumia and Zune were arguably two of the fastest OS that MS ever made, and this was during a period where a lot of android phones had too much bloat and slowdown for their specs and OS number at the time.
 
March Climber said:
I did that at one point too but it never felt the same. During those years, Lumia and Zune were arguably two of the fastest OS that MS ever made, and this was during a period where a lot of android phones had too much bloat and slowdown for their specs and OS number at the time.
Click to expand...
Try Square Home. It takes a bit of effort to set up, but I'm really happy with it and I bring it with me to every new smartphone.
 
i don't think I have ever seen a person use a windows phone or heard a person talk about a windows phone. Same with the Surface, although I've seen those at BB.

MS stinks at consumer hardware. They should just stick to Windows and boring corpo shit.
 
The two greatest mistakes MS ever made

1.) Killing Windows Phone instead of doubling down on it
2.). Instead of Gamepass, when Microsoft was considering making/pitching "XBOX LIVE" as the backbone of gaming on all consoles, and pc. To this day, i believe this would have been a tremendous success and a serious revenue stream for MS.

We will see if the Activision acquisition becomes their biggest mistake in time.
 
WhiteWaterM00se said:
The two greatest mistakes MS ever made

1.) Killing Windows Phone instead of doubling down on it
2.). Instead of Gamepass, when Microsoft was considering making/pitching "XBOX LIVE" as the backbone of gaming on all consoles, and pc. To this day, i believe this would have been a tremendous success and a serious revenue stream for MS.

We will see if the Activision acquisition becomes their biggest mistake in time.
Click to expand...
I don't know....I worked in windows mobile and there are several I could add that could rank higher than these 2...
 
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Windows Phone 7 was really a year (or more) too late. By the time it released, people had already started to lock into the other smartphone ecosystems.

My company had already switched from Blackberry to Android by 2010, but I had the opportunity to use a Samsung model in early 2011 for about month. It was fine and had some legit advantages compared to Android 2.3, but the third party app situation was poor.
 
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I really liked Windows Phone, kinda bummed it didn't gain enough momentum to compete with iOS and Android.

It was very smooth and snappy even on its outdated 1st gen Snapdragon, way better than Android at the time. The Live Tiles concept was really cool (basically the app icons doubled as widgets and could be resized to fit more info). Also borrowed the "cards" concept from WebOS that has since been adopted by iOS

I liked the minimalist UI, it was a nice contrast to the busy, garish Android skins that HTC/Samsung/Motorola had been forcing on their users.

It also had a few unique games that had Xbox Live achievements and everything. There was this Crackdown tower defense game that used your neighborhood map as the battlefield. And some other tower defense game (forget the name but it had Geometry Wars aesthetics) that was really fun - one of the few games I got 100% of the Xbox Live achievements for.
 
Microsoft is the definition of an ossified monopoly which has no idea how to react in a competitive market

The original Windows Mobile was arguably the first true smartphone OS. It was total shit, crashed all the time, and the Internet Explorer of that era could barely load a website without also crashing. But it was a real OS that had a small but growing ecosystem of apps and it filled a niche at the time. I had one of those early Windows Mobile 5 era devices because people ran their medical database apps on that platform back then

But as usual someone showed up and disrupted everything. And as usual it was Steve Jobs and Apple with the iPhone. The iPhone literally changed the world. Everyone from the "Before iPhone" era was slow to react, not just MS. All the BiP era companies are gone now. Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm, etc. It's true that MS fucked up responding to iPhone but so did everyone else

Only Google, which at the time had not even reached a beta stage with Android, immediately threw what they made into the trash and started over when iPhone was announced. They saw what Steve Jobs had made and instead of (infamously) laughing at it like Steve Ballmer did, they instantly understood it was the future and turned the entire Android project around to imitate it

By the time MS finally reacted and released Windows Phone it was mant years too late. It was also uninspired, had zero app support, and people just straight up don't like Windows very much. So a typical MS "catch up" product which failed to catch up in a meaningful way after the market had already chosen the winners

The rest is history

Edit: My first "After iPhone" smartphone was the Motorola Droid X (2010)
 
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Durien said:
I don't know....I worked in windows mobile and there are several I could add that could rank higher than these 2...
Click to expand...
A friend of mine did also, and would always talk about the amazing potential of windows phone with Office at the time.

I mean they are many. MS acquisitions usually turn out badly over time, imo. But, there are some ones in hindsight that really look questionable.
 
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I loved Windows Phone: RIP. I had a yellow Lumia 9-something-or-other at some point and it is probably my favorite phone of all time. The lack-of-apps thing is all true, but, personally, I never really needed more than basic productivity stuff to function on my device, so this deficiency didn't drive me away from it.

What I did notice at the time: Lack of marketing and sales enthusiasm in carrier/device stores. Numerous times when stopping-in, whether it was when I had AT&T as a carrier or otherwise, the store sales people would always regard the Windows Phone devices as, "those things." "They're weird. Nobody has those. You don't want one of those. Don't you want an iPhone, instead?" This definitely did not help - totally a failure by MS to properly train/instruct partner sales reps.

Went digging through a drawer - couldn't find the Lumia, but found this - I remember this being some cheap WP device; don't remember why I was using it at the time:
QikdEd4xZ8IS5F97.jpg

It powers up...sort of (reboot loop). Evil Ash exclaims, "I live...again!" Though, not really.
 
Cant believe its been 15 years. Still have mine packed away in their original packaging (even the boxes were good!).
Started with the Lumia 430, progressed to the 640 then finished with the 950XL, which to this day, has been my favourite phone.
 
Kacho said:
It took me the longest time to upgrade to a smart phone. I used a flip phone for far too long.

Always wanted a Windows phone but the lack of apps killed it. Tried Android and hated it. iphone is the place to be even though I hate apple with a passion.
Click to expand...
Ubuntu Touch? Sailfish?
 
BennyBlanco said:
i don't think I have ever seen a person use a windows phone or heard a person talk about a windows phone. Same with the Surface, although I've seen those at BB.

MS stinks at consumer hardware. They should just stick to Windows and boring corpo shit.
Click to expand...
I've only seen a few Microsoft phones ever, they were all the 8 style too.

But for surfaces? Best computer I ever used. I'd go back to it n second. See loads of them.
 
I had the 1020, probably still do in a drawer somewhere. AMAZING phone but yeah, the lack of apps back when EVERYONE and their damn mom had an app for stuff with no good web browser version was a bummer.

I feel like MS has somehow lost the ability to figure out a touch interface, or maybe apple/android just have all the intuitive stuff behind patents? If they had kept a version of windows that was lite and fast then we should have had seamless phone to laptop transitions by now, or that "phone docks into a laptop shell" concept.
 
My first phone was a Sony (Ericsson) Xperia X8, wasn't great, but it was super cheap, and when you're a student, you don't have much of a choice.
Then went back and forth, got a Blackberry 8520 (I just realized it's a straight line when you type it on a keyboard, so that explains its name), then Sony Xperia S, Sony Xperia Z1, LG G3, Sony Xperia XA Ultra, Sony Xperia XZ, Sony Xperia 1, Sony Xperia 1 III, and I'll probably buy the Xperia 1 VII soon.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Microsoft is the definition of an ossified monopoly which has no idea how to react in a competitive market

The original Windows Mobile was arguably the first true smartphone OS. It was total shit, crashed all the time, and the Internet Explorer of that era could barely load a website without also crashing. But it was a real OS that had a small but growing ecosystem of apps and it filled a niche at the time. I had one of those early Windows Mobile 5 era devices because people ran their medical database apps on that platform back then

But as usual someone showed up and disrupted everything. And as usual it was Steve Jobs and Apple with the iPhone. The iPhone literally changed the world. Everyone from the "Before iPhone" era was slow to react, not just MS. All the BiP era companies are gone now. Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm, etc. It's true that MS fucked up responding to iPhone but so did everyone else

Only Google, which at the time had not even reached a beta stage with Android, immediately threw what they made into the trash and started over when iPhone was announced. They saw what Steve Jobs had made and instead of (infamously) laughing at it like Steve Ballmer did, they instantly understood it was the future and turned the entire Android project around to imitate it

By the time MS finally reacted and released Windows Phone it was mant years too late. It was also uninspired, had zero app support, and people just straight up don't like Windows very much. So a typical MS "catch up" product which failed to catch up in a meaningful way after the market had already chosen the winners

The rest is history

Edit: My first "After iPhone" smartphone was the Motorola Droid X (2010)
Click to expand...

As Steve Jobs once said, Microsoft is a company that has no taste. They never understood why and how computers could be appealing to people. They still don't.

My first smartphone was a Palm Pre Plus, which was another smartphone OS with a great design but couldn't get the app support.
 
Guys hear me out: We need to bring back tiles on desktop. My Windows 11 desktop is so much wasted space. It's just a big picture. It could easily be a big bunch of buttons. Not shortcuts, buttons.
 
For me, the biggest fuck you and what caused their demise is that they shouldn't have launched Windows Phone 7 at all. Windows Phone 7 devices couldn't be updated to Windows Phone 8. You're telling me, that after being an early adopter of your device, that I don't even have an upgrade path to the newest OS, which was only a year later because you rushed 7 to market using Windows CE while in the background developing Windows phone 8 on Windows NT. This is all while iOS and Android devices had zero issues getting the latest and greatest new OS features through an over the air update. What a crock of shit. I think this was an even bigger blunder than no apps. Maybe if developers didn't have to support two simultaneous pipelines, your shit wouldn't have died and they may have actually wanted to develop for you.
 
crazy how many early Android users there are on here. Those early versions were... rough, especially compared to iOS. Way better now, but I am still shocked early Android survived given how horrible it was.
 
Pagusas said:
crazy how many early Android users there are on here. Those early versions were... rough, especially compared to iOS. Way better now, but I am still shocked early Android survived given how horrible it was.
Click to expand...
Just goes to show how bad MS screwed the pouch here. They should have been the number 2 even with iPhone eating a huge chunk of their pie. But it was one bonehead mistake after the other. Such a shame because android truly was crap in the beginning, especially with all the different versions and skins of Android.
 
Never had a windows phone, but MS gave up way to quick.
JDF said:
Just goes to show how bad MS screwed the pouch here. They should have been the number 2 even with iPhone eating a huge chunk of their pie. But it was one bonehead mistake after the other. Such a shame because android truly was crap in the beginning, especially with all the different versions and skins of Android.
Click to expand...
Google maps - fucking game changer.
 
I used to work for AT&T and I remember we all got gifted a windows phone. It was pretty cool I liked the live tiles. They shouldn't have thrown on the towel imo.
 
Pagusas said:
crazy how many early Android users there are on here. Those early versions were... rough, especially compared to iOS. Way better now, but I am still shocked early Android survived given how horrible it was.
Click to expand...
Early iOS wasn't great either. People forget iOS didn't even support actual apps until version 2.0
 
there are feature on WP that I miss today that aren't in Android or iPhone.

- Social Hub was a great tile/app logged into with your socials like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and you feed would be all you social feeds all in one place.

- Nokia's suite of photo fratures/editors was unrivaled. There was Cinetography gif app where you would choose what part of the still picture you want in motion. A motion blur editor that made still objects looked like they were in motion. There was much more but I've forgotten them.
 
WhiteWaterM00se said:
The two greatest mistakes MS ever made

1.) Killing Windows Phone instead of doubling down on it
2.). Instead of Gamepass, when Microsoft was considering making/pitching "XBOX LIVE" as the backbone of gaming on all consoles, and pc. To this day, i believe this would have been a tremendous success and a serious revenue stream for MS.

We will see if the Activision acquisition becomes their biggest mistake in time.
Click to expand...
Dude, they double/triple down on it on the phone. They lost so much money it crazy
 
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