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Comment by WorldMaker | Hacker News Reader

The living room is typically the biggest screen in people's homes, the screen they spend the most time with, and the screen they are the "fondest" for as it is the home for much of their entertainment. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to be at the center of that? Microsoft wants to "own" all of your screens, by being the friendly operating system and development tool provider for them, so of course the battle of the living room is huge for them.

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Is that really true? I would think that most people spend more time on their phones than watching TV.

You are right. http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-i...

It may not be true anymore, but it certainly was when the Xbox division was first conceived.

Yes, that's a good point, and I get that. But these days there are more smaller screens that they don't control because their mobile phone strategy was a huge failure. I would focus on controlling the smaller screens because that's where most entertainment and things happen.

Typing this from my android phone.

I have so many opinions on this and could quickly devolve this into a long winded tangent, but the short answer is: Yes, there are many screens and Microsoft clearly has strategies for all the fronts, mobile included. Also, just because Microsoft is down, don't count them out just yet in the mobile screen front. Microsoft has the best leverage right now, of any company/platform, to turn wins on any screen into possible gains in all of them...

Microsoft Lumia owner and fan

I wanted a Windows phone. The GUI was so nice. But they sort of give up. Knowing MS, they are probably cooking something now that they are in the embrace stage of their business plan.

I owned a Lumia Icon for about a year not terribly long ago, about the time WP 8.1 came out. My observations:

- The Update system was extremely confusing, I had a hell of a time just figuring out how to update to 8.1, including needing a firmware update, figuring out how to apply a firmware update, then doing it three times over because I had that many. While the system eventually notified me of the system update, it remained silent on the firmware.

- The UI language was fantastic, seriously I loved the way the phone handles information. The only issue there is that many apps like Facebook and what have you totally ignored it, and Microsoft let them on anyway. What good is building a UI like that if you're going to let the developers just do whatever they want anyway?

- The app store in general is extremely limited. I realize Microsoft can't do anything here but I'm holding them partially responsible because of how late they were to this game.

- My Icon would get very hot with only regular use. A quick flip through twitter or even just some websites and the back of the device became uncomfortably warm.

- The keyboard is AMAZING. Seriously Microsoft knocked it out of the park on that one.

- The device felt well built and (aside of the heat issues) never presented as though it was poorly made. Connectors were solid, battery life was very good, and the bright colored interfaces with the white-on-black text make it genuinely a pleasure to use.

Eventually I had to face reality and bail (too limited on capabilities, plus I'm an iOS developer and at the time they just released the 6, the first decently sized iPhone) and went that way. That said should I change careers I'd definitely look the Windows Phone way again.

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