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Comment by qubex | Hacker News Reader

The total failure of Windows Phone to gain acceptance in the market is a huge pity. I have a Lumina 950 as a secondary device (for loading with a local SIM while abroad) and it’s a solid performer with a polished OS, refreshingly ’different’ UI, and excellent basics (build quality, call quality, and battery life). The basic, core apps I ’need’ in this role are available (WhatsApp, Facebook/Messenger, Twitter, & cetera) and it hotspots very dependably towards my myriad Apple devices (iPhone7+, iPadPro10.5, 11” MacBook). It even has some very fascinating features not seen elsewhere (I have a dedicated dock for using certain apps with an external screen, keyboard and mouse, whose name escapes me at the moment).

I really wished they had managed to gain a foothold, because as a platform it really lacks nothing (excepting an app developer base, and actual producers of handsets).

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As an ex-WP user who also switched to android I would argue the android UX is a step backward in some respects.

When I open an app in WP I received immediate loading/animation feedback.

In android many core actions (such as initiating a phone call) cause temporary freeze while the app loads. Did the phone receive my tap? Do I need to tap again or wait?

Coming from a more fluid interface like the WP this is something I really miss and makes android feel a little more primitive in comparison (but the advanced apps do make up for it)

May be your Android is underpowered? It's not an excuse, of course. My iPhone 4S might lag for a few seconds between receiving tap and displaying an action. Modern iPhone (or iPhone 4S with iOS 6) responded instantly. Or it could indicate some kind of hardware problem, where driver is causing delay somewhere in the stack, for example very slow SD-card or something similar.

I have an S8 and can get similar freezing

It doesn't really have to do with the power of the device, it's just that once you hit the call button the UI hangs until the call starts before switching to 'calling view' rather than acknowledging the user's intent immediately. It's certainly more noticeable on slower phones but it's fundamentally a UX problem.

Funny. I have the exact same issue with iPhones. Just got an iPhone 8 and it still has it. Something about phone calls is just funky I guess.

My samsung s7 edge, has had this problem with phone calls for quite a while and, while not the fastest on the market, I doubt it would be considered slow.

I had Lumia 520 ($140) for a year and it was snappier than any $300+ Android I've tried.

Which Android device are you using?

s7 edge

Every 24 hours reboot. Fixes that for me. Feels like an old Windows Server.

Is there an expectation that most phones won't be able to provide hotspot / tethering for various platforms (not sure if there's some peculiarities with the three precisely branded devices you mention)?

Polished OS, build quality, call quality, battery life -- these features are all available (and were pre-Microsoft mobile) in both Android and Apple worlds.

Be cautious about assuming that the applications you use are all other people will want. I suspect the massive disparity in application volume & variety was the driving force behind Microsoft abandoning this platform.

>Polished OS,...,battery life

I don't agree Android offers that as an OS. Battery life is a little hardware specific, but on average Android provides below par "performance per mWh" compared to the other two.

Comparing "average Android" to WP / iPhone is unfair. Apple is the sole manufacturer of iPhone, while WP mainly refers to Lumia (90% market share by MS/Nokia as per [1]). If you want to compare Android with them, its fair to compare something like Pixel / Galaxy because long tail of other manufacturers just drag the average down.

[1] https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/sty...

You seem to be misunderstanding, I mean the core philosophies of Android as an OS that make it convenient/powerful in some aspects also lend to it being inefficient with battery life.

Android is making strides with things like Doze, but the same things that make iOS feel locked down for me as a developer compared to Android are also a huge part of the reason why iPhones can get such amazing standby time (since crappy software isn't even allowed to do inefficient things)

And fwiw, if I were talking about hardware, I'd expect the lower-end devices are better with battery life because more of them come with near bone stock Android than flagships.

I have an Alcatel Idol 4s for Windows, and I actually like it a lot.

(Confusingly is not the same hardware as the android Idol 4s. The windows version actually has much better hardware. Snapdragon 820 processor.)

I would say that some of the apps were either sub-par or missing. The Uber app wasn't as good, and there was no Lyft app. Yet, I found that the mobile websites for both were perfectly fine, and you can pin them to your start screen just like apps.

The AMC theater app for both Android and Windows always gave me endless trouble, but I likewise realized that their mobile website was just fine.

The Comcast/Xfinity site likewise can do basically anything their app can do.

I think being forced to use mobile sites is much less unpleasant than one would expect, and this is the way things should be trending anyways. It is the only way to achieve adequate cross-platform development.

I was really hoping to have a full Windows 10 phone that ran x86-64 apps and you could then dock and use like a regular computer. I think Intel scuttled that idea when they dropped the mobile chip though. It could have been a game changer.

It's still 100% possible and could be happening either this or next year as mentioned by Snapdragon [0]. There is a Youtube video showcasing full Windows 10 running on an ARM processor [1].

Windows Central have also reported Microsoft's next vision of the OS called "Andromeda" there will be a base OS that can have components bolted on [2].

[0] http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-hardware/windows-10/28534/win... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U [2] https://www.windowscentral.com/andromeda-os

ARM isn't x86_64...

MS has successfully run intel windows via emulation on ARM.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/249292-microsoft-decla...

I've liked that sort of idea, but not really as it has been currently implemented.

What I really want is just some way to maintain my 'working state' wherever I go.

When I'm in front of a desk, I'll want to make best use of multiple screens, higher-speed networking and storage. And when mobile (on a phone or tablet) I still want to maintain my context, at least in terms of what I've been looking at on the browser, in email, etc.

At any rate, I don't want to be power/thermal limited by the processor I can carry around in my pocket.

>I still want to maintain my context, at least in terms of what I've been looking at on the browser, in email, etc.

That's Apple's strategy with their continuity technology.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204681

That was project Rome from Microsoft

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/project-rome

I think this was the Holy Grail, a regular PC in a phone form factor. Of course you are left with the problem of needing a monitor and keyboard to plug it into when you want to do any work.

As someone that invested into UWP development for Windows Phone, it did not help at all that they rebooted 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 SDKs, always forcing us to rewrite the apps, manually.

The whole .NET Standard only happened to appease developers fed up with the whole story.

On top of that they kept failing the promises regarding the OS upgrades, even dropping devices that were running the preview builds without issues.

Every major version was a new os. Their phone strategy was terrible and lacked commitment. It didn't help that it was started by one CEO and abandoned midway through by the next CEO.

> Every major version was a new os.

I had had some Nokia phone with WP7 and it was a pretty nice phone despite lacking some apps, and I was looking forward the the future of the platform. Of course when the future did come witn WP8, they said there would be no updates to existing phones and they were pushing developers to use APIs that would only work on the new OS meaning my limited pool of apps wouldn't grow on my current phone, which hurt more than the no OS upgrade. While the lack of OS upgrade isn't uncommon in the Android world, Google doesn't generally push developers to abandon the old OS base so quickly. So with my Windows Phone basically EOL'd overnight(within about 6 months or so of buying it), I went back to Android.

It failed repeatedly under one CEO, until the next CEO put it out of its misery.

Ironically, by the time it was terminated it had developed into a very valid product indeed. Shame - Apple and Android definitely need more competition from someone with actual resources (sorry to the Sailfish, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Phone, etc etc).

> It failed repeatedly under one CEO, until the next CEO put it out of its misery.

The person who was the head of the Windows Phone group while it failed repeatedly under the first CEO was promoted and put in charge of the entire Windows division by the next CEO.

Something to contemplate.

I don't think that was at all part of why it failed. Palm stuck to their OS but theirs failed too.

I think all that ultimately mattered was that Android became the Windows of mobile phones; an operating system that each manufacturer/carrier could customize to sell the idea of value-add (with no actual value-add, I know).

Palm did not kill webOS. HP killed webOS.

webOS wasn't going to survive regardless

Palm sold webOS because it ran out of money. It ran out of money because webOS was not a success.

It was really close, Verizon was going to make the Pre its flagship device but changed its mind when the Droid was a success. The smartphone landscape could looks very different right now had the timelines been just a tad different.

>Every major version was a new os

I can report this is exactly what drove me from the platform. I adopted Windows Phone out the gate and received a never-ending litany of supportive emails, oneDrive bonuses, etc. There were missing features, but early adopters were promised they were coming and I think most of us thought the experience was worth compromising for early on. Then Windows Phone "7.5" released barely a year after I'd bought my phone, included most of the features early adopters had begged for, and didn't support any of the phones people had already bought. Soon some apps didn't work without 7.5 either. It felt like we all got flipped the bird for taking a risk on Microsoft's platform and I switched to Android. Every aspect of it felt dishonest and disingenuous - "7.5" implies an incremental release, and in terms of features it really should have been one. I have no idea if they just couldn't hack it on the weaker early devices or if MS honestly thought we were all going to run out and buy Nokias immediately. I mean, I nearly did a year later when they were $1...

The dock system was called Continuum: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum

I think its also the new mentality of MSFT. They are more willing to kill projects. The old micrsoft sunk so much money into xbox until it became big.

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