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Comment by hashhar | Hacker News Reader

The Zune (media players) and Windows Phone (upto 8, not even 8.1). The fluid interface with focus on readability and content.

The photos app was amazing. Live tiles are amazing. The music player and it's live tile was amazing. The performance was the same whether on a low end budget phone or the top of the line model.

So many good ui and ux decisions like the lack of hamburger menus and placement of all menu items along the bottom of the screen with the extra items being hidden away in a drop-down using ellipsis. System wide light and dark themes jazzed up using an accent color that all of your apps respected.

The People hub (contacts app) was the central point for all social media. Facebook and Twitter were integrated. I didn't need fb messenger. Skype and fb messenger were integrated with the messaging app.

Damn, I wish we made it.

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Imo, the hubs were really what made WP special and it would've been amazing with more third-party buy-in (which realistically was never going to happen). Going to a single centralized spot for social media or whatever else, instead of browsing through a dozen different apps, is such a great idea.

I was totally on board with WP but then Microsoft bungled the later WP updates (my phone wasn't supported, and it was one of the last ones with a physical keyboard) and third-parties never really supported the platform.

Blackberry 10 OS had the same thing -- a unified location (called the hub) where all of you communication would go. It was great, except that third-party apps rarely (and decreasingly) integrated with it.

With Android, Blackberry changed its strategy and now integrated all social notifications into the Hub. But it just opens the corresponding conversation in the social app, you can't respond directly from the Hub (which should be possible to implement now with Nougat-style answer to notifications)

Oh, cool. Didn't know that. Getting third-parties to integrate with something like this is a huge uphill battle - they just don't have any incentive when they don't get to design/dictate how users interface with their platforms. Ceding that kind of control to a company like Microsoft seems like a losing proposition to them, even if it may be convenient for consumers.

I must say, the first time in ages I used a modern windows phone was some Nokia in 2014ish, still running wp 8. I was really positively surprised how well designed it was. Pleasing to use, at least what I could judge from in a day of use. This whole tile bullshit from the desktop finally made sense and felt great. Also Scrolling felt smoother than on any Android device I ever held for some reason.

Absolutely loved the windows phone for what it was.

The UI and UX were both extremely well thought out and worked smoother than any Android phone on equivalent specs. (apart from the confusing settings menus)

My dad's 100$ nokia 840 still runs like a champ. I can't think of any $100 Android phone with that sort of smoothness over 4 years.

The lack of adoption from both devs and users killed it.

I woul love to see it being revived at some point, but I doubt we will see that day.

> The lack of adoption from both devs and users killed it.

Both of these fall square on Microsoft. Developers didn't care for the platform in part because there weren't users, but also because every version had a completely different UI framework that wasn't compatible with older oses, but if you didn't use it, your app wouldn't fit well on the new oses (and occasionally never start up). Developers of Windows mobile 6 apps had no path to wp7, other than rewriting everything.

Users got a very weird upgrade story. Sometimes, upgrades were just not available, despite promises that they would be. Windows Mobile 10 was a mess, Edge is worse than mobile IE, but users don't have a choice to go back. Microsoft pushed back on a mobile Firefox in the app store early, and if they changed their mind it was too late.

Finally, Microsoft decided to retarget towards the high end with Windows Mobile 10 devices -- somehow they forgot that most of the devices they were selling were low end devices, where they could have a lot better responsiveness than a similar cost Android, because of platform differences (single app at a time is probably a big part, but maybe there's some other components).

Windows Mobile 10 also lost all the boxy UI which I loved :(

I finally "upgraded" from a Windows 8.1 phone to an Android phone because no one makes apps for Windows phone. I miss the Windows phone UI. Tiles are just a superior to Android's menu/launcher.

had the same transition few month ago, i can highly recommend `Square Home 2`, i was able to recreate my winphone layout 1:1 sans the hubs

Wow terrific thank you.

I had the Nokia Lumia 920 with Windows Phone 8. That was really where smartphones peaked. I dislike both iOS and Android, they've just tried to migrate the desktop metaphor to the phone and it's not really working.

For me they peaked with the Lumia 925. The swiping keyboard had an accuracy unmatched by anything since, including the Lumia 950 I'm using to type this, which sucks (win 10 mobile rebuilt it for some stupid reason. It was perfect!)

I still think about going back to the 925. Battery life was great, camera was decent, and it was the perfect size for hand and pocket. Only the browser lets it down and that's mostly because modern js sites don't support ie mobile and a lot of stuff breaks

I still have all generation Zune's and I still use them quite often. They're off the grid, Zune software still works with no online features, FM radio, and the interface is pretty decent. I wish they didn't get discontinued as well.

That feature set sounds pretty similar to the $20 mp3 player I used before I had a smartphone. You can still buy really cheap mp3 players that have FM radios and work offline.

I miss large tap targets and easy one-handed nav on those systems.

What was a live tile?

On a side note I do wish there were strong 3rd or 4th choices for a phone OS. A shame Blackberry is now just an Android flavor.

A live tile in windows phone, 8, 10, etc is an app icon that contains realtime info like weather. I've never used the particular app mentioned, but live tiles are just a cool way to display info.

Yeah you could flick open your phone and the live tile said the current Temperature. Or rotated your latest photos in the photo app (or favourite photos depending on config), showed the latest headline in news app.

I spent alot less time on my phone cos information was at a glance and I didn't need to open/close many apps all the time.

The next step in the evolution was MixView similar to the Zune software. See this for a demo https://youtu.be/uoZw5PK_6XQ. Do look at the date to see how ahead of the times they were.

Also dedicated camera buttons on mobile phones with two step capture. On the first slight press the focus was adjusted and then on a harder press the image was clicked.

Just looked them up on Youtube. It looks like a very good UI/UX idea. Surprised Apple or Android hasn't copied it, except for the useless live clock icon on their clock app.

I have a ton of widgets on my Android home screen which are exactly that. Google at-a-glance, music player, calendar, stock screener, photos, it's awesome.

Widgets are nice but in the last 3 years of using an Android I've only ever used widgets for my podcast app, music players, a few tap to dial contacts, a calendar widget with the day view.

Widgets are a good idea but they look horribly inconsistent.

> what was a live tile?

Similar to android's "widgets".

yeah but with consistent design ;)

And consistent performance / battery life

Isn't a hamburger menu just a two-dimensional ellipsis?

The difference is that instead of being in the top left or right corners all the all menus / buttons were placed at the bottom of the screen which made them infinitely more accessible to use.

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