To me it seems they weren't content being a niche for whatever percentage of the market wanted phones that were simple, consistent, and didn't bother them. When Windows 10 Mobile came out, they started adding a bunch of useless animations, it became harder to use in every way. Although I guess the writing was on the wall by then. When I returned my phone they didn't even bother to ask why.

The audio design of the Windows Phone was exquisite. The physical design of the Nokias was also excellent. It always felt to me like it was the phone that was most thoughtfully designed, and it just arrived too late to be able to compete realistically...who wanted to write apps for Windows phone when you could write for ecosystems that already had wide adoption?

I loved it when my UT Starcom windows phone would crash mid phone call. I was able to convince Verizon to give me a free upgrade to blackberry because it was so bad.

Do I miss my blackberry? Not really, but I do miss how excited I was to have a device that was actually useful. I feel like we're just iterating over the same base design these days, which is fine, but the excitement isn't there for me like it used to be.

I do have a few contentions with your assessments.

I got my Windows Phone in the summer of 2013. It was WP8.

It had pretty fast notifications. In fact, I used to get real-time CNN notifications and I got information much faster than when what show up on the news channel. I even got wind of Nelson Mandela's death before Wikipedia made any edits and any obituaries made it to Google's first page.

The browser was Internet Explorer 11. It wasn't the best, but it performed well enough for reading articles.

Apps. I agree and that's still a problem almost a decade later.

IM was actually one of the strengths of the phone with the People Hub/Rooms feature. You could use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all in one application. I don't know why they removed in Windows 10 Mobile.

The games were mostly iOS ports, so quality varied, but many were well-known. Angry Birds and its myriad variations, Fruit Slash, Candy Crush, etc. It even got GTA San Andreas. But a distinctive feature for achievement junkies was that many of those games had Xbox Live integration (still works too). The phone also worked as a touch controller and remote with the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One.

You're right that it wasn't the most capable phone. But it offered a lot more than a refinement of the basic essence of a phone.

As a former Windows Phone user, The Palm Phone is about as close to that experience as you can get to that experience of a smartphone that generally leaves me alone.

Of course, they only made one version, they botched the marketing by marketing it as a "companion phone" initially, and it was released in 2018, so eventually it won't be an option with modern apps.

I had one of the later (probably last) Windows Phones from Nokia, and I think they corrected a lot of these gripes by the end. Notifications were relatively okay from what I remember, and WhatsApp worked perfectly fine for IM. Never bothered with games, but I understand the app development landscape was quite awful with it.

Still, an absolutely stunning phone with the best screen I have ever used, and easily the best camera I have ever used. Of course, I dropped my budget significantly after that one broke, but it was truly magnificent.