Why Windows Phone Was a $7B Failure

I'd go to my grave claiming that Pocket PCs were better and more fungible than iPhones manufactured up to 2012. when Apple's app ecosystem really took off.

Pocket PC was a beast, you could do anything on there. Even excel and ppt were there, stuff that Apple still hasn't perfected even today.

I guess I am one of the last Windows Phone holdouts. I will be retiring mine in a few weeks, maybe less, since Verizon's 3G service will be obsoleted I think in December.

It has been a good run for a reliable phone with great call quality and the ability to sync with all my Microsoft services. Great battery life, high quality build, simple and efficient interface. Just all-around an excellent product that saw no major apps developed to take advantage of all the goodness.

It is inconvenient to use now though since the browser is IE and most sites do not render well or at all on mobile with IE so I use it strictly for calls, photos, Office-related files, and texts.

I will move to an Apple iPhone. I am not nearly as familiar with that device as I am with Windows devices. I have not owned an Apple product since grad school in 1990 when I bought both an Epson PC (OS2 and MS-DOS) and a Mac SE/30. The SE/30 was a step up from my first PC, a 128k Mac which I still have. I returned the SE/30 for credit during the 6-week(?) time window you were given on Apple Credit to evaluate it (I think it was a $3600 purchase back then by the time I had all the peripherals). I simply couldn't afford to keep it. The PC had cost less than half of the cost of the Mac and the software ecosystem for geoscience on a Mac was still very small. The OS though was so much more polished, intuitive, and coherent on the Mac.

I am the last in my family to still use a Windows Phone. I steered everyone else to iPhones several years ago without ever seriously considering Android since it has tight ties to Google, which I have avoided as much as possible for years.

This video was a step back in time for me and a wake-up call that I should borrow the wife's device more often so that I can become familiar with it before I get my own.

It just feels wrong to abandon such a well-designed device simply because of a radio but it is what it is.

I loved my windows phones. I was so sad when the ecosystem floundered and I had to go back to the iPhone