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Comment by generj | Hacker News Reader

I also deeply enjoyed my Nokia Lumia.

They clearly took many design cues from Zune, which was another excellent product I loved that did not take off.

I think if MS Phone had stuck it out a bit longer hybrid apps may have helped bring some developers in.

It sounds like Nadella still doesn’t get it though. MSFT tried several times to “reinvent the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones” and none succeeded. Windows 8 UC targeting tablets and native apps was a disaster and ate up a lot of goodwill. With tablet PCs and netbooks Microsoft had the right idea too early and with poor technical implementation.

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I liked mine too. Sometimes I think I was the only one, but now I know there were at least three of us.

I had what I think was the lowest end Lumia at the time, a Lumia 520 maybe? It did what it did really well.

The camera was surprisingly OK. The tiles meant I could see what I needed without tapping around. It was much more responsive than other phones in its price range from what I remember too.

Wife here still using some Lumia 525 or 535 Dual-Sim. Only for calls, no messages or internet. Still works surprisingly great.

> I liked mine too. Sometimes I think I was the only one, but now I know there were at least three of us.

I'm pretty sure there were hundreds of us; but maybe only tens.

I don't think Microsoft understands how constantly churning the development framework impacts potential developers, because Windows is so big that developers will suffer through churn until they realize they should just stick to ancient methods that will continue to work. Windows Phone had no ancient methods, and important new OS features were tied to new frameworks anyway, but there wasn't enough users to encourage most developers to suffer through it. That they couldn't make Windows Mobile 10 work (well) on low end devices like the Lumia 520 is probably a mix of organizational and engineering failure, but either way, the push from Microsoft to build 'universal windows platform' apps that would only run on Windows Mobile 10 prompted developers to cut support for WP7 and WP8 in favor of WM10, even though WM10 never had more users than the earlier versions.

Also, mobile Edge was soooooo much worse than mobile IE, woof.

#totallynotstillbitter

I remember a lot of positive commentary on Windows Phone's UI and concepts. It was distinctive from iPhone and Android, which, with Android largely aping iOS, were pretty same-same, so it was a refreshing reinterpretation. And besides that, a third credible competitor was and still is welcome.

I think you were far from alone in your disappointment watching it wither on the vine.

I owned a windows phone. No. It was bad. It had all the misguided UX problems of Windows 8, but in your pocket. Such bad usability. Given more time, I don’t think it would’ve gotten better based on other MS software offerings in 2023

I think he does get it, though. Windows 11 is the most touch friendly version of the OS to date. While Windows tablets aren't as common as say, the iPad, they're inherently more useful.

I will say, they do need to get their heads out of their asses for MAUI.

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