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Windows Phone - The Best Smartphone OS that Failed to Survive

My first smartphone was a Nokia Lumia with Windows Phone OS. I am using Android devices now, but I still miss my Windows Phone.

Original Story by Prashant Sachdev


Nokia Lumia 925 running Windows Phone 8

Anyone who has used a Windows Phone in the last decade would remember how fast and fluid the OS was. Moreover, it was one of the most secure operating systems back then. Even with all this, Microsoft's ambitious smartphone OS failed to Google's less secure and laggy Android and Apple's expensive iPhones with iOS.

The Birth of Smartphones

The launch of the iPhone in 2007 took the smartphone industry by storm. It was the first mobile phone that did not rely on physical buttons and had an on screen touch keyboard.

Back then, Windows Phone had not been born - Rather, Microsoft was offering Windows Mobile OS that was not a touch screen friendly OS and was mainly built for business customers.

At that time, the then Microsoft CEO - Steve Ballmer laughed at the idea and said that a $500 phone without a physical keyboard does not appeal to the business customers. Back in 2006, Windows Mobile had a market share of more than 15% when Android and iOS didn't even exist.


Windows Mobile OS

Microsoft later realized that smartphones were not only meant for business customers, but people were using their phones as an alternative to music players, digital cameras and other media applications. They also realized that customers were now comfortable with an on-screen touch keypad due to the launch of superior capacitive touchscreens that had better accuracy and were far more sensitive to fingers than the traditional resistive touchscreens.

So, three years later, in 2010, Windows Phone OS was born.


Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 in 2010 which was a brand new OS that completely relied on touchscreen.

It was pleasant to the eyes with a Dark and Light Theme (which Android and iOS have recently added to their software). It had a very different home screen with interactive Live Tiles (something that still exists on Windows 10 for PCs).

The Live Tiles received both love and hate based upon personal preferences - Getting used to it was difficult initially, but was definitely a welcome addition.

The complete software had absolutely amazing animations while navigating through apps. Using the phone was always fun.

Moreover, the entire OS was connected to various internet based services. For e.g., the People Hub that displayed your contacts also displayed updates from Facebook, twitter etc. for all your contacts. The People Hub also synced contact information such as profile pictures, email addresses from Facebook, twitter etc.

The photos app in Windows Phone could automatically backup your photos and videos directly to SkyDrive (now known as OneDrive). This feature was launched by Google and Apple much later.

The Music + Videos Hub was an absolutely fantastic media center app giving access to music library as well as offline videos.


Later, Microsoft also launched Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 with under the hood improvements and feature addition. To my surprise, my then smartphone, the Lumia 520 (which was a budget device from 2013) got updated to the latest software for years - and these software updates did not impact the device performance or the battery life unlike Android Updates.

Microsoft also added a very easy to use Data Sense app in Windows Phone 8.1 which helped manage mobile data usage in the pre-Jio era.


Data Sense and Storage Sense Apps

The best part about all these apps was that they were 1st Party Apps, so they were baked into the OS which led to a very fast and smooth user experience.

Apps - The Cancer of Windows Phone

The core reason for the failure of Windows Phone was Apps.

Many people would argue that it was the lack of applications in general that led to the death of the OS - However, I believe it was Google who had been the real culprit.

Google has been notorious when it comes to supporting operating systems that they do not own.

Due to this, basic Google Applications such as YouTube, Google App, Google Drive etc. were all missing in the Windows Store. Google tried doing the same thing with Amazon devices as well.

This led to unsatisfied customers as these apps became essential over time and such customers started switching to Android OS.

Other unsupported apps such as Snapchat also contributed to the slow death of the OS.

Third party app developers did come to the rescue but couldn't offer the original app experience.

Microsoft tried to offer a large audience to the app developers with the launch of Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile that offered tools which allowed a single app to run on Smartphones, Tablets, PCs as well as other devices. Microsoft thought that developers would be happy as they would get millions of additional customers who use Windows on PCs.

All these efforts failed to improve the state of the Windows App Store - Post which, Microsoft announced in 2017 that they would no longer develop Windows Phone.

Do you feel that Windows Phone deserved better?

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