Is Windows Phone coming back?

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anthonyng

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I use my surface 3 as tablet mostly and split screen a lot... Right now Twitter pwa one side catching up on sports highlights, writing here on edge, web streaming audio in another tab

Now if I want to get up to go somewhere, it just needs to fold closed, continue to play my audio, allow one of my split screens show up on another screen on the "outside"

I was in Japan in October and I so wish I could've snapped a Pic of this dude standing in the subway. He had two phones side by side, using those finger hook things stuck up the back of each phone. He was looking stuff up on one phone and writing on the other.

The people are ready! Lol
 

dym3nelo

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It must be true or just a features for all mobile it's been too long since windows phone arrived and I don't know if it still being sold.
 

nate0

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I was looking today, after the announcement yesterday, on Microsoft's website for the new Windows 10 October Update. The first picture is to advertise integration between phone and PC, with the phone next to the PC enough to reinforce this integration of the new update, with a woman working on her Tabtop with a phone next to it. But hang on a moment, that phone looks unfamiliar. Can't be an Android. That design style is a Lumia 950/950 XL design style. It definitely IS a Lumia 950 XL. Either that or n unannounced phone, albeit not foldable Surface Phone. Why would Microsoft use a Lumia 950 XL for the October Update's phone-PC integration advert? Windows Phone is dead after all, so they would've used an Android or iPhone for the advert, right? Is Windows 10 Mobile about to receive an overhaul or what? Maybe us Windows 10 users are not left in the dust after all!

It can't be...I think I see a notch in there some where ;)
 

Luuthian

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If Microsoft tries their hand at phones again it won't be as "Windows Mobile." They'll call it something new and it likely won't represent Windows 10 Mobile at all. I'm sure at some point Microsoft will try their hand at a mobile device again but for now that dream seems pretty dead.

Without a mobile form factor of some kind their store will suffer and UWP will remain useless so they kind of have to take part in a mobile part of the market. It's that or change direction entirely. I mean they're doing pretty well as a services company right now. There's no reason why they may not simply opt to continue along that path for a few years.
 

beman39

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I just changed my Nokia Lumia 735 for a Huawei P20 Android 9. I did not want to do it right now, and wait as much as possible, but I cracked and I took advantage of the soldes to have it at 299 €.
Of course, the biggest change is in the level of pleasure, finally found, to be able to install all the applications that we are offered, without saying "ah yes, I'm Windows Phone, so no." And even the applications that we had under Windows Phone / Mobile (the bank, Facebook, Edge) were no longer up to date to work properly (Facebook who crashed one out of two every photo sharing, Edge who does not did not display many sites correctly ...)

I don't understand, my HP X3 must be a magical phone or has magic powers, Cuzz my Facebook and other web sites works perfectly fine ??????. Never have A problem
 

onysi

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windows phone is still around. i still use it to make calls, texts, or browse the web. then theirs android for other things. my wp battery life lasts over a day, my android not so much.. less than 6-7hrs of normal use.
 

Adventurer64

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Sadly, I don't think Windows Phone is making a comeback. Maybe a pocketable PC, but I'm not holding my breath. I would also be shocked if MS launched a folding device. I think MS is happy with subscription services, cloud, AI, AR, etc. The next big thing.... My 950XL is still meeting my needs, so I'm good for now.
 

steve_w_7

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@onysi -- That makes total sense. A phone that has no apps wouldn't use much battery because you wouldn't spend a lot of time doing anything with it. Your Android phone doesn't last as long because it has apps and you probably use it more than your WP.
 

Adventurer64

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@onysi -- That makes total sense. A phone that has no apps wouldn't use much battery because you wouldn't spend a lot of time doing anything with it. Your Android phone doesn't last as long because it has apps and you probably use it more than your WP.

Good point. However, I use my 950xl heavily because I travel weekly for business and rely on it for text, email, web, music, navigation and camera. Unlike Android, I can pick and choose which apps run in the background. Plus, my 950xl is not trying to monetize every step of my day with ads, data collection ,etc. This makes a huge difference. With W10M I don't have to worry about random battery burn.
 

Golfdriver97

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I think it's kinda sad that MS gave up on their mobile OS. Sure Google and Apple are the king's, and it would take a lot of resources, as in time, money and development, all of which MS has to be a contender.

With MS giving up, it's going to be a tough hill to climb for the next OS to dethrone the others.
 

JamesJinSC

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Android sucks, it's just the biggest google datamining product on the planet. You cannot completely shut down apps the way you can in Windows Phone - no way, no how. I tried that awful OS for 2 years and went back to Windows, even threw away my android tablets and picked up a Surface. The guy who made the call to kill the very best mobile OS in this day and age needs to be dragged out in the street and publicly flogged by the stockholders!

Now they not only have killed the mobile OS but are openly hawking android and developing for them, They have elected to go chrome with their flagship browser that is 4 times faster than chrome and less invasive. Oh yeah, they have also turned their business model over to making rental software for their competitions OS while at the same time that same company is developing 'free' software and giving it away to replace MS software.

Who left the buffoons in charge at MS?? Being a hardware vendor in these times with all of the thefts of intellectual property and technology by the chicoms is just plain silly. Selling rental software with the free android apps is insane. Bring back the mobile OS and make software that is second to none, respect our privacy, treat our devices for what they are, OUR devices.

If I owned any significant share of MS there would be a TON of current execs from the top down going home empty handed because they have been handing over the company piece by piece to google.
 

Adventurer64

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I agree JamesJin. I hope they at least extend support for W10M beyond end of 2019. Wishful thinking though. MS has been Scroogled. I'll probably switch to FireFox before I use a Chromium based browser. Once my 950xl is unusable, I'll likely move to iPhone since I can get one from employer for free.
 

playfulseagull

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Sadly Microsoft seems to abandon the consumer space in favor of enterprises. I guess that's where the money is at the moment. But I hope WP will come back in the future in some form and MS's bet on technology shift will come true.
 

sd4f

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Sadly Microsoft seems to abandon the consumer space in favor of enterprises. I guess that's where the money is at the moment. But I hope WP will come back in the future in some form and MS's bet on technology shift will come true.

With the benefit of hindsight, it appears obvious that in saying that they're targeting what comes after smartphones, it really says everything it needs to and foreshadowed the petering out of windows on phones.

Now with respect to the consumer space, I don't have numbers to back it up, but there's a few important things to consider, and since I've got time to write, I don't mind sharing my thoughts on the phone situation, so here goes...

Alphabet/Google, I suspect, isn't making the sort of money one would expect out of mobile; certainly not with the market dominance that they have. I base this on reports that google's share of app revenue is consistently lower than iOS. This is an important consideration because there's about 9 android users for every iOS user. I suspect that google has a significantly larger overhead than apple does (like 9 times the users...), and it just shows that google customers are a lot less valuable on average than on iOS.

It goes all the way back to how android was released. They were late to the market, so in many respects, they had everything to gain, and nothing to lose, in the sense that, they were already coming from behind; it's all or nothing, so that's why google gave android away. This is a critical change in the way software has been distributed, but also one which google, and advertising company, could do because their main line of business meant that they could monetise users in other ways, but it also helped create a race to the bottom, for instance the app stores, particularly any game these days will generally adopt a freemium model because if you have to pay for it, you'll only get a minute fraction of the potential users. This is basically the whole google platform in a nutshell; millions of users who will never pay a cent for anything, but, because google relies on collecting data, and their services consistently require someone to be online, then those millions and millions of users cost google, in turn, it's why so many mobile games suck, because invariably the game has been gimped to encourage users to part with money.

This, I further suspect, is why Microsoft has chosen to ignore the consumer market. They're not as well geared to make money from users who don't pay anything as google is. Additionally, MS doesn't have a few critical services which are kind of necessary to attract said users, like youtube, meanwhile google knows that it's a killer app and I remember well how they did whatever they could to prevent youtube from being on WP.

Now, the growth of smartphones made me think that MS going the enterprise route was in a way directing it into insignificance. In a way, it still is the case, but I now think that it's not as simple as that, because ultimately, you can win the platform, but at what cost? There's no point dominating at a loss. But also, important to note that the smartphone war was determined by consumers and not enterprise, and enterprise ultimately decided to go the route that consumers went, as opposed to the PC wars, where I suspect that most people first encountered a PC at work. This is probably why MS still want in on the mobile space, but have decided to retreat for now, because there's more important revenue streams for them, in the mean time.

I'm not surprised that the Andromeda device has been shelved, I'm sure I wrote about my doubts for its release on this forum. WP was a great OS, but really shows that MS is capable of doing great things when they're on the back foot, but that's also why they've given up, because they can't possibly make it a profitable business. It appears to me that MS want to come in from their strengths, and build up support that way rather than jumping into something completely exposed and able to be competed against from every possible angle.
 
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