Sorry for the delay, I checked this morning and our friends at Microsoft are supposed to add it to the store tomorrow.
Kevin
Waiting for this phone is like Waiting for Godot.
I want to apologize at the beginning for the whinefest that's about to commence. Before you guys roast me I want everyone to know that I appreciate and can relate to all of the excitement over Windows Phones, but I don't think I'm there anymore.
I've lurked on these forums for ages - waiting on the 950 for Verizon, the Surface Phone, the Cerulean phone, now waiting on the x3. To say I was an enthusiast would be an understatement. I've owned an Icon, an 8x, a Touch Pro 2, a Q, and even an iPaq back before WinMo supported phone hardware.
I thought maybe we'd see something exciting since the new Nov 1 release date coincided with the Microsoft Future Decoded event. But I think I'm done drinking the Kool-Aid.
As a consumer I can't deal with the fact that two companies as large as Microsoft/HP can't come up with even a little blurb that says "We're on Verizon as of XX/XX." It's an indication to me that no one really cares if they sell this product. When you have a ravenous, albeit small fanbase that continues to dig up information via FCC certifications, HP Sales back-channels, and conversations with former product developers you should do some sort of press release. Not having means one of two things - Either the platform is dead, or something new and awesome is on the horizon. And I've heard enough "something new and awesome is on the horizon" for the past few years about the non-existent Surface Phone. If I continue to believe that, I should be committed.
As a business owner, Microsoft just plain sucks. When you release things like Remote Desktop clients for Android before Windows Phone, don't ask why no one uses the platform. This wasn't when Windows Phone was on life support, this was when the platform was new. When you refuse to include things like SMB support when it was native in 6.5 you alienate your users. Not including a VPN from the start was a bad move too. You just can't keep saying no trust me this version is better, just wait a few years until we have all the functionality of the last version. There was a time I would laugh at iPhone users because they couldn't cut-and-paste. Then Windows Phone 7 came out and iPhone users were lauging at me.
As a developer, I'm not sure why anyone would want to support Windows Phone. You learn WM5/WM6 and at least those APIs were backwards compatible. Then you move to WP7 and have to learn new sandboxed APIs. Windows 8 comes along and now we have native API support but now we're simultaneously pushing UWP which is totally different from 7. At least 10 was like 8 with the UWP support but at this point everyone had already started pulling their WP apps, so it didn't matter anymore. I've seen people try to argue that Apple/Google do the same thing but it's not even close. Microsoft's treatment of mobile developers has been their equivalent of "you're holding it wrong."
Zac was being a bit disingenuous about their coverage of vaporware - I've read through article upon article about Surface phones, Cerulean, Andromeda, and CShell but nothing has come from them.
Microsoft can Andromeda you until you're blue in the face - the only reason they're building it is to replace Windows Embedded that's going to be EOLed soon. They are really not looking to build consumer oriented devices. I'm inclined to believe that the only reason the Surface anything exists is as an early PR ploy to show that the new start menu didn't suck "that bad."
Even the comments about not having a Windows Phone 10 CDMA stack I've heard thrown around were BS. Or maybe my Icon was running CDMA on Windows Phone 10 using unicorns and candy canes.
Not mad at you guys - you've done some super sleuthing. And I'm not mad at Zac - you can't consistently be expected to report on non-news or you become a supermarket tabloid. Microsoft is the only one to blame for bungling what I feel was until recently a consistently better product.