If you were in charge of the Windows Phone platform, what 5 changes would you make?

[Pete]

1) Get Gabe to do half the work
2) Get Joe to do the other half
3) Buy them pizza on Fridays

I'm not sure much more is needed.

 

[matt john2]

I wish I could run PC and console games on my windows phone.

 

[lkcbharath]

1) USB OTG
2) Clash of Clans and Real Racing 3 to WP/W10
3) Almost like 1, Xbox controller support (see the Z3, you can do remote play with it and a ps4 controller) and some xbox games to go with it
4) Make it easier for xbox certification
5) Landscape across the OS, starting with the home screen (idk how the wide tiles will play with this, guess its what comes with live tiles)

And a few more ones

6) Invert colors
7) BETTER MARKETING (seriously, the 730 could have screw the Moto G2 in India if it was advertised properly)
8) Only three or four phones like Motorola or the iPhone e.g. 5xx 7xx 9xx and a 15xx. Idk about India, but should be available to all carriers in carrier locked regions like USA, and have clear differentiating factors.
9) Snap chat, Instagram, and Google apps to WP/W10
10) STICK TO METRO/MODERN

 

[mrruz]

Understanding a little about hardware limitations and project management, I'd make no changes. I think Microsoft is doing an excellent job. Part of the reason I'm investing more heavily in their stock and products.

 

[someone2639]

1) Get Gabe to do half the work
2) Get Joe to do the other half
3) Buy them pizza on Fridays

I'm not sure much more is needed.

What about the rest of the dev team? That means more pizza, right?

 

[Legoboyii]

1. Bring back Hubs pivots and panorama, bring mixview tiles
2. Emphasize the Modern UI and kill hamburger buttons wherever it is
3. Add some sort of feature to the left of start screen
4. Split screen multitasking on screens at least 4.5" in size
5. Asked for features like USB otg, fix problems with SD card support, etc

 

[Nogitsune Micah]

1. Drop most OEMs.....let blu handle the low end and then release Lumia as the main brand.

2. Set out to purchase a few of these startup apps that are growing in popularity and/or enter a licensing agreement if possible with apps like vine/twitter, insta and snap chat.

3. Bring hubs back

4. Make a windows 8/10 compatible zune

That's it.

 

[PepperdotNet]

5) Hardware Control: We don't need ten 512MB phones to cater to the low end. ONE well-planned 512MB low-range for the people who only have a fifty to their name, ONE midrange phone, ONE high-end 5-incher and ONE powerhouse phablet would be enough. That's just more hardware you have to roll out new firmware to. More parts that your OEM has to manage and replace. Regional barriers could be easily conquered if the phone were loaded with enough antennas to make it a world phone in the first place. Then no "international edition" needs to be made, nor any incremental number change for different carriers. Simplicity is something the entire Windows Phone platform is horribly lacking in... and I don't see anything about this entire experience becoming polished when there's so much the OEM has to focus on.

What you listed as number 5 is the number one thing I would change. They need to make exactly one phone of each type low-end, midrange, high-end, phablet. That one phone in each range with enough radios and antennas to work anywhere on any carrier. Contracts with carriers to include a deadline for firmware testing so that all devices can be updated the same day. This one change would eliminate 90 percent of the complaining on forums like these "why don't I have xxxx update yet when people on yyy carrier in country zzz already got it!"

Number 2 would be a backup system that works. There is no reason app developers should have to "opt-in" for their data to be included in a backup. The entire user portion of the phone should be included in the backup which would include all customizations, saved data, passwords, app settings, all of it. An iPhone user can connect their phone to iTunes or iCloud and run a backup, get a new device, restore the backup, and pick up right where they were. A Windows phone user should not have to perform hours of tedious remembering and fixing settings after restoring.

Number 3 would be landscape mode as an option everywhere including the start screen.

Number 4 is keep the Feedback app in the final release.

Number 5 would be to hire a lot of "evangelists" and permanently station one of them in every place that sells phones.

 

[someone2639]

Dynamic code that changes UI with the OS.