Is Windows Phone 8.1 still a viable mobile OS?

[Windows Central]

Now that official support has ended, is it worth carrying on using your older phone with Windows Phone 8.1 onboard?
It had a good run, and even today there are folks who strongly prefer Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile. However, you cannot deny that it will no longer be supported by Microsoft.
But is it still worth using for some people? That's the topic of a new discussion in the Windows Central Forums.

Full story from the WindowsCentral blog...

 

[LuxuryTouringZone]

No it isn't. If anyone is using Window Phone 8.1, please update it if you can! If not, buy a Lumia 950 XL or something. Too expensive? Get an older handset eligible for it, or even a Lumia 640 XL.

 

[SirThoreth]

No it isn't. If anyone is using Window Phone 8.1, please update it if you can! If not, buy a Lumia 950 XL or something. Too expensive? Get an older handset eligible for it, or even a Lumia 640 XL.

My daily driver, since consolidating my wife's phone service and mine onto Sprint (which was her carrier) is an HTC 8XT, replacing the BLU Win HD LTE I had used as my main phone, and the Lumia 925 I had as a backup. The loss of Skype and Facebook Messenger support is the only thing that I'm really missing so far, and the HTC with WP8.1 is far more stable than the BLU was with Win10M AU.

But, hey, I'd love to hear your suggestion on a Windows 10 Mobile phone on Sprint, given the only one I've found that's Sprint compatible is the Sprint-compatible Lumia 635 with 512mb of RAM. That's not exactly the picture of stability on Windows 10 Mobile.

 

[msi81]

Stay away from this OS version, it's deja-vu like Windows Mobile 6.5

 

[LuxuryTouringZone]

But, hey, I'd love to hear your suggestion on a Windows 10 Mobile phone on Sprint, given the only one I've found that's Sprint compatible is the Sprint-compatible Lumia 635 with 512mb of RAM. That's not exactly the picture of stability on Windows 10 Mobile.

Because I don't even live in the USA, the only suggestion I can give you is to switch to another carrier (GSM not CDMA like Verizon!) if you really want to use a Windows 10 phone in America. It may sound kind of extreme, but the choice is entirely yours.

 

[Tien-Lin Chang]

The 8.1 is losing its already small ecosystem while w10m handset is going to its dead end with the news of Windows 10 on ARM (which is clearly the future) will not reaching ANY of the w10m device. I don't believe MS put such an effort to make w10a just let their tablet/2-in-1/laptop rocking full Windows 10 on QCom SoC so I think there is impossible for MS to maintain w10a/w10m at the same time which makes any Windows phone on the market not appealing.

So stay away form those orphans as far as possible.