You misunderstand what the kernel is. There is no clear definition of what exactly is part of the kernel and what isn't. Even within MS, engineers will often use the term differently. However, most of us consumers, on sites such as this, understand the kernel to be something vastly different from what anybody at MS considers it to be. For this reason, whenever MS mentions the kernel, most consumers tend to misunderstand what is being said.
The
topmost image on this Wikipedia page provides a very high level overview of the Windows architecture. The part coloured purple represents what engineers at MS generally consider to be the kernel. Although that area may seem to represent a large part of the overall OS , that entire purple area is contained (for the most part) in just three files:
ntoskrnl.exe (7 MB on disk)
hal.dll (0.5 MB on disk)
ntdll.dll (1.5MB on disk)
The mentioned file sizes are rough approximations for a Windows 8.1 installation. Considering that Windows 8.1 is a 10GB or 13GB install (for 32bit and 64bit versions), those three files actually comprise a very small part of the entire OS. About 0.07%! Although not entirely correct, from a user's point of view, it would probably be best to think of the kernel as a device driver for your motherboard. Nothing more!
My point is that literally none of the problems you've raised have anything to do with the kernel! Considering how small and focused the kernel is, it shouldn't be hard to imagine that the majority of issues will tend to reside elsewhere. When MS says that all versions of Windows share the same kernel, it's only that 0.07% of Windows that they are referring to. Not even for developers is that (directly) of much consequence. For users it's practically meaningless, but nevertheless, we do tend to make a big fuss over it around these parts. Like I said, mostly due to not understanding what it actually is.
I don't. I suspect almost nobody else does either. That is also not what MS aims to achieve! In addition to the kernel, and a few other small bits and pieces, the only other large and shared component that goes into making a Windows Phone is the
WinRT API and runtime. This is a larger piece of software logic, but still only of moderate size compared to the rest of Windows. A few hundred megabytes. All those things combined still get us nowhere close to being a desktop Windows OS, which is where all the problems you've mentioned are encountered.
This is the only accusation you've made that I think is valid. I agree that W7 was both faster and more reliable than W8.x. W7 also felt more responsive, despite running on the single-core hardware of the day. Though I don't recall that W7 was any better in terms of how often we encountered the resuming/loading screens. That's just my gut feeling though. I have no empirical data to back that up with.
Anyway, none of that is surprising considering Windows CE is a real-time OS. Parts of me wish MS had stayed with Windows CE, but I do understand why it made sense to change. I hope that over time MS will improve the OS, so we can eventually return to the efficiency of WP7.
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