What would it take for you to come back to Windows Mobile?

[savagelizards]

A flagship on Verizon would absolutely bring me back. I think I've got about as much chance of that as I have of winning the lottery. I still fool around with my old Icon, but now that it is dead-ended....

Still have an Icon, I bought a few refurbs on Amazon while they were still around. I am on my third and last one. I feel exactly how you do. Why they won't add CMDA support for Verizon users and sell them unlocked is beyond me, but we haven't had a new flagship since the Icon.

 

[N8tiveT3ch]

I'm still here and will be until the end...

 

[edchair]

Apps, apps, apps. WM best OS, especially for Microsoft Office users. People will stay/return and hardware will follow if apps available. Surface Phone DOA without apps!

 

[garisa]

One or few phones each two years is simply not enough. They not only need to keep the w10m phones available for consumers, but they also need to have at least few percent of consumers for developers. They have to make sure that more phones are available.

Also, Android apps are not necessary here. With a little bit more consumers we would have gotten far more apps by now. Developers had started making apps, but later they started to give up after they saw Microsoft doesn't give a damn about bringing new phones globally to the market.

Damn, they could have at least made a copy of Lumia 950(XL), etc., but with better hardware, and that would do the thing.

Not to mention how they made Lumia 650 with such a weak chipset, which later made even Windows 10 mobile itself less appealing. It was not a cheap phone, and yet it has a low end chipset on which w10m doesn't work so fast.

 

[Cinammon Roll]

As for me... This will sound crazy...

I'd like a version that was open sourced, or at least with open sourced elements. I'd like to be able to play with it, add my own elements, and hack it onto any device I want. That would bring me back.

 

[AWspicious 13]

i don't have to read the comments to know many of you already stated MORE APPS. Also, what's needed is a more fluid operation.
If you build it they will come.

 

[lubbalots]

To get me back in, bring the old team back- Stephen Elop and gang to run mobile separate from ****ya Madulla, like the xbox team. Get rid of windows 10 mobile name and change back to Windows Phone OS, including separating Mobile from PC. The universal platform is not working. Get back to what made WP, WP- Xbox gaming, social, camera, integration, and simplicity, should be a high priority. Work and business should be standard. If these things aren't met, you can forget it!

 

[Rhoyz]

Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! And undying support from the CEO.

 

[Sher Allen]

I have one foot out the door. And it makes me really sad since I just love the platform and know that if it had the apps it would easily be the #2 platform, it has the best of both worlds, not to shut down but not too open. It would take app and app feature parity along with features the platform used to have that it doesnt now, to get me back, but it appears that ship has sailed. I think right now MS needs to throw everything they have into Cortana, IoT/smart home market because that to me is clearly the next step the industry is trying to make big. They really need to get Cortana on Googles level and fast if they want to make anything out of it.

 

[mark mullins]

Windows phone 10 is awesome I'm not leaving this platform for anything

 

[xchaser]

I am still with windows mobile, but my hopes are running out. A new phone from Microsoft with an awesome camera like the previous Luminas and bring back all the apps that has left and new apps. I think that would bring back and get new people. Instagram is beating snap chat so M$ doesn't need snap chat anymore.

 

[Hoangboy]

Hi All,

For quite some time now I've watched as every opportunity to increase the market share slipped by Microsoft with them nearly managing to take advantage of it. The build it and they will come attitude of the marketing in my mind has been the cause of this failure. Bitter? Me? A little.

We are well on the downward spiral from dizzy days of 11% market share. Microsoft themselves seem to be releasing more complete apps to competing platforms, which they are entitled to do. No point feeding the few when the money is where the masses are.

I'm currently sitting here waiting on my first non windows phone since the day the Lumia 920 was released in the UK. The Galaxy S8 (it'll look like the Microsoft Edition when I'm done with it). My Lumia 950xl is sitting ready to be boxed and sent for recycling.

This brings me to my question, "What, if anything, would bring you back to a phone running on the Windows platform?"

What bring me back ?

A Lumia 730 with 2GB of RAM and 64GB memory, better camera, USB C

Fine tune the OS, I want to get rid of the "loading" screen anytime I open an app.
Fine tune the OS, Get rid of the "Adding the finishing touches" anytime I take picture
Fine tune the OS, make Bluetooth Transfer make sense, right now I can receive multi files at once but have to send every single file separately to other device
Make Facebook support the OS

My dream : MS deal with Apple to bring imessage to Windows 10 Mobile

 

[tropolite]

Even though I still use my 950XL and not interested in switching it over to another OS any time soon (not till the unlikely will happen that Windows for mobile is officially terminated).

Apps were only the way to get services etc to mobile devices i.e. Apple and Android from my understanding in the beginning had horrible browser capability - hence the birth of mobile apps.

Windows however has a pretty damn good browser experience (still developing some would say), and I've found that quite a number of services that either had a Windows app or have never had one work quite well via their web presence using Edge and placing web shortcuts on the start screen. I don't believe apps are the be all, end all of mobile tech. Perhaps in the past it may have been but why invest majorly in web technologies and apps for various OS' when web tech is as good if not better natively on the mobile device.

I'm keen to see a flagship come either from MS or an OEM (similar to Apple's business structure), or a number of OEMs with different pricepoint devices as I believe there is a market that would allow for both with the right marketing. A flagship from Microsoft for the enthusiast/fan and other niche OEM builds for other markets (entrylevel enterprise, etc).

Thing that HAS to happen though is to incentivise these to the carriers at least comparable to that Apple and Android offer. I know my experience with the Australian carrier, Telstra (supposedly a Microsoft partner), was very off-putting, as several times I went into these stores to specifically buy a Lumia (at the time), of various models, and each time I was steered toward (almost muscled toward) Apple or Android devices. And it occurred with other friends that decided to take up a Lumia only to be talked into another brand. This is not unique to this carrier, as I've seen countless times on forums and articles of similar stories.

Lastly each of these devices MUST be universally useable in the majority of countries and carriers (NO exclusives for a carrier any longer, what a joke). The point of growing a userbase is not to direct them to this or that carrier alone but to give users a choice and allow the carriers to be successful on their own performance, not what devices they offer.

An added point for free, I'd like to see the OS not hold back on features and capabilities. I would like to see more customisations and of course get rid of the lag with the phone when it comes to screen refreshing and app tile refresh. One frustrating thing I find with the latest build is Glance time display isn't precise, and shows incorrectly as does live tiles that do not refresh correctly. And of course, if we are meant to have apps such as Facebook and Messenger there HAS to be a way to have these open faster, refresh better and show correct updates on the live tiles.

Everything else such as OS feel and direction the ecosystem, longevity of OS lifecycle, OTA updates that are carrier independent are all good as I see it.


Rant and ramble off.

 

[Yamishi]

This brings me to my question, "What, if anything, would bring you back to a phone running on the Windows platform?"

Apps.

There is nothing that I like better on my Android device, other than the apps.

If I could play my one game (Phantasy Star Online 2es) and have my up to date banking app on my Lumia 950, I'd still be using it.

I've heard project Astoria didn't work great, but still... I can dream.

 

[Christian Del Rosario]

It's not just the apps. I miss the fluidity of the os. Old lumias running 7.8 and 8.0 always feel brand new. Now w10 running on an old hardware is lagfeast.

 

[Joe McClaine]

I mean probably that is an actual screen shot of an s8 with windows on it. Whether that product, or rom sees the light of day, who knows.

Perhaps you could explain, then, how it makes sense that this "screenshot" shows the device reporting 6 GB of RAM when the only version of W10M available today is a 32-bit operating system, and therefore incapable of addressing more than 4 GB of memory? Even the HP Elite x3 only has 4 GB of memory for just this reason and HP had to provide a proprietary solution to allow it to run 64-bit applications to get around this limitation.

 

[ViveLeRoi]

There were many things about WP7 & WP 8 that were awesome. Simplicity, ease of use and being able to do things FASTER than the competing operating systems. Forcing manufacturers to have a hardware camera button was genius in my mind because the improving quality of the cameras on the Nokia phones made it so I didn't have to bring along a point and shoot any longer. I also really liked all of the Nokia enhancements and programs such as HERE City Lens which was innovative in the way that it used the phone sensors to provide information to the user. I loved the quality of my Lumia 925 and only occasionally cursed T-Mobile for having Nokia leave out a card slot on the phone because otherwise it was a perfect device!

I still have *every* WP device that I have ever owned -from my Windows Mobile HTC Touch Pro, Lumia 710, Lumia 800, Lumia 925, Lumia 1020 and Lumia 1520 (and a couple others too). All still work well with the exception of one on which the screen was broken by my son.

If Microsoft wants to get back in the game, they need to remind themselves of their primary differentiator and that was the product allowed people to do things FASTER. They also need to get back to hardware like the gorgeous 925 with metal frames and solid construction and attractive, ergonomic designs. Hell, bring back the 925 with an upgraded processor, camera and a larger size and a SD CARD SLOT and I'd buy one! If they want to compete with Android and IOS, they will have to pay $$$$ to get the top 5 social media applications onto their platform. It might be cheaper just to run an emulator and use a VM for the top apps just TO GET THEM ON THE PHONE!! Instagram, Snapchat and a handful of others and the "app gap" would disappear because those are the apps where most people spend their time.

Get rid of all the application integration problems that you created by having the universal Windows platform. In the long run, it's costing you more because you're alienating all of your users on the mobile devices. While it sounds like a good idea, it really isn't. If it was a good idea, Windows Mobile 6.1 would have been a runaway success (but it wasn't).

Finally, for God's sake LISTEN to your actual users. We are begging you not to continue down this path which leaves us with no options except Android and IOS. As a software developer myself, your tools for developing phone apps have gotten worse with the latest iterations of Visual Studio. It's far more difficult to set things up than it was in the old WP7/Silverlight days. Remember that EXTERNAL software develops are indeed important for a platform to survive!

 

[Joe McClaine]

One word: Apps. I can live with W10M as it is, I even like it. But I switched to the iPhone simply because there's no apps I wanted to use on W10M. MS needs to not only provide tools for developers, but also incentivize them to code for UWP ecosystem.

Microsoft used to have an incentive, of sorts, for developers publishing on the Windows Store. They used to cut their commission to 20% from the usual 30% after profits on an app reached $25K but a couple of years ago they took this incentive away.

 

[nasznjoka]

Still in with 950XL, spouse on 950 and 3 young adults on 950, 640 and 640. However a Courier form factor with latest w10 on arm would definitely tempt me to change my 950XL

Don't force your children and or family members on bad tech that you're in love with....

 

[MrElectrifyer]

Hi All,

For quite some time now I've watched as every opportunity to increase the market share slipped by Microsoft with them nearly managing to take advantage of it. The build it and they will come attitude of the marketing in my mind has been the cause of this failure. Bitter? Me? A little.

We are well on the downward spiral from dizzy days of 11% market share. Microsoft themselves seem to be releasing more complete apps to competing platforms, which they are entitled to do. No point feeding the few when the money is where the masses are.

I'm currently sitting here waiting on my first non windows phone since the day the Lumia 920 was released in the UK. The Galaxy S8 (it'll look like the Microsoft Edition when I'm done with it). My Lumia 950xl is sitting ready to be boxed and sent for recycling.

This brings me to my question, "What, if anything, would bring you back to a phone running on the Windows platform?"

Only way I'd consider a Windows Phone is if it's running the full Windows 10 (perhaps Windows 10 on ARM) plus the following:

- An off switch for all the data mining telemetry ( https://is.gd/p5gTKO )
- The fools at microsoft finally get permissions right by defaulting them to off instead of on like it currently is on my Surface Pro
- It gains widgets in the form of Interactive Live Tiles
- It allows replacing cortana and other system apps with something else from the Windows Store, just like Android allows Google Now to be fully replaced
- It gains a Samsung SideSync like feature that seamlessly and wirelessly syncs your phone with your Windows PC, allowing you to make and receive calls, send and receive text/BBM/WhatsApp messages, and manage your phone notifications, all of that, without connecting on any skynet account.

As of now, Windows Phone is nothing but a big compromise compared to the competition, and I'm not punishing myself with such a joke.