9 ms·

I really, really liked my Nokia Windows phone. The tile based UI, the smooth performance and snappy UX, an excellent camera and the way the battery could last f

by lenkite 10y ago

I really, really liked my Nokia Windows phone. The tile based UI, the smooth performance and snappy UX, an excellent camera and the way the battery could last for sometimes 3 whole days without charging. Android phones just don't compare. And though I like MacOS, I could never get iOS. Microsoft gave up the war here in the last 10%. They should have put their head down and persisted. Alas, now we just have two flavors of phone..

bb101 10y ago
Try a Blackberry KeyOne when it's released in May. It runs the latest version of Android without any lags, has a physical keyboard for simple use (shortcuts for everything), has the same camera as the Google Pixel (v.good) and packs a 3500mAh battery that will last more than a day with moderate use. I'm using one now and it's nothing short of excellent.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  It may use the same sensor as the Pixel, but it doesn't have the Pixel camera processing algorithms. Those Pixel algorithms are a big reason why it's considered to have the best smartphone camera.
theNewMicrosoft 10y ago
Persisted = Burn millions of $ because some insignificant minuscule minority happens to like their phones.
- MarkCole 10y ago
  The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year. There is room for them to carve out a niche of Microsoft Phones earning them a couple of billion in revenue, and a couple of hundred million in profit. However for a big company like Microsoft that money is a drop in the ocean, and they want to own the market which at this point in time is unrealistic for them unless they can produce something truely groundbreaking.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year. Ah yes, the good old "even if we captured only 1% of this huge market we would make billions!" argument.
  - jliptzin 10y ago
    It's the ecosystem. My friend swore by his Android, always telling me how he could never switch to iOS. Until one day one app that he REALLY wanted to use had a nice polished iOS version but the Android version was clearly total crap with no obvious intention to improve, since then he's switched to iOS and isn't talking too much about Android anymore. So even if you have a small following, those people eventually drop off too one by one over things like this.
    - vorticalbox 10y ago
      That could be said for any phone system, the photo gallery and editing on windows phone is extremely good. Your friend could have easily gone from iPhone to android for the same reason.
      - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        I think the point is that any given person is more likely to find an app they "can't live without" on Android/iOS than on WinPhone, just because there's so many more to choose from.
  - jl6 10y ago
    But new phones are incredibly sophisticated devices requiring a lot of investment to create and bring to market, so maybe even billions a year of revenue might not be enough.
    - MarkCole 10y ago
      That's true hence from that revenue they might only be able to squeeze tens or maybe hundreds of millions in profit from it. Which for Microsoft is in their eyes probably not worth the effort.
- endorphone 10y ago
  Billions of dollars. Windows Phone has been failing for years, and the same chorus has been saying "just a little bit more!" while Microsoft dumped billions and a large amount of goodwill into a clearly failed venture. They put more effort into it that the overwhelming bulk of businesses on the planet could ever imagine. There's a point where it's just a lot of good money and effort after a futile cause. People's discussions about Windows Phone -- the invariable commentators who talk about how great it is -- is the sort of thing I'm incredibly wary about, having been misled by it before in this field. The people professing love for Windows Phone almost invariably spent very little time with it (and haven't dealt with the enormous number of flaws and gaps), or have a profound bias to like it regardless. As a developer across a number of platforms, and with no affinity or vow of loyalty to any of the makers, I think it was a terrible platform that had tiny nuggets of promise, but never a compelling enough reward profile.
  - vorticalbox 10y ago
    I have had my 950 for almost a year, I always read "bugs that have never been fixed" I haven't seen anything as such. I'll agree it has gaps and the settings is all over the place, wallpapers in personalise and not under display. I get it, its just not like any other mobiles os, even screen time out isn't in display its in lock screen. It also has annoying links to faq at the bottom of every single page.
- devonkim 10y ago
  Yeah, I can't find the article now but there's always a group of consumers out there that have a strong affinity for products that have failed in the market. Anything from soft drinks to candy to fast food to electronics devices - they're among the greater predictors of a product failure than any focus group could offer. I'm someone that was all about alternatives to MP3 such as Ogg Vorbis and VQF and ripped nearly 300 CDs to them before giving up and just going with... FLAC, which at least lets me pick and choose whatever I want in the future.
  - tjalfi 10y ago
    Were you thinking of the following article? Eric Anderson, Song Lin, Duncan Simester, and Catherine Tucker (2015) Harbingers of Failure. Journal of Marketing Research: October 2015, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 580-592. It was posted to HN in July 2015[0] and a PDF is at [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9839344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9839344 [1] http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/staff/song_lin/song_lin-jmr-2015.pdf http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/staff/song_lin/song_lin-jmr-2015.p...
    - Roboprog 10y ago
      Thanks for that. I wonder how many of us in this readership have "flop affinity", given often very particular tastes and goals?
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I believe many people would argue that 'computing in the 21st century happens on the phone' not on the desktop or laptop for a large fraction of the population. And because of that, it would seem the worlds leading software vendor would want to participate there. So persistence here is not perceived as throwing away billions for a small minority, so much as investing billions so that you're a credible alternative to tens if not hundreds of millions of users. That keeps your company tuned up in the most dominant software delivery mechanism of our time and avoids overall company death by irrelevancy.
jpalomaki 10y ago
The phones and the operating system were great, but the ecosystem was not there and that was a problem. I used 920 and 930, but then switched to iPhone due to lack of 3rd party software (either the software was completely missing or the features arrived late).
- vorticalbox 10y ago
  Somewhat agree, I have a 950 and a lit of android/ios apps are here just not all. Last time I checked out of the top 20 on android windows phone has 17/20. I find most games pointless battery life on all phones already sucks.
- roryisok 10y ago
  I'm typing this on a 925, and I'll use it for as long as it works. I've come to see the ecosystem problem as a blessing in disguise. The promise of windows phone in the early adverts was that you would get in and out quickly, and not waste time that could be spent socialising, or with family. They delivered on that, though not the way they intended. The lack of apps means I don't waste time on my phone. The latest games aren't there. Major apps are unavailable. No pinterest. No ebay app. Crappy youtube experience. These are all good things. The temptation to install timesinks is far less, because even when they are available, they're generally quite poor quality compared to the IOS or android alternatives I have more free time because I'm on windows phone, and that's worth a lot
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Why even get a smartphone if all you want is the basics? Might as well get a feature phone and enjoy the extra battery life.
    - roryisok 10y ago
      I browse HN, take a lot of photos and make notes on OneNote. But to be honest I've often been tempted. The camera is probably the thing I'd most miss - I take a lot of photos of my kids and a feature phone camera won't cut the mustard
untog 10y ago
I'm amazed by how much MS messed up Windows Phone. At a certain point they were right to give up, but only because of their own incompetence. I bought a Windows Phone 7 device. Loved it. Still the best mobile UI I've experienced. It had a ton of smart ideas too, like integrating different messaging services into a central app - totally breaking up the app-centric model of iOS and Android. ...except they didn't provide any hooks for third party apps to integrate. Said it was coming. Along with multitasking and other stuff that was already common in other OSes. It never did. Instead they announced Windows Phone 8, and stated that almost all WP7 devices would be ineligible for an upgrade, thus burning their relationship with early adopters. I believe they did the same with some devices from WP8 to 10. Nowadays they've given up everything that made WP unique, so there's no need to use it. Sad thing is, their initial timing was great. Google had dropped the ball on Android - developing an entire version specifically for tablets (3.0) while the phone OS floundered. Compared to Android 2.3, Windows Phone was a breath of fresh air. But by the time they'd decided my phone was EOL less than a year later, Android 4 was out. I switched back with no regrets. Don't get me wrong, it would have been an insane uphill climb for anyone, but MS, with their resources and XBox etc., if anyone could have entered the market, it could have been them.
- hhw 10y ago
  Blackberry OS 10 has an integrated hub for all communications as well. I've never tried Windows Phone, but I can't see anything me much slicker than that. Didn't do them any favours either, and they started off with a larger base. The lack of an app ecosystem, and some unfounded sentiments of it being obsolete did them in. I'm on my 2nd BB Classic, and will likely stock up a couple more to last me some years, as there's no better phone for email and ssh. And the few apps I do need that aren't supported I can still run using the Android runtime.
- Maarten88 10y ago
  Yes, instead of having two OSses with one application API during the transition with Windows 95 and Windows NT (Win32), with Windows 8 they made one OS with two different API's, costing almost two years and bringing no benefits to users, throwing early adopters and developers under the bus. Like the GP, I also miss my Windows Phone, but Windows 8 killed the opportunity they had.
Markoff 10y ago
you can have smooth tiled experience in Android as well, as for battery if you use it same way as windows phone with almost zero apps and killing background processes you can have same battery life windows phone used pretty low end low power CPU which don't eat much or you really think windows can manage resources better than Android?
zelos 10y ago
I felt the same about my Lumia 630. I broke the screen and ended up switching to some HTC abomination because I needed Android, but the 640 was cheap, smooth, fast, well ahead of its time in mobile UI and it was actually pleasant to use. I can't believe how badly MS have handled Windows Phone. Splitting the market between WP 7/8/10 was insane given how small a user base they had.
u801e 10y ago
I think that Nokia would have been better off had they devoted their resources towards the Meego OS (along with providing an easy way to use existing Symbian applications on the new platform. I'm still using my Nokia N9 and am pretty satisfied with it. Unfortunately, there won't be any updates (and, as far as I know, I can't hey a Jolla phone here in the US).
samfisher83 10y ago
If it was bill gates or ballmer's microsoft they might have gone on. They lost billions on Xbox and Bing, but they still kept at it. I guess Xbox turned out pretty good, but they sunk a ton of money on it. I guess the new Microsoft management is not interested in losing money. Google realized their core business is search and getting google search on phones was paramount even if they had to pay manufacturers to put their search engine there.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  This would be the same Ballmer who laughed on national TV at the iPhone announcement?
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  I remember getting a pamphlet at GameStop or something around the original XBox launch with all the reasons I should get one. They actually spent some time saying, essentially, "Microsoft is rich as hell and doesn't give up, so even if it's not successful immediately there will be new game support for years." I guess that worked out for them.
zw123456 10y ago
I agree, I had a windows phone and I actually liked the UI, simple clean, the 5 things I used the most often in nice big blocks, easy for me to find quickly. Too bad, I just feel like the whole phone scene has fallen into a duopoly, Apple iPhone and Samsung Android. I liked the idea of having a strong #3. Maybe it is my soft spot for the underdog, but I miss having a richer phone space. I know, I know, this is HN so someone will bring up some obscure thing I am supposed to know about like an Ubuntu phone or something, but let's keep it real guys, there are 2, keepin' it 100, K?
suda50 10y ago
I heavily considered purchasing a Lumia 950 when looking to upgrade my Android phone. Unfortunately, the community pretty much drove me away, not because they were toxic, but because they claimed the platform was dead and no one suggested getting into Windows Mobile 10. If Microsoft releases a new WM 10 phone with a fingerprint sensor and a decent set of specs, I might consider picking one up and bearing the "app problem". I like the fact that Microsoft updates the devices directly and I can go into a Microsoft store if I have a problem.
- Kipters 10y ago
  The HP Elite x3 has a fingerprint reader (also an iris scanner, like the 950 and 950 XL)
m_fayer 10y ago
And the native app model for WP was a pleasure to code against, compared to Android or iOS.
smichel17 10y ago
Two flavors of phone, plus however many flavors of Android.

by lenkite 10y ago

bb101 10y ago

Try a Blackberry KeyOne when it's released in May. It runs the latest version of Android without any lags, has a physical keyboard for simple use (shortcuts for everything), has the same camera as the Google Pixel (v.good) and packs a 3500mAh battery that will last more than a day with moderate use. I'm using one now and it's nothing short of excellent.

bitmapbrother 10y ago
It may use the same sensor as the Pixel, but it doesn't have the Pixel camera processing algorithms. Those Pixel algorithms are a big reason why it's considered to have the best smartphone camera.

theNewMicrosoft 10y ago

Persisted = Burn millions of $ because some insignificant minuscule minority happens to like their phones.

MarkCole 10y ago
The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year. There is room for them to carve out a niche of Microsoft Phones earning them a couple of billion in revenue, and a couple of hundred million in profit. However for a big company like Microsoft that money is a drop in the ocean, and they want to own the market which at this point in time is unrealistic for them unless they can produce something truely groundbreaking.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year. Ah yes, the good old "even if we captured only 1% of this huge market we would make billions!" argument.
- jliptzin 10y ago
  It's the ecosystem. My friend swore by his Android, always telling me how he could never switch to iOS. Until one day one app that he REALLY wanted to use had a nice polished iOS version but the Android version was clearly total crap with no obvious intention to improve, since then he's switched to iOS and isn't talking too much about Android anymore. So even if you have a small following, those people eventually drop off too one by one over things like this.
  - vorticalbox 10y ago
    That could be said for any phone system, the photo gallery and editing on windows phone is extremely good. Your friend could have easily gone from iPhone to android for the same reason.
    - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      I think the point is that any given person is more likely to find an app they "can't live without" on Android/iOS than on WinPhone, just because there's so many more to choose from.
- jl6 10y ago
  But new phones are incredibly sophisticated devices requiring a lot of investment to create and bring to market, so maybe even billions a year of revenue might not be enough.
  - MarkCole 10y ago
    That's true hence from that revenue they might only be able to squeeze tens or maybe hundreds of millions in profit from it. Which for Microsoft is in their eyes probably not worth the effort.
endorphone 10y ago
Billions of dollars. Windows Phone has been failing for years, and the same chorus has been saying "just a little bit more!" while Microsoft dumped billions and a large amount of goodwill into a clearly failed venture. They put more effort into it that the overwhelming bulk of businesses on the planet could ever imagine. There's a point where it's just a lot of good money and effort after a futile cause. People's discussions about Windows Phone -- the invariable commentators who talk about how great it is -- is the sort of thing I'm incredibly wary about, having been misled by it before in this field. The people professing love for Windows Phone almost invariably spent very little time with it (and haven't dealt with the enormous number of flaws and gaps), or have a profound bias to like it regardless. As a developer across a number of platforms, and with no affinity or vow of loyalty to any of the makers, I think it was a terrible platform that had tiny nuggets of promise, but never a compelling enough reward profile.
- vorticalbox 10y ago
  I have had my 950 for almost a year, I always read "bugs that have never been fixed" I haven't seen anything as such. I'll agree it has gaps and the settings is all over the place, wallpapers in personalise and not under display. I get it, its just not like any other mobiles os, even screen time out isn't in display its in lock screen. It also has annoying links to faq at the bottom of every single page.
devonkim 10y ago
Yeah, I can't find the article now but there's always a group of consumers out there that have a strong affinity for products that have failed in the market. Anything from soft drinks to candy to fast food to electronics devices - they're among the greater predictors of a product failure than any focus group could offer. I'm someone that was all about alternatives to MP3 such as Ogg Vorbis and VQF and ripped nearly 300 CDs to them before giving up and just going with... FLAC, which at least lets me pick and choose whatever I want in the future.
- tjalfi 10y ago
  Were you thinking of the following article? Eric Anderson, Song Lin, Duncan Simester, and Catherine Tucker (2015) Harbingers of Failure. Journal of Marketing Research: October 2015, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 580-592. It was posted to HN in July 2015[0] and a PDF is at [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9839344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9839344 [1] http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/staff/song_lin/song_lin-jmr-2015.pdf http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/staff/song_lin/song_lin-jmr-2015.p...
  - Roboprog 10y ago
    Thanks for that. I wonder how many of us in this readership have "flop affinity", given often very particular tastes and goals?
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I believe many people would argue that 'computing in the 21st century happens on the phone' not on the desktop or laptop for a large fraction of the population. And because of that, it would seem the worlds leading software vendor would want to participate there. So persistence here is not perceived as throwing away billions for a small minority, so much as investing billions so that you're a credible alternative to tens if not hundreds of millions of users. That keeps your company tuned up in the most dominant software delivery mechanism of our time and avoids overall company death by irrelevancy.

jpalomaki 10y ago

The phones and the operating system were great, but the ecosystem was not there and that was a problem. I used 920 and 930, but then switched to iPhone due to lack of 3rd party software (either the software was completely missing or the features arrived late).

vorticalbox 10y ago
Somewhat agree, I have a 950 and a lit of android/ios apps are here just not all. Last time I checked out of the top 20 on android windows phone has 17/20. I find most games pointless battery life on all phones already sucks.
roryisok 10y ago
I'm typing this on a 925, and I'll use it for as long as it works. I've come to see the ecosystem problem as a blessing in disguise. The promise of windows phone in the early adverts was that you would get in and out quickly, and not waste time that could be spent socialising, or with family. They delivered on that, though not the way they intended. The lack of apps means I don't waste time on my phone. The latest games aren't there. Major apps are unavailable. No pinterest. No ebay app. Crappy youtube experience. These are all good things. The temptation to install timesinks is far less, because even when they are available, they're generally quite poor quality compared to the IOS or android alternatives I have more free time because I'm on windows phone, and that's worth a lot
- icebraining 10y ago
  Why even get a smartphone if all you want is the basics? Might as well get a feature phone and enjoy the extra battery life.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    I browse HN, take a lot of photos and make notes on OneNote. But to be honest I've often been tempted. The camera is probably the thing I'd most miss - I take a lot of photos of my kids and a feature phone camera won't cut the mustard

untog 10y ago

I'm amazed by how much MS messed up Windows Phone. At a certain point they were right to give up, but only because of their own incompetence. I bought a Windows Phone 7 device. Loved it. Still the best mobile UI I've experienced. It had a ton of smart ideas too, like integrating different messaging services into a central app - totally breaking up the app-centric model of iOS and Android. ...except they didn't provide any hooks for third party apps to integrate. Said it was coming. Along with multitasking and other stuff that was already common in other OSes. It never did. Instead they announced Windows Phone 8, and stated that almost all WP7 devices would be ineligible for an upgrade, thus burning their relationship with early adopters. I believe they did the same with some devices from WP8 to 10. Nowadays they've given up everything that made WP unique, so there's no need to use it. Sad thing is, their initial timing was great. Google had dropped the ball on Android - developing an entire version specifically for tablets (3.0) while the phone OS floundered. Compared to Android 2.3, Windows Phone was a breath of fresh air. But by the time they'd decided my phone was EOL less than a year later, Android 4 was out. I switched back with no regrets. Don't get me wrong, it would have been an insane uphill climb for anyone, but MS, with their resources and XBox etc., if anyone could have entered the market, it could have been them.

hhw 10y ago
Blackberry OS 10 has an integrated hub for all communications as well. I've never tried Windows Phone, but I can't see anything me much slicker than that. Didn't do them any favours either, and they started off with a larger base. The lack of an app ecosystem, and some unfounded sentiments of it being obsolete did them in. I'm on my 2nd BB Classic, and will likely stock up a couple more to last me some years, as there's no better phone for email and ssh. And the few apps I do need that aren't supported I can still run using the Android runtime.
Maarten88 10y ago
Yes, instead of having two OSses with one application API during the transition with Windows 95 and Windows NT (Win32), with Windows 8 they made one OS with two different API's, costing almost two years and bringing no benefits to users, throwing early adopters and developers under the bus. Like the GP, I also miss my Windows Phone, but Windows 8 killed the opportunity they had.

Markoff 10y ago

you can have smooth tiled experience in Android as well, as for battery if you use it same way as windows phone with almost zero apps and killing background processes you can have same battery life windows phone used pretty low end low power CPU which don't eat much or you really think windows can manage resources better than Android?

zelos 10y ago

I felt the same about my Lumia 630. I broke the screen and ended up switching to some HTC abomination because I needed Android, but the 640 was cheap, smooth, fast, well ahead of its time in mobile UI and it was actually pleasant to use. I can't believe how badly MS have handled Windows Phone. Splitting the market between WP 7/8/10 was insane given how small a user base they had.

u801e 10y ago

I think that Nokia would have been better off had they devoted their resources towards the Meego OS (along with providing an easy way to use existing Symbian applications on the new platform. I'm still using my Nokia N9 and am pretty satisfied with it. Unfortunately, there won't be any updates (and, as far as I know, I can't hey a Jolla phone here in the US).

samfisher83 10y ago

If it was bill gates or ballmer's microsoft they might have gone on. They lost billions on Xbox and Bing, but they still kept at it. I guess Xbox turned out pretty good, but they sunk a ton of money on it. I guess the new Microsoft management is not interested in losing money. Google realized their core business is search and getting google search on phones was paramount even if they had to pay manufacturers to put their search engine there.

CamperBob2 10y ago
This would be the same Ballmer who laughed on national TV at the iPhone announcement?
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
I remember getting a pamphlet at GameStop or something around the original XBox launch with all the reasons I should get one. They actually spent some time saying, essentially, "Microsoft is rich as hell and doesn't give up, so even if it's not successful immediately there will be new game support for years." I guess that worked out for them.

zw123456 10y ago

I agree, I had a windows phone and I actually liked the UI, simple clean, the 5 things I used the most often in nice big blocks, easy for me to find quickly. Too bad, I just feel like the whole phone scene has fallen into a duopoly, Apple iPhone and Samsung Android. I liked the idea of having a strong #3. Maybe it is my soft spot for the underdog, but I miss having a richer phone space. I know, I know, this is HN so someone will bring up some obscure thing I am supposed to know about like an Ubuntu phone or something, but let's keep it real guys, there are 2, keepin' it 100, K?

suda50 10y ago

I heavily considered purchasing a Lumia 950 when looking to upgrade my Android phone. Unfortunately, the community pretty much drove me away, not because they were toxic, but because they claimed the platform was dead and no one suggested getting into Windows Mobile 10. If Microsoft releases a new WM 10 phone with a fingerprint sensor and a decent set of specs, I might consider picking one up and bearing the "app problem". I like the fact that Microsoft updates the devices directly and I can go into a Microsoft store if I have a problem.

Kipters 10y ago
The HP Elite x3 has a fingerprint reader (also an iris scanner, like the 950 and 950 XL)

m_fayer 10y ago

And the native app model for WP was a pleasure to code against, compared to Android or iOS.

smichel17 10y ago

Two flavors of phone, plus however many flavors of Android.