6 ms·
There have been rumors of a 'surface phone' that runs Win 10 (not mobile) for a couple years now. Most expected some kind of future Intel chip to enable that, b
by sxates 9y ago
There have been rumors of a 'surface phone' that runs Win 10 (not mobile) for a couple years now. Most expected some kind of future Intel chip to enable that, but ARM support certainly opens up the possibility. Just what Windows phones need - another OS change!
- ams6110 9y agoI'd be very interested in a Windows 10 phone if it has automatic updates that do not depend on the carrier, to avoid the Android situation where only certain phones get updates on a timely basis.
- pjc50 9y agoThis was the case for the Win7/8 Nokia phones, so the signs are good. (Although I'm in the UK, where the carriers are less abusive)
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoWindows 10 Mobile gets OS updates directly from Microsoft. Verizon does not support Windows 10 Mobile at all, but my four year old Verizon Lumia Icon got Windows 10 version 14393.1198, which released yesterday, yesterday. Microsoft has chosen to drop a lot of older models from the Creator's Update, but is still providing cumulative/security updates to the Anniversary Update right now, which is supported on all phones which run Windows 10 Mobile. At least, at present, if you have a Windows 10 Mobile device, you have recent security updates, regardless of make or model.
- sxates 9y agoI have a Nokia Icon in a drawer (relented and went back to iPhone last year) which I booted up the other day and had tons of updates waiting. It does seem the Win10 Mobile platform is still alive and well, though there are few signs of it in the broader market. Good to see they're still at it, I've always loved Win Phones.
- kyriakos 9y agoOne thing Microsoft does well is Long term support and backwards compatibility. I guess this applies to their mobile OS as well.
- toast0 9y agoUnless your mobile OS is Windows Phone 8.1, or Windows Phone 7, or Windows Mobile 6, etc which got very little in the way of updates once a new major release was made; and many phones are not upgradable from one major release to the next (or the upgrade wasn't pushed to users without intervention, which is effectively the same thing). I would say, Microsoft has a reputation for long term support and backwards compatibility, but it seems like it's something they're trying to get away from.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoI would more characterize it as failures in their mobile space. Microsoft has rebooted it's mobile product line a bunch of times. But, as noted, my Lumia Icon was a Windows Phone 8.x device, and it runs yesterday's release of Windows 10 Mobile. A pretty large number of 8.x devices are capable of 10. The manual intervention to upgrade to 10 is because, as noted, the big change is that Windows 10 Mobile upgrades are handled by Microsoft, so the update servers had to be changed. Prior versions to 10 had the same carrier-based update issues Android had. I'd argue that change alone points to the fact that Microsoft is getting better at long term support, not worse.
- flukus 9y ago> (or the upgrade wasn't pushed to users without intervention, which is effectively the same thing) No, that's a good thing. Pushing major updates and new features instead of just patches is what makes users (and IT departments) disable automatic updates.
- randyrand 9y agoImagine how shitty it would be to have your phone do the Windows popup "restarting in 4 hours" and then you're forced to be out of a phone for 10-30 minutes. Worse yet if the update fails...
- oridecon 9y agoFor me it's way shittier to have an insecure phone. I would even install a Clippy launcher on Android if I could have the latest security and feature updates the same day that they are released (without changing phones every year or using custom ROMs).
- randyrand 9y agoThose are not the only 2 alternatives. For instance, iOS has neither of these problems.
- Grazester 9y agoFear not Windows Phone is just about dead.
- pjmlp 9y agoMy phones still make phone calls, do SMS, have Internet access and execute the apps I care about. Seems pretty alive to me.
- _wmd 9y agoI'm a 20+ year Linux/open source neckbeard and I prefer WP as the ideal balance between cost and a variety of ideals it doesn't seem possible to get outside of an iPhone. My current Lumia 650 cost £60 refurbished, which is a tenth what I'd pay for the next best option. It's fairly trivial to stop a Windows Phone reporting your entire life history upstream, and unlike pretty much any Android handset I ever owned, this firmware receives constant security updates, as did its predecessor for the 3 years I owned it (old phone cost £120).
- Grazester 9y agoGood for you but I was responding to the previous poster and his fear of the Window Phone platform potentially changing again.