10 ms·

Bill Gates switches to Android phone

102 points by abalog 9y ago

miguelrochefort 9y ago
Windows Phone was the best thing since webOS. The developer experience was (and still is) a lot better than for iOS or Android. I'm sure it will eventually come back.
- MBCook 9y ago
  I don’t know how it could. It doesn’t matter how nice it is the app ecosystem is too important and they’d be light years behind. If they emulated Android (like Blackberry)... why not just buy an android phone?
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    The kind of apps we're using today won't exist anymore in 5 years. I believe that Microsoft will dominate in AR, and quickly become the leading platform.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      I feel like the people currently mocking Microsoft for how "boring" the HoloLens has quickly become because it's primary focus hasn't been games but enterprise and it's still not very consumer-friendly, are missing exactly why Microsoft is likely to be the leading AR platform. What Apple and Google are doing are still just fun toys for kids; HoloLens is already powering incredible business applications in places as disparate as NASA JPL and Ford.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    The fact that Microsoft is pushing Universal apps so hard, and if you're making a universal app for desktops, it's trivially easy to allow it to also work on Mobile. A not-insignificant number of times I've installed an app on my desktop and then realized I can use it on my phone, or installed a phone app, and realized it's great on my desktop too. If UWP takes off, their mobile app support will follow. New Windows 10 S devices only running UWP apps will encourage this progress a lot.
    - lostmsu 9y ago
      > New Windows 10 S devices only running UWP apps will encourage this progress a lot. If anybody will actually buy them.
      - WorldMaker 9y ago
        There's a setting now to set Windows 10 Home and Pro to only allow Store apps as well. How soon until that tempts more of us that do unpaid tech support in our free time for family and friends to just turn that setting on for them?
- 201709User 9y ago
  It crashed every debug deployment. Xamarin on the other hand never does.
netsec_burn 9y ago
Long story short: Developers, developers, developers, developers. The same reason why people won't switch from Windows to Linux is why people won't switch from Android to Windows Phone.
- MBCook 9y ago
  It’s not only developers (although that was a HUGE Robles and also one of the big two problems with WebOS). Every time they made a huge change in the OS (for the better) basically none of the existing phones go it. So every time they updated they were basically throwing away the previous platform. If apps weren’t compatible (I don’t know) they may have been resetting that as well. Combined with how late they were to the party that was just a death sentence.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Sure, but the difference is that Linux might be small in market share on the desktop but it's carved itself a small but self-sustaining niche for itself. Windows Phone didn't even manage that.
Jedd 9y ago
There's a mild delight in noting that Microsoft failed to break into someone else's platform stranglehold. Personally I wasn't sad to see it fail to obtain a place in the market. Disclaimer -- I've never used a Microsoft phone. Indeed, I only know one person that had one - and even then it was an employer decision. Nor have I ever heard anyone wish out loud that their phone was more like their Microsoft Windows computer, or that it integrated better with their existing Microsoft systems. People who want to 'think different' could have embraced Maemo, BB, Sailfish, Firefox, or various other niche platforms. And then observed the same problem -- lack of people developing applications for them.
- KGIII 9y ago
  I, and it seems a few others in this thread, like our Windows phones. It's the only Microsoft code I have running, actually.
- notzorbo3 9y ago
  > Nor have I ever heard anyone wish out loud that their phone was more like their Microsoft Windows computer The one place I want microsoft to succeed is smartphones. Android spies on basically everything you do. Both android and iOS are vendor lock-in in a way we've never seen before. Compared to the current smartphone OS offerings, Windows was (and is) an incredibly open platform.
  - nileshtrivedi 9y ago
    WHy not LineageOS then?
  - saint_fiasco 9y ago
    Windows already spies on you on the desktop. Is their mobile OS different in that regard?
  - Yetanfou 9y ago
    Android itself does not "[spy] on basically everything you do", that role is given to the Google-specific services and applications you can - but do not have to - run on the thing. Neither is Android "vendor lock-in in a way we've never seen before", the source to the basic OS is available after all. The exception to this is formed by the device drivers which generally come in the form of "blobs" which are tailored to a specific build of the OS. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to make use of source builds, a situation which might be rectified by "project Treble" [1] but the jury is still out on this. With the source to Android available and decoupled from the device-specific code it should be easier to create alternative Android distributions. This should also make it possible to upgrade Android on devices which have been abandoned by the vendor and those which never got any updates to begin with. This is not just theory by the way, I'm using a number of Google-free Android devices myself. They run just fine without those Google bits, they don't spy more than any other device. This does not mean it does not spy at all but that problem is present in all mobile devices from all manufacturers and under all operating systems: the radio interface layer is a black box closed source blob in all commercially available devices that I've come across. [1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...
qubex 9y ago
The total failure of Windows Phone to gain acceptance in the market is a huge pity. I have a Lumina 950 as a secondary device (for loading with a local SIM while abroad) and it’s a solid performer with a polished OS, refreshingly ’different’ UI, and excellent basics (build quality, call quality, and battery life). The basic, core apps I ’need’ in this role are available (WhatsApp, Facebook/Messenger, Twitter, & cetera) and it hotspots very dependably towards my myriad Apple devices (iPhone7+, iPadPro10.5, 11” MacBook). It even has some very fascinating features not seen elsewhere (I have a dedicated dock for using certain apps with an external screen, keyboard and mouse, whose name escapes me at the moment). I really wished they had managed to gain a foothold, because as a platform it really lacks nothing (excepting an app developer base, and actual producers of handsets).
- robin_reala 9y ago
  The dock system was called Continuum: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum
- jasonmaydie 9y ago
  Every major version was a new os. Their phone strategy was terrible and lacked commitment. It didn't help that it was started by one CEO and abandoned midway through by the next CEO.
  - bsharitt 9y ago
    > Every major version was a new os. I had had some Nokia phone with WP7 and it was a pretty nice phone despite lacking some apps, and I was looking forward the the future of the platform. Of course when the future did come witn WP8, they said there would be no updates to existing phones and they were pushing developers to use APIs that would only work on the new OS meaning my limited pool of apps wouldn't grow on my current phone, which hurt more than the no OS upgrade. While the lack of OS upgrade isn't uncommon in the Android world, Google doesn't generally push developers to abandon the old OS base so quickly. So with my Windows Phone basically EOL'd overnight(within about 6 months or so of buying it), I went back to Android.
  - 9y ago
dep_b 9y ago
Windows Phone 8 was probably one of the best OS's Microsoft ever did. It was fast on cheap hardware and the UI actually had just one idea instead of several layers of cruft of generations of unfinished new ideas. It was more open than iOS where it counted and more closed than Android where it mattered. So naturally it failed.
- gruez 9y ago
  >It was more open than iOS where it counted and more closed than Android where it mattered. Elaborate on counted vs mattered?
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Customization vs security, probably.
  - dep_b 9y ago
    Well Microsoft got a great balance between allowing a programmer or a user to do things without allowing them end up with a phone that drains battery too fast, isn't secure, looks like a mess etcetera. Most important is it's update model. It just works. A mid range WP Nokia would be a great secondary phone to me (disclosure: I'm an iOS developer) if it would have any traction.
- nwah1 9y ago
  Windows 10 Mobile is better. Developers can use the same XAML + C# toolchain for universal apps, but easily deploy to desktops as well. The Edge browser is much better. It is fast, and shares the same kernel as regular Windows, as well as Xbox. The upcoming mobile version will have something called CShell which means that the interface will be shared among desktop and mobile, meaning that there will be no differences aside from x86 support.
  - 201709User 9y ago
    Are we supposed to buy legacy/obscure devices to get it though? They lied about upgrading my 920 very blatantly.
chiph 9y ago
I really liked my Windows Phone and wish they were still being made. The OS was stable and fast, and you could resize the squares to make them easier to hit with your thumb. Battery life was good. I think if they'd gone with premium hardware they'd make sales to people who appreciate a good looking phone and one that didn't make them wait for pointless animations to finish. Now that Microsoft has talented hardware people working on really nice products like Surface, they could probably do an in-house design on a new phone. Borrow a page from Motorola/Google's Moto X Pure Edition and put a wooden back on it - it's grippier than plastic or glass, and looks classier too.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Acer, HP, and Alcatel still make them. Microsoft doesn't make any and Windows Phone 8 is dead, I think.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    In fact, it sounds like a Verizon model of the HP Elite x3 is launch-imminent. I'm hearing mid-October.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Yeah, I may end up switching to Verizon, though I'm not sure how happy they will be. US Cellular owns the towers near me and Verizon has an agreement to share towers with them. However, Verizon recently cut about 12,500 people off because they were using non-Verizon towers too often. (This made some news sites and the municipalities are less than impressed.) US Cellular doesn't like to activate non-branded phones, though I guess they have started doing some. They share the same tech so I don't know of any technical limitations that would prevent it. I will need to replace mine. It is running 8 (.1 maybe?) and I guess it can be upgraded but I'd rather not risk it and it is getting long in the tooth. I should add that I'm in an unusual position where I don't even carry my cell phone very often. I often even forget to bring it with me. I don't depend on it, am not chained to it, and it frequently goes without attention for days or weeks at a time. I don't actually install anything on it. The stock apps do everything I want to do, and more. Right now, I think it's in the cab of the tractor, though it might be in the car.
spinchange 9y ago
At one point, Microsoft was reported to be earning somewhere in the neighborhood of $2B per year in revenues from IP licensing agreements with Android ODMs. I think that's largely fallen away now, but it's not as if Microsoft didn't get a pound of flesh from this platform, commercially. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-earns-2-billion-per-year-from-android-patent-royalties-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-earns-2-billion-per...
nsxwolf 9y ago
I always liked Windows Phone. It was a truly unique and refreshing alternative to iOS, not the carbon copy that Android is.
perfectstorm 9y ago
I miss my Lumia 920 with Windows phone 8.1. I feel bad for MS (Nokia mostly) when I see Apple/Google announcing a feature that has been on WP8.1 for years (Google lens, tap to awake, ambient/always on display, offline maps/navigation, wireless charging etc.).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
abdvfuk 9y ago
Does it also mean, Gates is no more concerned about Privacy or Google targeting him with ads?
- ape4 9y ago
  You'd think a rich guy would have to be very concerned with privacy.
losteverything 9y ago
I accidentally rode an elevator mr gates was in. Just me, him and an EA from exec area He was carrying a laptop. No case. It was well before cell phone ubiquity and way before smartphones. I thought "wow, the richest man carries an unprotected laptop, no briefcase, his hair even uncombed (probably because he just came from heliport)" I felt "LC" because i cared about a celebrity (and even noted my diary). Later, the parking guard said it was to be a low key meeting. We all speculated and believe it had to do with using unused bandwith?during overnight hours... I still feel LC because i read the article...
- jstanley 9y ago
  I can't work out which one of these you're referring to: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/LC http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/LC
  - voltooid 9y ago
    Lara Croft? Liver Cirrhosis? Leaky Cauldron??
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
Divver 9y ago
Before I joined Apple I was at Microsoft and I did use a Windows Phone. It was a Lumia 1520. And honestly the OS was rock solid and worked great (unlike my experience with the Lenovo Windows work laptop I was given which would keep blue-screening after going into hibernate for more than 5 minutes. I ended up switching to a SurfaceBook once that was available and it worked perfectly. Amazing laptop. Like a MacBook Pro. Except without Bash which sucked so you had to learn PowerShell to script things (well until recently now I think there’s Bash on Windows using some kind of emulation trick I guess)) Windows Phone was a solid system with a decent easy to use UI it is kind of a pity it didn’t take off. But because the app ecoosysem was so poor after about 6 months I switched to a Samsung Android phone (there was no Google Pixel at the time), which had worse battery life but it performed fine. I use an iPhone now and the biggest thing I miss is the lack of certain categories of apps that I could find on Android or Windows that I couldn’t find in the iOS App Store. And the feature set of iOS usually lags behind Android but after using it for over a year now it’s really not that bad and I really like the cross-OS integration features with macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Universal copy paste is a killer feature imo. To be honest I’m happy with both Android and iOS. They both have the same set of popular third party US apps in their App Stores.
- justacat 9y ago
  I had real hopes for the Windows Phones, I thought they were really exploring a unique approach to the whole thing. I'm on Apple right now and it is the Apple ecosystem that keeps me here more than anything.
- jobu 9y ago
  > Windows Phone was a solid system with a decent easy to use UI it is kind of a pity it didn’t take off. Agreed. We developed a couple apps way back in Windows Phone 7, and the UI was slick and stylish. The developer tools were fantastic - very fast and easy to create decent apps. Unfortunately we didn't see much ROI for those apps, and then Microsoft decided everyone needed to redo their apps for Windows Phone 8. It was an easy choice to drop support for those apps and stop all development for Windows Phone at that point. The biggest problem people had with Windows Phone was the lack of apps, and it seemed like MS caused that problem themselves.
bmsleight_ 9y ago
Wow, I guess 10 years ago - if I said Mr Gates would be walking around with a Linux device as his most often used 'computer' - no one would have believed me. What next ?
- drzaiusapelord 9y ago
  Its not like he had much choice. Adopting Apple, his historic competitor, would have been too much of an ego bruising for him. Linux is more neutral to MS anyway. MS never had a lock on the server market that linux is successful in. The home computer front has always been under attack by Apple with varying results. Especially today where owning an Apple computer isn't just for 'designers.' Pretty much every college student has one.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    > MS never had a lock on the server market that linux is successful in. Only because Linux happened, businesses were happily moving from proprietary UNIXes into Windows NT and 2000.
    - drzaiusapelord 9y ago
      Linux ate proprietary Unix, not Windows. Windows "servers" domination as listed by garner and others were tiny office NT4 domains back then, not internet facing websites and such. The web never really got dominated by MS and Unix and Linux always strangled MS in the cradle. Even stats by netcraft are misleading. Sure you'll see a lot of small business IIS crap and Exchange OWA, but that's no the web in general. The web has always been dominated by linux/Unix.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
pulse7 9y ago
He used it secretly before, but didn't tell anybody about it... :-)
bkovacev 9y ago
Why is this on HN? Articles like these should be on TMZ or some other non-relevant websites.
louprado 9y ago
This story was originally reported the same day Apple announced that it would no longer use Bing.[1]. Gates' sudden affection for Android feels like a transparent way to snub Apple in retaliation and nothing more. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/25/16361628/apple-siri-bing-google-search-results-spotlight-mac https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/25/16361628/apple-siri-bing-...
- misingnoglic 9y ago
  Apple started using Google, so Bill Gates got back at them by also using Google?
perseusprime11 9y ago
The lack of a Youtube App from Google killed the Windows Phone. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/2013/08/15/the-limits-of-googles-openness/ https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/...
- fenwick67 9y ago
  It's insane to me that there haven't been any anti-trust lawsuits against Google for this kind of crap they pull. More examples: * Deceptive ads all over the web telling people to switch to Chrome * You can't use any other search engine but Google from Chrome on Android * The insane amount of Google integration on stock Android Google has almost total control over a typical internet user's experience
thisiscool 9y ago
In 2010 I nearly joined a company which was building their business on deploying and managing Windows Mobile devices to enterprises. Glad I didn't do that!
SteveCoast 9y ago
It's possible it's a Microsoft Android phone.
dictum 9y ago
He also "played around with Firefox a bit" sometime around 2005 (2004?). I'll take his word for it that he really thought IE6 was still better by then ;) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4508897.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4508897.stm
richardknop 9y ago
I think Microsoft hasn't given up on smartphones yet. They will give it another try next year with Surface Phone. Can't just leave such huge market to Apple and Google. It's worth it for them to keep trying to compete. Maybe they'll get it right next time.
mattnewport 9y ago
I recently switched back to Windows Phone after several years on Android and I'm liking it a lot so far. I switched from a Samsung Galaxy S6 to an HP Elite x3. The app ecosystem is lacking but I have the apps I really need (Slack for work, WhatsApp and Telegram for messaging, LastPass) plus several nice to have apps. I find I don't want a lot of apps any more and would rather use the browser or cut them out completely.
oldgun 9y ago
Wonder what model he's actually using. Pixel most likely?

102 points by abalog 9y ago

Windows Phone was the best thing since webOS. The developer experience was (and still is) a lot better than for iOS or Android. I'm sure it will eventually come back.

MBCook 9y ago
I don’t know how it could. It doesn’t matter how nice it is the app ecosystem is too important and they’d be light years behind. If they emulated Android (like Blackberry)... why not just buy an android phone?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  The kind of apps we're using today won't exist anymore in 5 years. I believe that Microsoft will dominate in AR, and quickly become the leading platform.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    I feel like the people currently mocking Microsoft for how "boring" the HoloLens has quickly become because it's primary focus hasn't been games but enterprise and it's still not very consumer-friendly, are missing exactly why Microsoft is likely to be the leading AR platform. What Apple and Google are doing are still just fun toys for kids; HoloLens is already powering incredible business applications in places as disparate as NASA JPL and Ford.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  The fact that Microsoft is pushing Universal apps so hard, and if you're making a universal app for desktops, it's trivially easy to allow it to also work on Mobile. A not-insignificant number of times I've installed an app on my desktop and then realized I can use it on my phone, or installed a phone app, and realized it's great on my desktop too. If UWP takes off, their mobile app support will follow. New Windows 10 S devices only running UWP apps will encourage this progress a lot.
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    > New Windows 10 S devices only running UWP apps will encourage this progress a lot. If anybody will actually buy them.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      There's a setting now to set Windows 10 Home and Pro to only allow Store apps as well. How soon until that tempts more of us that do unpaid tech support in our free time for family and friends to just turn that setting on for them?
201709User 9y ago
It crashed every debug deployment. Xamarin on the other hand never does.

netsec_burn 9y ago

Long story short: Developers, developers, developers, developers. The same reason why people won't switch from Windows to Linux is why people won't switch from Android to Windows Phone.

MBCook 9y ago
It’s not only developers (although that was a HUGE Robles and also one of the big two problems with WebOS). Every time they made a huge change in the OS (for the better) basically none of the existing phones go it. So every time they updated they were basically throwing away the previous platform. If apps weren’t compatible (I don’t know) they may have been resetting that as well. Combined with how late they were to the party that was just a death sentence.
Spivak 9y ago
Sure, but the difference is that Linux might be small in market share on the desktop but it's carved itself a small but self-sustaining niche for itself. Windows Phone didn't even manage that.

Jedd 9y ago

There's a mild delight in noting that Microsoft failed to break into someone else's platform stranglehold. Personally I wasn't sad to see it fail to obtain a place in the market. Disclaimer -- I've never used a Microsoft phone. Indeed, I only know one person that had one - and even then it was an employer decision. Nor have I ever heard anyone wish out loud that their phone was more like their Microsoft Windows computer, or that it integrated better with their existing Microsoft systems. People who want to 'think different' could have embraced Maemo, BB, Sailfish, Firefox, or various other niche platforms. And then observed the same problem -- lack of people developing applications for them.

KGIII 9y ago
I, and it seems a few others in this thread, like our Windows phones. It's the only Microsoft code I have running, actually.
notzorbo3 9y ago
> Nor have I ever heard anyone wish out loud that their phone was more like their Microsoft Windows computer The one place I want microsoft to succeed is smartphones. Android spies on basically everything you do. Both android and iOS are vendor lock-in in a way we've never seen before. Compared to the current smartphone OS offerings, Windows was (and is) an incredibly open platform.
- nileshtrivedi 9y ago
  WHy not LineageOS then?
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  Windows already spies on you on the desktop. Is their mobile OS different in that regard?
- Yetanfou 9y ago
  Android itself does not "[spy] on basically everything you do", that role is given to the Google-specific services and applications you can - but do not have to - run on the thing. Neither is Android "vendor lock-in in a way we've never seen before", the source to the basic OS is available after all. The exception to this is formed by the device drivers which generally come in the form of "blobs" which are tailored to a specific build of the OS. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to make use of source builds, a situation which might be rectified by "project Treble" [1] but the jury is still out on this. With the source to Android available and decoupled from the device-specific code it should be easier to create alternative Android distributions. This should also make it possible to upgrade Android on devices which have been abandoned by the vendor and those which never got any updates to begin with. This is not just theory by the way, I'm using a number of Google-free Android devices myself. They run just fine without those Google bits, they don't spy more than any other device. This does not mean it does not spy at all but that problem is present in all mobile devices from all manufacturers and under all operating systems: the radio interface layer is a black box closed source blob in all commercially available devices that I've come across. [1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...

qubex 9y ago

The total failure of Windows Phone to gain acceptance in the market is a huge pity. I have a Lumina 950 as a secondary device (for loading with a local SIM while abroad) and it’s a solid performer with a polished OS, refreshingly ’different’ UI, and excellent basics (build quality, call quality, and battery life). The basic, core apps I ’need’ in this role are available (WhatsApp, Facebook/Messenger, Twitter, & cetera) and it hotspots very dependably towards my myriad Apple devices (iPhone7+, iPadPro10.5, 11” MacBook). It even has some very fascinating features not seen elsewhere (I have a dedicated dock for using certain apps with an external screen, keyboard and mouse, whose name escapes me at the moment). I really wished they had managed to gain a foothold, because as a platform it really lacks nothing (excepting an app developer base, and actual producers of handsets).

robin_reala 9y ago
The dock system was called Continuum: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum
jasonmaydie 9y ago
Every major version was a new os. Their phone strategy was terrible and lacked commitment. It didn't help that it was started by one CEO and abandoned midway through by the next CEO.
- bsharitt 9y ago
  > Every major version was a new os. I had had some Nokia phone with WP7 and it was a pretty nice phone despite lacking some apps, and I was looking forward the the future of the platform. Of course when the future did come witn WP8, they said there would be no updates to existing phones and they were pushing developers to use APIs that would only work on the new OS meaning my limited pool of apps wouldn't grow on my current phone, which hurt more than the no OS upgrade. While the lack of OS upgrade isn't uncommon in the Android world, Google doesn't generally push developers to abandon the old OS base so quickly. So with my Windows Phone basically EOL'd overnight(within about 6 months or so of buying it), I went back to Android.
- 9y ago

dep_b 9y ago

Windows Phone 8 was probably one of the best OS's Microsoft ever did. It was fast on cheap hardware and the UI actually had just one idea instead of several layers of cruft of generations of unfinished new ideas. It was more open than iOS where it counted and more closed than Android where it mattered. So naturally it failed.

gruez 9y ago
>It was more open than iOS where it counted and more closed than Android where it mattered. Elaborate on counted vs mattered?
- TomMarius 9y ago
  Customization vs security, probably.
- dep_b 9y ago
  Well Microsoft got a great balance between allowing a programmer or a user to do things without allowing them end up with a phone that drains battery too fast, isn't secure, looks like a mess etcetera. Most important is it's update model. It just works. A mid range WP Nokia would be a great secondary phone to me (disclosure: I'm an iOS developer) if it would have any traction.
nwah1 9y ago
Windows 10 Mobile is better. Developers can use the same XAML + C# toolchain for universal apps, but easily deploy to desktops as well. The Edge browser is much better. It is fast, and shares the same kernel as regular Windows, as well as Xbox. The upcoming mobile version will have something called CShell which means that the interface will be shared among desktop and mobile, meaning that there will be no differences aside from x86 support.
- 201709User 9y ago
  Are we supposed to buy legacy/obscure devices to get it though? They lied about upgrading my 920 very blatantly.

chiph 9y ago

I really liked my Windows Phone and wish they were still being made. The OS was stable and fast, and you could resize the squares to make them easier to hit with your thumb. Battery life was good. I think if they'd gone with premium hardware they'd make sales to people who appreciate a good looking phone and one that didn't make them wait for pointless animations to finish. Now that Microsoft has talented hardware people working on really nice products like Surface, they could probably do an in-house design on a new phone. Borrow a page from Motorola/Google's Moto X Pure Edition and put a wooden back on it - it's grippier than plastic or glass, and looks classier too.

KGIII 9y ago
Acer, HP, and Alcatel still make them. Microsoft doesn't make any and Windows Phone 8 is dead, I think.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  In fact, it sounds like a Verizon model of the HP Elite x3 is launch-imminent. I'm hearing mid-October.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Yeah, I may end up switching to Verizon, though I'm not sure how happy they will be. US Cellular owns the towers near me and Verizon has an agreement to share towers with them. However, Verizon recently cut about 12,500 people off because they were using non-Verizon towers too often. (This made some news sites and the municipalities are less than impressed.) US Cellular doesn't like to activate non-branded phones, though I guess they have started doing some. They share the same tech so I don't know of any technical limitations that would prevent it. I will need to replace mine. It is running 8 (.1 maybe?) and I guess it can be upgraded but I'd rather not risk it and it is getting long in the tooth. I should add that I'm in an unusual position where I don't even carry my cell phone very often. I often even forget to bring it with me. I don't depend on it, am not chained to it, and it frequently goes without attention for days or weeks at a time. I don't actually install anything on it. The stock apps do everything I want to do, and more. Right now, I think it's in the cab of the tractor, though it might be in the car.

spinchange 9y ago

At one point, Microsoft was reported to be earning somewhere in the neighborhood of $2B per year in revenues from IP licensing agreements with Android ODMs. I think that's largely fallen away now, but it's not as if Microsoft didn't get a pound of flesh from this platform, commercially. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-earns-2-billion-per-year-from-android-patent-royalties-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-earns-2-billion-per...

nsxwolf 9y ago

I always liked Windows Phone. It was a truly unique and refreshing alternative to iOS, not the carbon copy that Android is.

perfectstorm 9y ago

I miss my Lumia 920 with Windows phone 8.1. I feel bad for MS (Nokia mostly) when I see Apple/Google announcing a feature that has been on WP8.1 for years (Google lens, tap to awake, ambient/always on display, offline maps/navigation, wireless charging etc.).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

abdvfuk 9y ago

Does it also mean, Gates is no more concerned about Privacy or Google targeting him with ads?

ape4 9y ago
You'd think a rich guy would have to be very concerned with privacy.

losteverything 9y ago

I accidentally rode an elevator mr gates was in. Just me, him and an EA from exec area He was carrying a laptop. No case. It was well before cell phone ubiquity and way before smartphones. I thought "wow, the richest man carries an unprotected laptop, no briefcase, his hair even uncombed (probably because he just came from heliport)" I felt "LC" because i cared about a celebrity (and even noted my diary). Later, the parking guard said it was to be a low key meeting. We all speculated and believe it had to do with using unused bandwith?during overnight hours... I still feel LC because i read the article...

jstanley 9y ago
I can't work out which one of these you're referring to: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/LC http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/LC
- voltooid 9y ago
  Lara Croft? Liver Cirrhosis? Leaky Cauldron??
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

Divver 9y ago

Before I joined Apple I was at Microsoft and I did use a Windows Phone. It was a Lumia 1520. And honestly the OS was rock solid and worked great (unlike my experience with the Lenovo Windows work laptop I was given which would keep blue-screening after going into hibernate for more than 5 minutes. I ended up switching to a SurfaceBook once that was available and it worked perfectly. Amazing laptop. Like a MacBook Pro. Except without Bash which sucked so you had to learn PowerShell to script things (well until recently now I think there’s Bash on Windows using some kind of emulation trick I guess)) Windows Phone was a solid system with a decent easy to use UI it is kind of a pity it didn’t take off. But because the app ecoosysem was so poor after about 6 months I switched to a Samsung Android phone (there was no Google Pixel at the time), which had worse battery life but it performed fine. I use an iPhone now and the biggest thing I miss is the lack of certain categories of apps that I could find on Android or Windows that I couldn’t find in the iOS App Store. And the feature set of iOS usually lags behind Android but after using it for over a year now it’s really not that bad and I really like the cross-OS integration features with macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Universal copy paste is a killer feature imo. To be honest I’m happy with both Android and iOS. They both have the same set of popular third party US apps in their App Stores.

justacat 9y ago
I had real hopes for the Windows Phones, I thought they were really exploring a unique approach to the whole thing. I'm on Apple right now and it is the Apple ecosystem that keeps me here more than anything.
jobu 9y ago
> Windows Phone was a solid system with a decent easy to use UI it is kind of a pity it didn’t take off. Agreed. We developed a couple apps way back in Windows Phone 7, and the UI was slick and stylish. The developer tools were fantastic - very fast and easy to create decent apps. Unfortunately we didn't see much ROI for those apps, and then Microsoft decided everyone needed to redo their apps for Windows Phone 8. It was an easy choice to drop support for those apps and stop all development for Windows Phone at that point. The biggest problem people had with Windows Phone was the lack of apps, and it seemed like MS caused that problem themselves.

bmsleight_ 9y ago

Wow, I guess 10 years ago - if I said Mr Gates would be walking around with a Linux device as his most often used 'computer' - no one would have believed me. What next ?

drzaiusapelord 9y ago
Its not like he had much choice. Adopting Apple, his historic competitor, would have been too much of an ego bruising for him. Linux is more neutral to MS anyway. MS never had a lock on the server market that linux is successful in. The home computer front has always been under attack by Apple with varying results. Especially today where owning an Apple computer isn't just for 'designers.' Pretty much every college student has one.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  > MS never had a lock on the server market that linux is successful in. Only because Linux happened, businesses were happily moving from proprietary UNIXes into Windows NT and 2000.
  - drzaiusapelord 9y ago
    Linux ate proprietary Unix, not Windows. Windows "servers" domination as listed by garner and others were tiny office NT4 domains back then, not internet facing websites and such. The web never really got dominated by MS and Unix and Linux always strangled MS in the cradle. Even stats by netcraft are misleading. Sure you'll see a lot of small business IIS crap and Exchange OWA, but that's no the web in general. The web has always been dominated by linux/Unix.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

pulse7 9y ago

He used it secretly before, but didn't tell anybody about it... :-)

bkovacev 9y ago

Why is this on HN? Articles like these should be on TMZ or some other non-relevant websites.

louprado 9y ago

This story was originally reported the same day Apple announced that it would no longer use Bing.[1]. Gates' sudden affection for Android feels like a transparent way to snub Apple in retaliation and nothing more. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/25/16361628/apple-siri-bing-google-search-results-spotlight-mac https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/25/16361628/apple-siri-bing-...

misingnoglic 9y ago
Apple started using Google, so Bill Gates got back at them by also using Google?

perseusprime11 9y ago

The lack of a Youtube App from Google killed the Windows Phone. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/2013/08/15/the-limits-of-googles-openness/ https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/...

fenwick67 9y ago
It's insane to me that there haven't been any anti-trust lawsuits against Google for this kind of crap they pull. More examples: * Deceptive ads all over the web telling people to switch to Chrome * You can't use any other search engine but Google from Chrome on Android * The insane amount of Google integration on stock Android Google has almost total control over a typical internet user's experience

thisiscool 9y ago

In 2010 I nearly joined a company which was building their business on deploying and managing Windows Mobile devices to enterprises. Glad I didn't do that!

SteveCoast 9y ago

It's possible it's a Microsoft Android phone.

dictum 9y ago

He also "played around with Firefox a bit" sometime around 2005 (2004?). I'll take his word for it that he really thought IE6 was still better by then ;) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4508897.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4508897.stm

richardknop 9y ago

I think Microsoft hasn't given up on smartphones yet. They will give it another try next year with Surface Phone. Can't just leave such huge market to Apple and Google. It's worth it for them to keep trying to compete. Maybe they'll get it right next time.

mattnewport 9y ago

I recently switched back to Windows Phone after several years on Android and I'm liking it a lot so far. I switched from a Samsung Galaxy S6 to an HP Elite x3. The app ecosystem is lacking but I have the apps I really need (Slack for work, WhatsApp and Telegram for messaging, LastPass) plus several nice to have apps. I find I don't want a lot of apps any more and would rather use the browser or cut them out completely.

oldgun 9y ago

Wonder what model he's actually using. Pixel most likely?