4 ms·

To me, windows Phone was a nightmare. I previously had a symbian and every interaction with windows phone made me regret it. Windows Phone was so locked and wor

To me, windows Phone was a nightmare. I previously had a symbian and every interaction with windows phone made me regret it. Windows Phone was so locked and worse than symbian! You could not install another web browser (on symbian I was using opera or opera mini). There did not exist file explorers (apps could not get permissions to explore local files). Consequently, it was impossible to open html files (Edge, the only available browser did not understand the file: protocol). I kept some data in html files on my phone to always have them with me even when offline... The dedicated search "button" was the worst idea ever: it had no use when offline and was barely interesting when connected. It would automatically turn mute when connected to a bluetooth speaker but would forget to unmute when disconnected. The volume control was even more confusing than android one (volume was represented as a number, sometimes, max was 12, sometimes it was 32...). The only good thing (the reason I chose windows phone rather than android) was nokia's GPS app. But it was already ther on symbian! Good riddance. I don't miss you windows phone!

digi_owl 9y ago
Effectively MS, who should have known the value of backwards compatibility, shot themselves in the foot by abandoning the PocketPC lineage. Never mind that debacle early on when people discovered that WinPhone7 would lock an inserted SD card to that specific device (a rarely used "feature" of the Secure Digital standard). With the added irony that Symbian could unlock said cards while Android could just reformat it. Frankly i maintain that the introduction of the iPhone rolled back smartphone development by a decade or more, as look were put before functionality and what used to be a workhorse device became a glorified media player.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9y ago
  >Effectively MS, who should have known the value of backwards compatibility, shot themselves in the foot by abandoning the PocketPC lineage. Backward compatibility with a platform which has almost zero market share is worthless.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    PocketPC/Mobile, in particular in the corporate world, was massive. And in the "consumer" world, HTC made a name for itself by making PocketPC based devices with a range of designs. Come the Windows Phone 7 announcement, they also renamed the PocketPC lineage to Phone 6.5, but it was clear that Microsoft was barely keeping it on life support. Thing was that Phone 7 could not run PocketPC lineage software, full stop. This meant that all those corporate and consumer programs (Opera Mobile came to be on PocketPC a decade before Americans were all hot and bothered about web on a mobile devices) had to be rewritten anyways, so why not look for alternatives (like Android).
    - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9y ago
      Yes, WinMo was still being used in the enterprise, mainly in industrial PDAs, but definitely not in the consumer market. I think that the main reason why Microsoft decided to drop compatibility with WinMo (apart from small marketshare) was the fact that it was using extremely outdated UI conventions. Almost all Windows Mobile apps were designed to be used with a stylus. Tiny widgets, small fonts etc. There was no place for that in the post-iPhone-launch world. Benefits from creating new OS from scratch outweighted value added by compatibility with an outdated platform.

digi_owl 9y ago

Effectively MS, who should have known the value of backwards compatibility, shot themselves in the foot by abandoning the PocketPC lineage. Never mind that debacle early on when people discovered that WinPhone7 would lock an inserted SD card to that specific device (a rarely used "feature" of the Secure Digital standard). With the added irony that Symbian could unlock said cards while Android could just reformat it. Frankly i maintain that the introduction of the iPhone rolled back smartphone development by a decade or more, as look were put before functionality and what used to be a workhorse device became a glorified media player.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9y ago
>Effectively MS, who should have known the value of backwards compatibility, shot themselves in the foot by abandoning the PocketPC lineage. Backward compatibility with a platform which has almost zero market share is worthless.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  PocketPC/Mobile, in particular in the corporate world, was massive. And in the "consumer" world, HTC made a name for itself by making PocketPC based devices with a range of designs. Come the Windows Phone 7 announcement, they also renamed the PocketPC lineage to Phone 6.5, but it was clear that Microsoft was barely keeping it on life support. Thing was that Phone 7 could not run PocketPC lineage software, full stop. This meant that all those corporate and consumer programs (Opera Mobile came to be on PocketPC a decade before Americans were all hot and bothered about web on a mobile devices) had to be rewritten anyways, so why not look for alternatives (like Android).
  - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9y ago
    Yes, WinMo was still being used in the enterprise, mainly in industrial PDAs, but definitely not in the consumer market. I think that the main reason why Microsoft decided to drop compatibility with WinMo (apart from small marketshare) was the fact that it was using extremely outdated UI conventions. Almost all Windows Mobile apps were designed to be used with a stylus. Tiny widgets, small fonts etc. There was no place for that in the post-iPhone-launch world. Benefits from creating new OS from scratch outweighted value added by compatibility with an outdated platform.