Over the last few months years quite a few people have written about the Windows Phone demise.
However, according to Microsoft’s Support Page for product life cycle, the “Mainstream Support End Date” for Windows Phone 8.1 is July 11, 2017… so that’s basically, tomorrow!
Microsoft’s last update for the WP8.x operating system (dubbed “Update 2”) was more than 2 years ago… so even if the “official” support only now ended, I think we can all agree that unofficially Microsoft abandoned the OS a long time ago (mostly when they replaced it with Windows 10 Mobile).
My own experience with Windows Phone
Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 15, 2010; I remember that the more I saw those screens and learned about the promised capabilities and technical details, the more I knew that I wanted to build apps for it, both as a hobby and professionally - and do so I did!!
When they released the first Windows Phone devices on October 21, 2010 in Europe, I went straight to a local shop and bought my very first Windows Phone: the magnificent Samsung Omnia 7.
Soon after that, Microsoft and Nokia got into a partnership to boost the operating system footprint, and as a consequence I ended up leaving Portugal and moving to Bristol UK to join the Nokia Music division, later known as MixRadio!
Nokia’s first Windows Phone was the Lumia 800, one of the best phones I have ever owned (I actually kept one of these as a souvenir)
By my account, throughout the years I owed and used at least 12 different Windows Phone devices, mostly due to my time as Nokia employee.
I also got to do a lot tech-talks on Windows Phone development, and participated in a few hackathons, helping the young and brightest with their projects.
“The King is dead, long live the King!”
Microsoft arrived late to the “mobile party” and made lots of mistakes (the lack of software upgrades for “older” devices, some less than a year old, being the biggest), but it was the lack of true first-party apps that caused users to lose interest in the phones and doomed the mobile operating system.
Windows 10 makes good on the promise of “one Windows for all devices”, but the mobile flavor never did get the same praise as the Windows Phone did - and I strongly agree with that!
I enjoyed all my Windows Phone devices, and I will miss using them a lot… but life goes on!
Farewell, Windows Phone.
