The problem for Microsoft is everything is down the road. The promise of Universal apps? Coming soon. The promise of ported apps through Bridges from Android, iOS, Win32 and web apps? On the way. New exciting Windows Phone hardware? Just around the corner! A stable and mature OS that can compete with Android and iOS and even surpass them? It’s almost here!
I talked about this before, and this pattern is really, really frustrating.
Vaporwares…
Actually it really isn’t. The development has been out in the open and nobody is doubting that Windows 10 mobile will be RTM in the next 2 months, that CityMan and Talkman are real, that the 4 bridges will be build, etc. “The next version” will surely come.
Is that version going to conquer the world, dethrone Android (marketshare) or Apple (profit)…Nobody thinks so. “viable 3rd with growth potential” is the goal.
(wikipedia: In the computer industry, vaporware is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured)
I doubt MS banks on WP being “viable 3rd” anymore. They are gradually ramping down the effort (e.g. by closing R&D facilities in Finland, and moving the remaining ex-Nokia personnel to non-WP R&D).
Most folks (for whom WP is relevant in any way, e.g. mobile app / web developers) – inside or outside MS – are just waiting for WP to go away. Thinks could take a surprising change at some point, but you may not want to bet your company money on that.
“viable 3rd” is still the goal. But that means viable from now on. Of course they realise they are not going to get the Nokia investment back. That was 7 billion horribly spend (although without spending it there wouldn’t be any Windows Phone anymore. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t). There is no way that Microsoft is going to remove themselves from the mobile world and that means Windows Mobile 10 with some Microsoft hardware and some partner hardware. Microsoft is a software company in its core and always relies on partners for hardware (they do make XBox, Keyboard/mice and lately Surface but they never expected they would be the makers of >95% of their mobile platform)
Please provide some information/source why you think that people for whom Windows Mobile is relevant are waiting for it to go away. That makes no sense. It is like carsellers waiting for cars to go away. Microsoft is betting big on Universal Apps and on their platform running everything (modern apps, “ios” apps, Android apps, web apps and win32 apps). Windows Mobile going away would result in Store Apps going away which would turn them into a legacy company that would have to rely entirely on Enterprise for their money. Microsoft will do everything it can to prevent that from happening
I don’t have the time/energy to argue this; but WP is a resource drain for both MS and developers that still have to support it for some reason or another (supporting both iOS and Android is already taxing enough).
Satya likely wants to kill it, but it’s not politically straightforward to do it even as a CEO.
I have no idea if Satya wants to kill WP, but so far he has done whatever he wants. Windows 10 for free? Software for iOS and Android first or even only? Fire 20.000 people? Write down the entire Nokia purchase? Kill Surface RT and Windows RT?
Windows Phone (actually Windows Mobile) isn’t kept alive because of politics. It is pushed forwards because Mobile is where the future is so it is strategically important.
Google needs hardware, Apple needs services, Microsoft needs mobile
What vaporware? I would argue the only problem WinPhone had was lack of any kind of flagship but now that subsidies of phones has been killed dead in the USA? That really isn’t a problem anymore.
I’ve been using Android since Donut because I liked being able to unlock the OS and install custom ROMs but my wife just hated both Android and the iPhone 5 she had for a few months so I ended up getting her a Lumia and…damn, that is a really nice OS! All the important data like latest messages and updates? Right on the front screen as soon as you unlock the phone, updates are all handled by MSFT and they come quickly and painlessly,its intuitive as hell and actions like copy/paste are simple and easy…its just a damned easy to use OS.
While I seriously doubt I’ll be using the desktop (really don’t like Windows 10 spying and reports are its buggy as hell) I have a feeling that when my BLU Mini LTE dies? It’ll probably be my last Android phone. The carriers just don’t support their phones with more than one upgrade, even Google can’t be counted on not to abandon your phone, and the communities making ROMs have started really dying off, nowadays unless you have the latest Samsung it becomes harder and harder to find ROMs whereas in the 2.x days nearly every android phone had at least a couple ROMs you could choose from.
I’ve had Android, iOS, even a WinCE back in the day and I’d say MSFT has done the WinPhone right, they really only need to boost their advertising and let folks see how consistent and easy to use the new phones are, because IMHO they are the most BS free phones I’ve ever messed with. I just wish I’d have played with one before I bought my Android, I’d have bought the WinPhone instead.
What you talked about before was that Metro still sucked. (true)
Nobody that I know thinks Windows Phone sucks. Quite the opposite actually. For some reason the market has decided it was too little, too late and apps just aren’t released as often as on iOS and Android.
I got my Nokia 1020 2 years ago as a company Christmas present. A few months later I bought a 1520 for my wife. Both have been amazing devices for us, especially the cameras and screens. The updates came quick and were really feature rich: better multitasking, notification center, quick settings, cortana, browser improvements and most importantly a major update to the keyboard that turned us from email readers to email writers…..and then nothing happened anymore. For over a year my phone hasn’t received any interesting updates. The 1520 receive a major update to the camera making it incredibly fast and almost the same quality as my 1020 and I wish I had a 1520 instead of a 1020.
I participated in the insider preview for Windows 10 and am running (and loving) that on all except my work machine. My phone…no, I am not going to run beta’s on a daily driver either. I have accepted that my phone is EOL. A glorious life and a life that will last quite a lot longer with hopefully some improved apps and OS in the future but nothing major is coming or necessary actually. I like my homescreen, my trusted apps, my offline maps, my Japanese lessons and translators, my pictures, videos, running apps and music, email and browser and my slow but incredible camera. (and my daily game of picross)
Would I buy a new Windows Phone right now? No, just like nobody should buy an iPone right now. New models are just about to launch with a new OS, some new features and a better price.
Would I buy a new Windows Phone if I lost my 1020 or would I buy something else? A “1540” or Note 5 or 1+2 would be my choices depending on my budget at that time. Probably the Windows Phone because of Continuum.
Now is the Windows Phone universe imploding? Yes it is. Since Microsoft took over Nokia OS-development slowed down, low-end received all of the attention, apps were merged/cancelled/restarted and some features that I loved (family room) got cancelled. A few useful updates happened but the platform has felt stagnating for a while now and the Universal Apps, Windows 10 Mobile, new enthousiast level phones and Continuum are really going to have to hit it out of the park to get this platform growing
I think you illustrated the real problem with windows phone. Microsoft doesn’t support it. Every time they have a failure or not the iphone sized market, they decide to redo it again and break backward compatibility. I almost considered a windows phone this last upgrade cycle, but I’m not going to buy something where the SDK completely changes and no apps will work in a year.
Apple supports iOS devices for a few years on average and software continues to work. Microsoft needs to fix the hate of their users. You don’t turn your back on a customer when you’re in a niche market. You kiss their ass and sell premium hardware they want, not lowend garbage with no updates. I want a reference phone, with software updates for 2 years (at least a contract period) and a stable (but improving) SDK.
Thanks, but you are too negative about Microsoft and Windows Phone/Mobile now. Microsoft surely does support Windows Phone and backwards AND forwards compatibility is great. I am currently running a picross game that was written for Windows Phone 7 and my favorite Japanese program is an original Windows Phone 7 apps as well. That 1020 and 1520 are 2 years and 1.5 years old, still run great, run each and every piece of software, have received about 3 very useful software updates and are going to receive Windows 10 Mobile and will run all those universal apps.
It is just that between the last update and the next update there is a major vacuum (unless you participate in the preview which I am not willing to do on our main phones) both in OS-updates and new hardware for enthusiasts. They focused on making great low-end hardware to get bulk, but that part of the market is not where app developers are going. Wrong bet!
I hope there will be a reference device (Surface Phone) but I would say that the current main model (640 and 640 XL) are currently taking that place and their cameras and screens are just not good enough for my liking.
I don’t know why Windows Phone/Mobile isn’t doing better.
Pro’s:
* The development tools are amazing
* The platform is rock stable
* The software and hardware has some unique features
* The hardware line-up provides great value for money
* You know it will keep running old software for years
* You know it will continue to receive new software for years
Con’s:
* No new enthusiast hardware in over a year (930/1520)
* A big lull in OS-Updates
* Small market, so it gets apps last (or sometimes not at all)
I think the main problem is the last con. We are living in times where there only seems room for 1 dominant platform…and Apple
. 3rd place is already such a tiny part of the market that there is no hope of ever really growing past nr. 2.
(Compare 1. Windows – 2. OSX – 3. Linux with 1. Android – 2. iOS – 3. Windows)
You all probably know I have a strong dislike of Apple. But I have to agree the Iphone has consistently been one of the better smart phones in the market.
Long support times and good hardware where users mostly know what they are getting goes a long way.
If they had Linux support for direct access to the phones drive or even Itunes on Linux (not my first choice…) I would probably own an Iphone.
Of course the iPhone is consistently one of the better phones on the market….it is the most expensive one and it comes from a company that has “infinite money” to hire whoever they want and buy whichever other company they want.
There are always some complaints about the latest iPhone, but all-round they don’t have any major weaknesses. Never the best, always among the top made them earn the reputation they have.
Personally I just don’t like all the limitations of their hardware and software
MS is concentrating on the bottom end of the market. WP is basically pitched as a replacement for the Nokia feature phones. It fills this niche very successfully.
Specially when comparing it with Android tooling.
Microsoft in the middle of all problems that they are having with the platform, besides improving WinRT, managed to add Android support to Visual Studio and provide an emulator that runs circles around the one provided on the Android SDK.
Also having the option between C#, VB, F# and C++ vs Java 6, partial Java 7 and handicapped C++, it is quite a difference.
So the options are .Net skin 1 (C#), .Net skin 2 (VB), .Net skin 3 (F#), .Net skin 4 (C++/CLI) or WinRT wrapped C++/CX.
I’d take C# over Java any time of the day too. But I fail to see how the Android C++ support is gimped when supposedly the WinRT support is not. I suggest you fire up Visual Studio 2015 and create a C++ Universal App project and notice all you get is a sad “we can initialize Direct3D for you” project going to nowhere.
Maybe the support will be more serious in the next version.
As a developer on those platforms, I can only understanding this remark as trolling.
In Android Studio you don’t even get that. The C++ support was added in 1.3, there are no project templates and the debugging experience, oh well.
Gradle plugin for C++ on AS? Just “here is a link to github, go figure out yourself how to Gradle flavor of the week builds them, oh by the way, not every feature from ndk-build is supported”.
I don’t question that the Android support for C++ is terrible. I’m saying that the WinRT support is only marginally better.
Where I can I find this for the NDK?
Roadmap for Windows Runtime apps using C++
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh700360.aspx
Learn how to use C++ and XAML to create Windows Runtime apps.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh974580.aspx
Not to mention how Blend perfectly works with C++ code or the debugging tools.
This is so poorly documented
http://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/index.html
As I said, I don’t question that the Android support for C++ is terrible.
Destructors are run on C++/CX objects when their reference count reaches zero. The CLR is not involved at all with pure C++/CX apps.
IF you are in a scenario where you are consuming a C++/CX type from C#, the type gets projected (wrapped) in a C# type. When the C# type is collected, the reference count is decremented.
I think the difference between WinRT and the Android support for C++ is that out of the box a C++/CX (or even a vanilla C++11 / WRL app if you hate yourself) can access ALL of the Universal runtime API surface. The wrappers if you will (again, called projections In WinRT lingo) are generated from the .winmd metadata files.
The metadata is native to .NET (its .NET’s byte code format actually) so the wrappers for .NET are really high quality. For C++ the adaptation is possible via a language projection into C++/CX (part of why they needed a language extension to define all the stuff C++ lacked).
It was exactly this scenario I was thinking of.
In particular I’m wondering which thread it might happen on as it is my understanding the CLR garbage collector could run at any given time collecting objects from several threads.
I remember back in the early .Net days that Microsoft had to do some tricks for WinForms to ensure that garbage collected HWND/HDC/HBITMAP/etc had their final DestroyWindow+ReleaseDC+DestroyBitmap calls executed on the original thread. Just wondering what C++/CX’s solution to this is, if any. For example it could very well be behaving just like if you used std::shared_ptr across several threads.
The semantics are equivalent, ref classes (with the ^ hat in C++/CX) are just wrappers over CComPTr (because WinRT is COM), which is very similar to shared_ptr.
The reference counting is atomic and only one thread is allowed to run the destructor. Creating a copy of the pointer increments the reference count.
As you probably know, quality of tooling is irrelevant when you don’t have the volumes. Companies invest based on what has profit/reach/demand, not on how good time developers are going to have or 10-30% improvements in productivity.
Case in point: Objective C
The tooling is shared with big Windows (which has nearing 100 million installs). It should (in my opinion) also come to Android and iOS.
Android had a very nice and interesting life, it was so different than ios.
It started out as a good viable user friendly option, then it went to dookie. I cant imagine how bad 6 is going to be. Sure you can blame a lot of the stuff on the manufacturers of devices, and all the custom builds they make. But in the end, google (like MS with windows) should take the wrap for the poor product that android is today. Sure its all nice and fruity now, fliud user interface, and nice things people expect from an iphone. But then again, it has gone back on too many fronts. You no longer have a usable sdcard, otg support, wifi problems gallore, unresposive, ram hogging (my device has 3gb ram! and its not enough?), and usability killer.
Seriously what happened to being able to connect your phone and transfer data? MTP doesnt have any convenience to it. USB Device mode was fast and worked. If its about the apps on sdcard thing, then get rid of that. I constantly run out of space on a 32 gig device, and the 64 gig card doesnt help. Because andoid is gimped by design now. Then theres the devices that overheat, its gotten to the point that android brings processors to their knees and overheat, even low end phones are constantly dragged down by android. Maybe its best android stay out of the low end devices and make room for a system that doesnt slow down, like windows, bb os, or anything else that can actually work right 2 months down the line. Sure you can blame the cheap Chinese makers for that, but then again. Google knows it has a big market on the low end and should have addressed the issue. then theres the usability thing, what the hell happened to the menu soft keys? why is the UI designed around it not being there. Why do you have to go back to the beginning of the market to change your settings! that is horrible, i have used android with a menu key. Having me go back to an awkward no menu ui doesn’t make sense to me. Its like stepping into and iPhone and looking at the screen, where do you tick now????? Oh yeah at the top right(or left)??? why not the bottom where my thumb is likely to be???? its dumb.
I hope windows learned their lesson on trying to be fruity….. they finally fixed the multi tasking (and screw the saved app states after reebot!), copy and paste, sdcard, notifications, performance (FLAGSHIP DEVICES), actual file management, and apps that can use the sdcard as much as they want.
At this point, anything is better than apple, and adroid. But i want a flagship device…no i don’t consider apples devices flagship, any company that doesn’t release techncal (processor, ram, resolution) information on their latest release…so i am stuck with android, in the end a wannabe ios. I welcome all raging trolling and constructive criticism
The problems are nearly always due to badly implemented manufacturers hacks. Vanilla Android runs smoothly with rock solid stability on quite modest hardware.
IMHO you really need to stick to a pure Apple/MS/Linux (Android) ecosystem for all your devices to get the best outcomes.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2015/05/17/lollipop-nex…
Face it… even on Nexus devices, Lollipop was a clusterf–k of epic proportions. Let’s hope Marshmallow is better.
Edited 2015-09-12 19:51 UTC
You mean an x.0 upgrade on three year old hardware had a few bugs? They were fixed in 5.1.
I haven’t heard too many complaints about new phones with Lollipop pre-installed.
Buying a new cheap prepaid phone every 12-18 months is a far more sensible option than buying a flagship and expecting 3-4years of upgrades.
Even if it is better, aside from Nexus devices, most people will never see it.
The problem for OSNews is that they like to stubbornly repeat their old favourite mantras.
If nothing has changed, it is yet factual to repeat the same old mantras.
Don’t be frustrated! Just go buy a used android on swappa.com and enjoy an incredibly superior platform. I recommend an older samsung with removable battery and SD slot, like the Note 2. Then root it. Then install Cyanogenmod or one of the FLOSS clones. You’ll have the best phone available for about $120 and a couple hours of easy work.
I can’t IMAGINE using a Windows phone. What little experiences I’ve had with that platform made me feel sorry for all living things.
Er… Thanks for the advice, but frustration is not exactly my sentiment here.
Or perhaps it is, but not in the same way you implied. I am frustrated for all this mediocrity and average-ness in choices around me, and I think — sorry, I used to think that people deserved something better.
But no problem anyway – if somebody still manages to be content with, say, the horrible looks of a Samsung smartphone – then go for it!
P.S. I can’t remember in which article it was, but somebody brought up the Galaxy S6 Edge in tv spots as an example of beatutifully-designed object. Mother of god… What were they smoking?! The glossy surfaces are probably the only nice features of that thing…
P.P.S. Ah, I almost forgot: now you can downvote me again. Please do! 😉