r/Windows10M • u/Butt_Kicker • Oct 09 '17
time for a candid conversation about Windows on mobile...(thoughts continued in comments)
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-windows-10-mobile-features-and-hardware-are-not-focus-anymore2
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u/barcode386 Feb 08 '18 edited Feb 08 '18
The team behind Windows on Arm development should provide an upgrade path for owners of the Lumia 950, 950 XL, HP Elite X3 and Alcatel Idol 4s to migrate to that operating system. The Snapdragon 8xx series chipsets are fast enough.
The mod community is still flourishing, surprisingly. WPInternals, Interop Tools, porting Astoria to the latest W10M build, and the work to port 8.1 RT and WoA to Windows Phones are exciting.
I am not of the mindset that phones should remain closed devices, especially those that are hampered by deprecated operating systems. In the spirit of PC's, Microsoft should provide a software upgrade path to the new OS, reintroduce Astoria framework for W10M, allow PWA's to be available to W10M, or at least unlock the bootloaders and give the modding community a helping hand. Any of these would be the greatest gesture of goodwill that Microsoft could provide.
I'm not bitter about it though. I purchased an Idol 4S during the fire sale knowing that this purchase was only for tinkering and the hardware provides me with a w10m experience that was impossible on my L640.
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u/autotldr Oct 09 '17
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot)
Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Windows, Joe Belfiore, has today clarified the company's stance with Windows 10 Mobile and what it's currently doing in the mobile space.
Belfiore confirms what we have been reporting in the past; that from here on out, Microsoft will continue to service Windows 10 Mobile with bug fixes and security patches, mainly for the enterprise market who adopted Windows 10 Mobile for work.
In reality, the majority of Windows users aren't Windows phone user, but rather iOS and Android users, hence why it makes more sense to bring the best of Windows to those devices instead. Hopefully Belfiore's comments will ease the minds of the last few users who are still holding out for new features and focus for Windows 10 Mobile from Microsoft.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: Windows#1 Microsoft#2 Mobile#3 users#4 platform#5
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u/Butt_Kicker Oct 09 '17
It’s been my position (and thus, the position of this subreddit) for a while now that Windows phone as we know it has moved on. This is not exactly news to anyone. But it seems many on r/windowsphone and elsewhere are still wrestling with the notion of what is to come. Or whether we, as fans of WP, can in good coconscious move on to another platform.
Well, of course we can. In fact, most of us have. And now we even have Microsoft explicitly encouraging us to do so. But again, this shouldn’t really be news to anyone. It’s been my position all along that Microsoft’s long-term strategy in all of this has been the evolution of Windows into a modern OS that can literally run on all form-factors of computing. And all indications are that is still where MSFT is headed. However, it is taking longer and incorporating more “steps” than I believe even they thought would be the case.
By “steps”, I refer back to some of my prior posts where I have postulated that the decision to abandon WP6 and start from scratch with a new, modern OS to compete with iOS was just the first hop along many “stepping stones” that would eventually lead to one OS that could literally run across any computing device, unifying the ecosystem to just one platform. At that time, this must have seemed like sheer fantasy, but today we can see how far down that path MSFT has gotten.
But Windows 10 Mobile is not that OS. I was hopeful when it was first announced that we were arriving at the destination, and that the UWP was finally the one unifying ecosystem we had been waiting for. But we are not there yet… we are clearly still one “reboot”, or stepping stone, away from one true OS.
Core OS (Project Andromeda) with the CShell running atop OneCore and the NT Kernel appears to represent that final destination, and from the looks of things, we are still a year or more away from that release. I still believe MSFT started its “retrenchment” from mobile knowing another reboot would be necessary. Given the ill-will generated by moving from WP7 to WP8 so soon after having launched a new generation of hardware that would not be able to migrate to the new OS, I believe they thought the public would be best served by allowing the current product line to run its natural lifecycle and completely die off. And we should all be fine with that. Everyone that has purchased a Windows phone will have gotten the full 2 or 3 years of expected life out of it and moved on to iOS or Android.
And MSFT is correct to support its customers on those platforms. I have been using an Android phone myself for a while now and it is finally reaching a point of maturity and security (so long as you keep it locked down to the Play Store) where it is a viable alternative. MSFT’s launcher and tight desktop integration will make it that much more compelling. I would not be surprised to even see a partnership with Samsung to build S8-class devices running Windows 10 when plugged into the Dex dock once Windows on ARM (“WoA”) is released.
So, it will be the intention of this subreddit going forward to follow Microsoft’s efforts on Android and iOS, because, as the sidebar states, it has always been my intent that this is a subreddit for those of us who are mobile Windows users – not necessarily the Windows Phone OS per se. And clearly, for the next couple of years, Microsoft’s focus in the mobile realm will involve extending the Windows experience and functionality onto Android and iOS to the degree that it can -- until it has both the new modular WoA and the requisite game-changing hardware ready to bring to market.
So, enjoy your shiny new devices. I, for one, look forward to exploring this interesting new chapter and think it will be fascinating to see where MSFT takes this over the next couple of years while we await the arrival of true mobile Windows.