this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Linux Phones
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It's been years, and I still miss windowsphone so much. I knew we were fucked when they axed it and iPhone and android were already starting to stall out with a duopoly.
At one point, we had blackberry, some form of meego, Windowsphone, android and iOS, as well as niche things like jolla and sailfish.
Eh? Microsoft and Windowsphone basically killed the only real alternative to Android and iOS when they did their hostile takeover of Nokia, and Windowsphone itself was an atrocity that luckily died rather quickly.
"Tell me you never used Windows Phone without telling me you never used Windows Phone"
Eh never liked it.
I have used WindowsPhone and it was strictly worse than Nokia's Meego running on a N900/N9.
It was faster than Android or iOS, better optimised, had massively better features (like People Hub, Message Hub, etc), and the best cameras on the market at the time.
But, yeah, it was an "atrocity" because you couldn't install Snapchat...
There, fixed it for you 😅
The Meego phones that Nokia had were miles ahead of WindowsPhone. I am not even talking about iOS and Android (Android was indeed also pretty bad back then).
Soooo... Your argument for "Windows Phone was an atrocity" is that a completely different OS was better?
Make it make sense.
No, my argument is that is was really bad compared to what it replaced on Nokia phones. The first Nokia WindowsPhones basically used the hardware of the N9 but with this horrible OS no one other than the Microsoft execs wanted.
It's such an insane comparison, Christ...
Nokia never had a sliver of the smartphone market. It was always iOS vs Android.
Windows Phone (8, granted, but still) had around 21% in Europe at its peak.
So, not "only MS execs wanted it", 1 in 5 people in Europe wanted it. And, if I remember right, in the US it was around 10%, which is still not bad considering Google, Snapchat and Facebook were actively attempting to kill it in the crib.
Nokia had an iOS killer with the N9 and Meego, but Microsoft bought Nokia's phone subsidiary before it entered the market and subsequently killed it off after a very limited release. Windows phone was an atrocity compared to it and was only able to get some market share because Android was also pretty bad back then, and Nokia's brand and excellent hardware continued to pull it along for some time despite the horrible OS. Especially in Europe the Nokia brand had real pull back then, which is why Microsoft spend billions on it.
MS bought Nokia's mobile division in 2013, what you're describing was in 2011.
I haven't used MeeGo, but compared to other OSes on the market, Windows Mobile was very strong.
Microsoft managed to put one of their former staff as the CEO of Nokia and immediately after the take-over negotiations started. This took a few years to complete given the size of the takeover, but it was already set in stone in 2011.
And I have used both and can assure you that MeeGo was much better and Windows Mobile was at best competitive with the back then also really atrocious Android, but nowhere near iOS either.
I think your remembering might be biased. The press reviews about Meego was dithyrambic and it was described as a serious challenger to Android and iOS.
The fresh new CEO Stephen Elop, who was coming straight from MS with a single task: get Nokia aquired by MS, was at length saying anywhere and everywhere before the launch that the N9 would be the very last ever hardware to run Meego even if it was be the best selling phone in the world historically! And he was adamant he would work to kill its support as quickly as possible, while some inner Nokia were vowing to support is. He got too late to stop the release, but he worked very hard to shoot it down!
So no, it didn't have the market share, because the project was literally sabotaged by the CEO of Nokia himself!
We know the rest of the story: Nokia's phone division got aquired by MS, Elop joined back MS (keep in mind Nokia was not just phones, but he didn't care: his "job" was done).
The only mystery here is whether Elop tricked Nokia's board by omitting that the phone part of the business being "aquired by MS" meant "burn it down until it's cheap enough for MS" or if they were all in in that trick plan.
There should be a special hell for people like him.
With all of that I agree. What MS did to Nokia's mobile division should be criminal.
It got Snapchat in the end, there was some guy who made a whole bunch of missing apps, including a tinder app which worked better than the original.
Rudy Huyn. Ended up working at Microsoft. He was doing a bunch of apps, but I think you might be confusing Snapchat for Instagram. His Instagram app worked for a year or two, but Snapchat killed any attempt at a third party app immediately, as soon as they realised what's going on.
My first phone was a Windows Phone. It could send and receive calls and messages, and it had a crappy but functional web browser, but it didn't have any of the fun apps my friends' phones had.
Did you use Windows Phone or a phone running Windows Mobile?
There were very few Windows Phone devices. Windows Mobile, however, had a bunch. It was a PDA operating system that pre-dated iOS, Android, and Blackberry. It was a competitor to PalmOS.
Both? Pretty sure I had this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_520
Looks like it ran the mobile version of Windows 8.
Windows phones were underrated.
Which one 😁