Microsoft Reportedly Working on New Windows Mobile Reboot

Megalith

Megalith

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Never gonna give you up: Microsoft is rumored to be working on a hardware device that is being used to test a new mobile experience and user interface. Naturally, universal Windows apps are likely part of the equation, but it is hard to say what will make this effort unique compared to previous attempts and whether it can get MS back in the phone game. Supposedly, the device could release within a year’s time depending on how it is received internally.

...while Microsoft has all but killed off developing this iteration of Windows Mobile, the firm is reportedly working on yet another mobile experience. A new report from Petri’s Brad Sams highlights that Microsoft has been working on new hardware for Windows 10 Mobile internally. This hardware device is supposedly one that highlights the new mobile experiences Microsoft has been thinking of and is being tested with a supposedly different user interface than what we have now. As far as release, Sams speculates that the device could very well be a year or less away from release if it is an internal hit.
 
Keep the 'go to camera' dedicated button, and more UWP sure.. I can probably part with my Icon.
 
The problem with Microsoft and their mobile phone effort from just a very well seasoned, well informed and very tech savvy end consumer like myself is that they just aren't cool. Meaning, the general perception is not that great. And sure, even though it shouldn't, it does get in the way of what people want.

"Perception is everything"

They always seem behind, desperate and needy in what they bring to market.

A lot of their marketing lately and for awhile now has been, "me too! me too!" and "but we do this better!" etc etc. "we see you are not using our Edge browser, you do know it's better right? Of course this is strictly because we say so" ......."can we please switch you over?"

I would like to see a quiet launch from them for once, let the product build it's own momentum and interest and let the market and reviewers and end users do all the talking. For once Microsoft needs to stay out of the way.

Also, forcing people to use Microsoft services is a no go. When they do this ... people simply fucking hate them. They are great at creating this annoying undertone that distracts people away from even wanting to try the products.

Also, they need to just release a singular exceptional product, not a low, middle or high-end tier and then pack it with features. A calling card of sorts. Maybe even lose a little money on the effort just to give people not only value but ... hope in their mobile brand.

Google Pixel ... very cool name. It's a one off with exceptional features and performance, people are dying to get it and when they get it from whatever source they get it from, sometimes the phone gets banned lol ( see Kyle's recent thread ) Sure a hassle but it's also kinda cool from the hard to get POV.

I used to love Microsoft especially back when they had their gaming peripherals division 12 - 15 years ago.

Anyways, they need to find a way to create "cool" again with their mobile phones.
 
Uvaman2 said:
So how will they force adoption this time? Leveraging the desktop didn't work, sooo leveraging the ' cloud' somehow?
Click to expand...

That's one of the big huge reasons I hate and I am sure many others despise them. There is always a gimmick or some underhanded mechanic that forces people one way or another.

They need a cool honest product that stands on it's own without any type of BS that is so typical of Microsoft these days. Like I said, they are desperate. It's pretty clear to me why they keep failing.
 
I'm pretty pro-microsoft and I never bit on their phones. I didn't see a compelling reason to choose them over android or apple. My main use cases for my phone are email, sms, and web browsing. My secondary's are music, camera, and google maps/navigation. Lower would be youtube and the occasional game. I use chrome and gmail and google maps, all of which I was pretty confident would give the best experience on android. SMS/Camera/Music I was pretty sure any good phone could handle. Youtube I knew google was being jerks about. And the apple maps thing showed google was also being jerks about that.

So basically - I like google services. Google seems to be sabotaging the competition, which makes me not like google but I continue to use google short term. Long term google has lost my trust that they will do the right thing for the consumer and so if microsoft did release a good phone I'd consider it.
And office 365 is cheap and free gmail isn't what it used to be. Mobile games don't hold my interest anymore. I think I could switch.

Continuum was a neat idea. I'd love to see them fully actually execute on that.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Microsoft gave up just when they were on the point of succeeding. I'm still a fan of Windows Mobile, so I'll be looking forward to this.
Click to expand...

Amen, went from Lumia 1020 to a G5, so much bloatware, along with way worse battery life. Then tried a G6 on weekend and returned it after a day, how do you release a phone with a worse camera, no replaceable battery, weighs more and classify it as an upgrade, I felt ripped off...where's the XZ premium in Canada :(
 
Hopefully my little cheap-ass Nokia 521 lives that long. I like the Windows phones. I don't really understand the love for Apple or Android and I guess I never will.

I guess if I used a phone like a PC.... nah I would still hate them.

I hope they keep a decently priced low end model and not screw up the interface too much.
 
So, ONE MORE TIME, MS is going to totally abandon the previous adopters of their failed mobile platform and try to convince users to adopt a completely new and incompatible system! Wow, do they REALLY think ANYONE will bite on this??? How many times do WP people need to be screwed over before they get the message that MS doesn't care about their customers?
 
So another go at mobile for the MS loyal fanbois. They will sell a handful... and MS will pull the plug like every other attempt no matter what the state of the sales are. The one thing MS has proven through multiple kicks at the consumer device space (far more then just mobile) is that they don't have the fortitude to shepherd products to success.
 
You guys are getting this wrong. MS needs the mobile market. MS needs it because it will take over from much of the desktop market. One day, we will be able to put our phones into a dock and use them as desktops. Microsoft doesn't want to lose that market to Android or Apple. So it really does need to try again in the mobile market.
 
Just get an X86 platform with good battery life. Phone when I need it, PC when I need it with a simple dock
 
I doubt this is a whole new OS, reboot territory per se. Probably just a branch on prototype hardware to test out their ideas.

Existing Windows Phone devices might benefit but considering its been a couple years since they released them and this is still months away (if ever) its not so unreasonable to have a major jump in features that wont be backported.
 
I still remember the days when Windows Mobile was it for smartphones. How times have changed in just 10 years. It'll be a tough road for Microsoft.
 
ChadD said:
So another go at mobile for the MS loyal fanbois.
Click to expand...
Read below, they still have them!.

Quartz-1 said:
Microsoft doesn't want to lose that market to Android or Apple.
Click to expand...

Sadly, that already happened. Only a blind fanboi will be crazy enough to give them money again after leaving their customers abandoned like they did.

Quartz-1 said:
One day, we will be able to put our phones into a dock and use them as desktops.
Click to expand...
And why it needs to be another MS OS for this to happen?

Quartz-1 said:
So it really does need to try again in the mobile market.
Click to expand...
After burning their customers SEVERAL times now, no thanks.
 
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Quartz-1 said:
You guys are getting this wrong. MS needs the mobile market. MS needs it because it will take over from much of the desktop market. One day, we will be able to put our phones into a dock and use them as desktops. Microsoft doesn't want to lose that market to Android or Apple. So it really does need to try again in the mobile market.
Click to expand...

One day you say....
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/17/samsung-dex-review-the-impressive-unnecessary-phone-powered-pc/
https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-dex-review-you-got-your-computer-my-phone

The day is already here and its only going to get better... the chances of MS ever having a piece of this space. Zero. MS has lost.
 
SixFootDuo said:
The problem with Microsoft and their mobile phone effort from just a very well seasoned, well informed and very tech savvy end consumer like myself is that they just aren't cool. Meaning, the general perception is not that great. And sure, even though it shouldn't, it does get in the way of what people want.

"Perception is everything"

They always seem behind, desperate and needy in what they bring to market.
Click to expand...

I think MS a few two key problems that you see repeated over and over.

1) They get into a market WAY, WAY too early and have trouble conveying broad value. Case in point, them missing the boat on smart phones. Really, they didn't. They missed the bus on smartphones being popular with non-business consumers. palm, MS, and blackberry were there first. The only place they were clearly valuable was as an active sync capable device and having a rudamentary web browser.

2) They are shit at reinventing themselves and or admitting that they are not in line with the proper feature set.

3) When they are trying to mimic the successes of others in a competitive space, they seem to be either bad at it or hesitant. Perhaps it is a bit of being gun shy regarding anti-trust issues.

Office 365 seems to be the only area in which they aren't following this pattern. They are aggressively mimicking competitors' feature sets while introducing features that at least unique-ish, and not getting tied up in trying to convince you they were right if siad feature fizzles.
 
There was a report that the new Windows mobile OS was going to be compatible with the googlestore and google ARM applications. Maybe that is what this project is about? Effectively making the new Windows OS an Android variant?
 
Quartz-1 said:
MS has a hill to climb, but it has that huge x86/x64 software base to leverage.
Click to expand...

Accept we all know they won't do that anyway. There is no chance their new Mobile version of windows won't be just like Windows -S. Its going to run UWP software only... which puts it well behind the android ecosystem. Also not likely to be running x86 hardware. I know they are working on a ARM-X86 translation layer thing ala Transmeta however without the customised hardware and I don't imagine without a major speed penalty. (although it does make me curious how Transmeta style translation style software would run on newer Arm hardware)

We'll see what they come up with... I know I'm no MS fan and won't be looking at these. Still I'll be interested to see if they have anything new and interesting. MS does sometimes come up with interesting ideas. They rarely stand behind them long enough... still perhaps they can bring something new and not just a Windows Android clone store and all.
 
Easy way to get people on their platform. Make a good phone that rivals apple and Android top phones at a reasonable cost. Make the hardware that can run x86/x64 programs with seamless integration with windows. Come with a stock bloat free OS. Get rid of the all the telemetry and you got me sold.
 
*SIGH* If they would have stopped with the reboots, they would have had a successful Windows Mobile Operating System. As it is now, as much as it works, it is now dead. (This coming from a realistic fan who loved the integration with the Band 2, Lumia 950, XBox One and all my Windows 10 machines.) Just sucks now.
 
Megalith said:
...while Microsoft has all but killed off developing this iteration of Windows Mobile...
Click to expand...

I keep reading this, yet I got a significant OS update on my Lumia 950, corresponding to the Creator's Update, which included some nice UI improvements. Also, core apps continue to be updated (Maps got a nice facelift) and new 3rd party apps continue to appear in the store. From everything I've seen, this narrative of "Microsoft is giving up on Windows 10 Mobile" has been, and continues to be, horseshit. But, I guess it makes good clickbait for haters, so it's a safe bet we'll keep seeing it.

Let's presume this new phone launches a year from now, and MS stops feature updates for the x50 line a few months prior. That would put them on par with Google's update policy for the Nexus 5X (updates guaranteed until September 2017), which launched about a month before the Lumia 950.

From where I'm standing, claims that MS is quicker than others to abandon their hardware hardly seem justified, when comparing them to the standard set by the almighty Google.
 
Windows on a device you rely on every day to work... what could go wrong...

vegeta535 said:
Easy way to get people on their platform. Make a good phone that rivals apple and Android top phones at a reasonable cost. Make the hardware that can run x86/x64 programs with seamless integration with windows. Come with a stock bloat free OS. Get rid of the all the telemetry and you got me sold.
Click to expand...

They cant even get seamless integration in Windows 10... good luck doing it with 2 seperate opersting systems.
 
I don't think the reboots are that bad. They suck as a user, but everybody gets a new phone every couple years and no vendors are updating them past a couple years. Except apple, but if you ever used a 3gs or ipad 2 after the updates you'll wish you could go back to IOS 6 or 7 because the device is unusably slow.

MS is in a very small market share position and a significant reboot may be required to try to gain some foothold. It would be one thing to do a reboot from google or apple's position, but that's not what we are talking about. I'd like to see what they come up with. I haven't seen any significant phone improvements in years other than screen/storage/camera/battery life (hardware updates that would apply to any phone). Android 4.3+ has been pretty much the same for me. (Currently using an S7 edge with Android 7). And IOS is similar. They're adding stuff, but when ditching a physical home button or headphone jack is the big headliner I think it's pretty clear things have stagnated somewhat.
 
I tried out one of their phones for about a month. I forget the model but it was one of the last ones they made. I liked the phone, it was fast and easy to use. My only complaint was that I couldn't upload a sms conversation to One Drive like I can do with my Android phone and Google Drive. I keep all of the conversations I have with my ex-wife in case I need them in the future. If I could have done that I would still have the thing.
 
As someone involved in mobile app development, they don't have market share to attract app developers yet. It's kind of a chicken-vs-egg issue as far as that goes. That said, a lot of people see the "app world" dying off.
People want information - not apps. I want to ask my phone the weather, stocks, directions, etc and have it get me the information. I don't want to have to use an app for each piece of information. Microsoft has Cortana - will admit I've not used it much, but it seems to work reasonably well when I have tried it. This can compete with Siri and Google Now (or whatever they call it these days).
The other interesting thing about Microsoft is they have their own browser and search engine. If they can build a phone that is well integrated, they might be on to something - hell, if they can get 5% market share, that's still a lot of eyes. I'm all for some competition and choice in the market.
Maybe Amazon will bring back the Fire Phone. I never tried it, but Alexa works well and AMZN has a good cloud infrastructure. Not sure how the stockholders would take this news though...
 
If they made awesome phones they gave away for free, if they made apps that were better than anything the world had ever seen before and gave those away for free, if they paid developers $10,000 cash per app - yes, even fart and fake beer apps included, if they literally paid the end users to actually use the free phones with the free apps on an hourly basis like $10 an hour Microsoft would still be absolutely nothing but EPIC FUCKING FAIL in the mobile space and that's never ever going to change now.

As someone that was using "PDAs" long ago before someone even put Personal and Digital and Assistant into that acronym I've seen pretty much everything that's come along since those days, and believe it or not I still have nothing but fond memories of the time when it was Palm vs PocketPC and I just didn't find Palm products to be all that awesome. The "PocketPC" which then became Windows Mobile did absolutely everything I required in a device, and I still have a Dell Axim X51v, what I consider to be the greatest "PocketPC" type device ever, around here someplace in good working condition. Damned thing was a work of art (literally, it won some design awards, no joke) and I actually miss using it in some respects.

But Microsoft, my god, will you people please just toss in the towel. You lost, it's over, seriously.

Now, if you'd take my advice you'd have a winner guaranteed:

1) Buy this, lock stock and barrel, the entire design portfolio top to bottom and everything in between, from Canonical (and of course obviously the Ubuntu logo would be removed, duh):



2) Make it from today's best mobile hardware (Snapdragon 835 if possible, 4GB of RAM is more than enough, 1920x1080 display because QHD is nothing but a waste of battery efficiency no matter what anybody tells you, 11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, lots of LTE bands and support, perhaps CDMA as well for those on Sprint/Verizon networks, good audio DAC in it with a decent speaker in it (front facing would be great, stereo speakers just ain't all that really), 3500+ mAh battery, Quick Charge 3.0+, USB-C, leave in the damned headphone jack or else, and you can figure the rest of it out from here

3) Create a kick ass slick version of Android on it with no bloatware, make it fast and efficient, and update it every freakin' month like clockwork the same way Google does when they push out the monthly security patches and do it for at least 2 full years guaranteed from the day the device hits the market, preferably 3

4) Bill it as the Surface Phone people have been expecting you to make for years now - I mean really, go back and look at the original Surface Tablet, then look at what Canonical created with this failed Ubuntu Edge project device, they're practically twins for fuck's sake

5) Sell it for a good price, like $500-600 with 128GB of onboard storage AND a microSD card slot - a removable battery would be fantastic but I can actually forgive it in favor of the microSD card slot, that I will not abide anymore and I will not buy devices that don't have one

Do those 5 things and I guarantee you can make a dent in the smartphone market, ignore those 5 things at your peril 'cause nothing else you do at this point is going to matter in terms of "Windows Mobile" - it's a dead platform for you but you're just not seeming to realize it.

Oh, and if you do these 5 steps, I'll expect two of these Surface Phones delivered to me (one for me, one for the wife, of course) as compensation for turning your entire mobile division around with just 5 easy steps, thanks. ;)
 
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Tiberian said:
If they made awesome phones they gave away for free, if they made apps that were better than anything the world had ever seen before and gave those away for free, if they paid developers $10,000 cash per app - yes, even fart and fake beer apps included, if they literally paid the end users to actually use the free phones with the free apps on an hourly basis like $10 an hour Microsoft would still be absolutely nothing but EPIC FUCKING FAIL in the mobile space and that's never ever going to change now.

As someone that was using "PDAs" long ago before someone even put Personal and Digital and Assistant into that acronym I've seen pretty much everything that's come along since those days, and believe it or not I still have nothing but fond memories of the time when it was Palm vs PocketPC and I just didn't find Palm products to be all that awesome. The "PocketPC" which then became Windows Mobile did absolutely everything I required in a device, and I still have a Dell Axim X51v, what I consider to be the greatest "PocketPC" type device ever, around here someplace in good working condition. Damned thing was a work of art (literally, it won some design awards, no joke) and I actually miss using it in some respects.

But Microsoft, my god, will you people please just toss in the towel. You lost, it's over, seriously.

Now, if you'd take my advice you'd have a winner guaranteed:

1) Buy this, lock stock and barrel, the entire design portfolio top to bottom and everything in between, from Canonical (and of course obviously the Ubuntu logo would be removed, duh):



2) Make it from today's best mobile hardware (Snapdragon 835 if possible, 4GB of RAM is more than enough, 1920x1080 display because QHD is nothing but a waste of battery efficiency no matter what anybody tells you, 11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, lots of LTE bands and support, perhaps CDMA as well for those on Sprint/Verizon networks, good audio DAC in it with a decent speaker in it (front facing would be great, stereo speakers just ain't all that really), 3500+ mAh battery, Quick Charge 3.0+, USB-C, leave in the damned headphone jack or else, and you can figure the rest of it out from here

3) Create a kick ass slick version of Android on it with no bloatware, make it fast and efficient, and update it every freakin' month like clockwork the same way Google does when they push out the monthly security patches and do it for at least 2 full years guaranteed from the day the device hits the market, preferably 3

4) Bill it as the Surface Phone people have been expecting you to make for years now - I mean really, go back and look at the original Surface Tablet, then look at what Canonical created with this failed Ubuntu Edge project device, they're practically twins for fuck's sake

5) Sell it for a good price, like $500-600 with 128GB of onboard storage AND a microSD card slot - a removable battery would be fantastic but I can actually forgive it in favor of the microSD card slot, that I will not abide anymore and I will not buy devices that don't have one

Do those 5 things and I guarantee you can make a dent in the smartphone market, ignore those 5 things at your peril 'cause nothing else you do at this point is going to matter in terms of "Windows Mobile" - it's a dead platform for you but you're just not seeming to realize it.

Oh, and if you do these 5 steps, I'll expect two of these Surface Phones delivered to me (one for me, one for the wife, of course) as compensation for turning your entire mobile division around with just 5 easy steps, thanks. ;)
Click to expand...

Microsoft lost because they quit time and again and would retrench time and again. Now, for them to sell an Android based phone would be foolishness in my opinion. Besides, they are focusing on the iPhone anyways, as was seen on the stage of the last Phone show they had, or whatever it is called.
 
steakman1971 said:
As someone involved in mobile app development, they don't have market share to attract app developers yet. It's kind of a chicken-vs-egg issue as far as that goes. That said, a lot of people see the "app world" dying off.
People want information - not apps. I want to ask my phone the weather, stocks, directions, etc and have it get me the information. I don't want to have to use an app for each piece of information. Microsoft has Cortana - will admit I've not used it much, but it seems to work reasonably well when I have tried it. This can compete with Siri and Google Now (or whatever they call it these days).
The other interesting thing about Microsoft is they have their own browser and search engine. If they can build a phone that is well integrated, they might be on to something - hell, if they can get 5% market share, that's still a lot of eyes. I'm all for some competition and choice in the market.
Maybe Amazon will bring back the Fire Phone. I never tried it, but Alexa works well and AMZN has a good cloud infrastructure. Not sure how the stockholders would take this news though...
Click to expand...

The problem is, the most important stuff like Garmin is not all that compatible anymore. The fact that they dumped their own smartwatch line instead of fixing and improving it says all we need to know. :(
 
andrewaggb said:
I don't think the reboots are that bad. They suck as a user, but everybody gets a new phone every couple years and no vendors are updating them past a couple years. Except apple, but if you ever used a 3gs or ipad 2 after the updates you'll wish you could go back to IOS 6 or 7 because the device is unusably slow.

MS is in a very small market share position and a significant reboot may be required to try to gain some foothold. It would be one thing to do a reboot from google or apple's position, but that's not what we are talking about. I'd like to see what they come up with. I haven't seen any significant phone improvements in years other than screen/storage/camera/battery life (hardware updates that would apply to any phone). Android 4.3+ has been pretty much the same for me. (Currently using an S7 edge with Android 7). And IOS is similar. They're adding stuff, but when ditching a physical home button or headphone jack is the big headliner I think it's pretty clear things have stagnated somewhat.
Click to expand...

The problem is everytime they did a reboot, they left behind more phones and more apps as well as developers. Until very recently, I used the Windows Phone and Mobile platform exclusively but, things like my Garmin Vivoactive HR+ did not work well with my Lumia 950 as time went on. (Had a Band 2 and it worked great but, MS killed that off.)
 
ManofGod said:
Microsoft lost because they quit time and again and would retrench time and again. Now, for them to sell an Android based phone would be foolishness in my opinion. Besides, they are focusing on the iPhone anyways, as was seen on the stage of the last Phone show they had, or whatever it is called.
Click to expand...

Not seeing how selling an android phone would be foolish at all. Frankly its the ONLY way they get any traction at all in the mobile area. Windows and phone are 2 things that are just not going to happen for them ever. As you are saying they have burned customers far to many times. Android is open source and they are free to remove all the google stuff and bundle their own. What software would they need to bundle that MS doesn't already have in the google store ? Nothing but edge is the answer. They could replace every Google service with a MS one... install both the Google store and a MS store like Samsung does... and then push some of the best hardware they can and subsidise the shit out of it for a few years. If they ever get to a point where they can claim their sales match Samsung they can start doing their regular MS BS trying to remove googles store ect instead of competing with it like everyone else. lol

Of course we all know they won't ... cause you know pride. Its their funeral and to be honest I'll be dancing when MS gets chased out of the consumer space completely a few years down the road from now.
 
Yay, another restart and retrenching. Getting the popcorn. At this point, even if they made the phones out of platinum and paid devs a grip load of cash, it's too late. Peeps are now tied to their respective ecosystems with purchases from the app stores.

On the other side, they are making a great effort porting all of their apps and services on other platforms. Mobile first, just not on their platform and devices.
 
jnemesh said:
(snip)... that MS doesn't care about their customers?
Click to expand...
...except as (forced potential) revenue slaves they missed harvesting in the last few rounds?

MS desperately wants to seem relevant to the tptb, to whit: the self serving agencies they are now trying to both bend knee to an bow in front of for future returns to share holders by using consumers (telemetry) as the trade-able commodity .

They care.

Because someone with piles of interest ( almost infinite money supply ) , is telling micro shaft to ( care about getting your telemetry at any cost )
 
every time microsoft attempts to horn in on another pointless venture i always think of this picture.

aZPrMK3_700b_v2.jpg
 
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aokman said:
Windows on a device you rely on every day to work... what could go wrong...



They cant even get seamless integration in Windows 10... good luck doing it with 2 seperate opersting systems.
Click to expand...

They did get seamless integration in Windows 10. That said, they have now killed Windows 10 Mobile so.......... :( Well, lets see, I predict 7 pages of nothing for this thread.
 
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