Nowadays, you can do almost anything using smartphones. These devices can even help you find the most advantageous bonuses from a site like BettingOffersFinder. But when it comes to the operating system you can use on mobile, you will find that you basically only have two options: iOS and Android. There was a time when that wasn’t the case – Microsoft also had a mobile operating system.
“Windows Phone was a sensational operating system in every industry,” says Betting Offers Finder product owner Tony Sloterman. “There was a time when almost every iGaming studio was trying to develop games for this platform.” Windows Phone is no more, but we can say that it has left an impressive legacy behind. If you are wondering how Microsoft developed this operating system and why it was canceled, you can find the answer below.
The history of a Windows mobile goes way back
Most users found out in 2010 that Microsoft was developing a mobile operating system, but “Windows Phone” actually goes back much further. There were touchscreen smartphones even before the iPhone was around, but these screens were “resistive”, meaning you had to apply pressure to make it respond. Touchscreen phones were used with a stylus until the iPhone developed capacitive screens to make this job much easier. Microsoft had developed an operating system called “Windows Mobile” for devices with resistive displays, and this platform was used by manufacturers such as Motorola, HTC, and Palm. However, none of them gained almost any popularity: the stylus was not practical at all.
Microsoft did not find what it expected in the smartphone market but continued to develop Windows Mobile. At the MWC fair in 2010, it introduced the “Windows 7” series. This series was built on the “Windows Phone” operating system and was to be released in collaboration with Nokia. In other words, Windows Phone would only be available on devices manufactured by Nokia.
This was a very promising collaboration. Nokia was using Symbian at that time, but this obsolete operating system did not have features to compete with iOS or Android. Windows Phone could be the thing to save Nokia. Microsoft, on the other hand, would use Nokia’s reputation for robustness and reliability. Also, Windows 7 was really a very different mobile operating system.
- It had an interface design consisting of 4×2 tiles. These tiles were “live”, meaning they could be updated in real time, for example, with push notifications. It was an operating system that looked very different visually.
- It was built on the “hub” logic. For example, all media content (music, video, radio, etc.) owned by the user was brought together in the “Zune” hub. This was also true for other essential features such as Office, email, contacts, and messages: each was accessed from within a hub.
- Other Microsoft services were integrated into the operating system. For example, search and maps were provided by Bing.
Updates – lots of updates
Windows Phone was a very impressive and promising operating system. Microsoft started releasing updates almost immediately. The most important of these was the “Windows Phone 8” update in 2012. Unfortunately, this caused a lot of criticism, as devices using Windows Phone 7 could not be upgraded to version 8.
Two years later, the “Windows Phone 8.1” update was released. This was an update to make the operating system fully compatible with Windows 8. Many features have been added, such as a new web browser, cross-device synchronization, skin support, and Cortana. Most users still think this is the best version of Windows Phone.
In 2015, the “Windows Phone 10” update was announced. The purpose of this was to make the operating system compatible with Windows 10. The update contained many exciting innovations, but Microsoft could not reach the desired number of users. The application support of the operating system was very limited, for example, there was not even an official Instagram application. Live Tile design was not liked by most users and icon-based designs were preferred. Microsoft ended active development for Windows Phone in 2017 and had to announce the end of the platform in January 2020. If it had achieved the popularity it wanted, we could be witnessing a very different mobile market right now. Unfortunately, many reasons, especially the lack of applications, caused Windows Phone to be a canceled project 10 years after it started.
