The real reason Microsoft killed live tiles
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
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Live tiles were the most iconic Microsoft design element, trying Windows Phone, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 8, Windows 10, Surface and other brands together. I loved them. But they were flawed from the start and doomed to fail.
The Story Behind
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remember seeing ads on youtube for that search engine lol
@@atemoc It's because bing is down. Took down some other services with it.
I thought they spent their revenue on planting trees. Seems like they are sponsoring people using that money wtf lol
Edit: That's not even a privacy friendly search engine. Read their privacy policy. They share our searches and IP addresses with google and bing and earn more money.
no
I thought they spent their revenue on planting trees. Seems like they are sponsoring people using that money lol
Former windows phone developer here. You hit the nail on the head with the horizontal integration. Microsoft’s promise of vertical integration has ok but there wasn’t a user base. Then Microsoft pushed Xamarin hard to encourage horizontal integration on a platform that supported UWP. What resulted was a buggy framework, lackluster apps, and most Xamarin developers choosing to ignore UWP anyway.
On what part of windows phone have you worked on? just curious
Also, horizontal integration was the more sensible option in any case. iOS/Android/WinPhone Phones resemble each other far more than Windows PC and Windows phones did. Horizontal integration was the way to minimize the required effort.
Allow me to personally thank you and your team. My Lumia WP8.1 was what made me switch from my old non-touch phone. And I refused to go to android for years after WP was already discontinued. Only 2 years ago now, I got a repairable smart phone, using degoogled e/OS/, and got Launcher10 that copied WP tiles as close as possible. Using that today! Couldn't imagine using stock android and their launchers, WP just spoiled me way too much. So - THANK YOU for Windows Phone 8! I still miss the menu & settings style on my Android now.
It is interesting how vertical integration is the aim of iOs, and it just works... I think the problem is rather that Google was so actively aimed to suppress any apps it can to get released on Windows Phone, that it even went far enough to threat companies it has stock into, that it will sell these stocks and removes its money, if they dare.
Also, in a Freemium service world, where most of the apps rely on ADs for profits, the least an app developer wants is you to know everything you need with a glance staying in your start screen. They want you to click on the app, watch the banners + ADs placed somewhere in the app, only then be satisfied with the information the app provides
Good point, thanks.
you dont have to capitalise ads, its not an acronym
Nerdge @@trankuill
@@trankuillit is! Advertisement!
I liked the Microsoft Phones. They were thin, light, came with an OLED screen, you could swap the battery by simply removing the case, they had a memory card slot and if you couldn't find an app from the start screen, you could swipe left and got an index of all apps installed. Finally, the live tiles didn't serve for advertising as opposed to the situation in Windows 10 desktop where I still hate the new control center being mixed with the old one and zillions of features without recognizable icons or their icons drastically changed.
The high end Nokias had far better camera hardware than most phones of the time but too many reviewers kept crapping on everything about the phones.
@@NightMotorcyclist microsoft bought skype
@@pewgarpolls How is that relevant to the comment you're replying to?
I had one of the first Nokia windows phones. It was thick and kind of shoddily built. The vibration motor made the volume buttons rattle around. It was cool at first as a concept, but I went back to iOS before a year was up.
Check out Launcher10! I'm using that on my repairable phone with e/OS/ rom. Launcher10 can be configured to be and do all the things you loved about WP8.1 and it's amazing. Including that app list on swipe. Multiple home screens. Custom tile sizes. Folders. I simply couldn't use normal Android launchers after WP!
I absolutely loved the Live Tiles on Windows Phone; they were such a unique and dynamic feature that made the user experience truly stand out. There were so many innovative features and a fresh approach to the mobile OS landscape. I really wanted Windows Phone to succeed, especially with the exciting plans they had for merging desktop and mobile experiences. It's sad that it didn’t go that way, as it had so much potential to reshape the mobile OS landscape.
Absolutely. I was so ready to change from Android to MS fully, but ie. banking and online chat apps just never got there and waited until platform died. I tried multiple Lumia's etc. and I was immeadiately sold for UI fluidity and loved the idea of live tiles. I actually liked W8 on my Surface Pro 2. But also hated it on desktop. More app developers and bit tweaking for "Metro" and I'm sure it would've been game changer. It's kinda hilarious that now ie. MacOS, Gnome and KDE have fairly similar start screen options that W8 had. But todays competitor alternatives are actually worse imo 😄
Likewise. I loved my Windows Mobile especially the LiveTiles. Was sad when I and to give up and move to Android as the few key apps I used just disappeared off Windows.
Same. I really liked the tiles. It just so pleasing on the eye and all the apps were on the one screen. With Android, there is the home page with only a few icons on and then you have to swipe to another page to get page 1 of all your apps. Very odd experience and hard to explain to those that struggle with tech.
"Merging desktop and mobile experience" means pushing walled garden to desktop. UWP requires Microsoft Store.
@@sergeykish no, they had plans to have dex like experience with windows. Also now with processors like snapdragon x elite would've made that proper desktop in your hands
A major role is played by Google in their demise ‘cause they didn’t make a single app for it.
And actively went against anyone else making an app for their services
100% mate. Google was key in the demise of Windows phone. 2010s was the period of Google's rise in popularity across the globe with interent reaching to billions and they priortized their own platform obviously
Not just not make a single app: They made a mandate to make anything that would go onto WP as uncomfortable and obnoxious as possible.
Microsoft made a TH-cam app, because Google wasn't going to, and as soon as it started getting traction, Google demanded Microsoft to shut it down - it stayed as a Web wrapper.
@@KazrBrekker If they at least made TH-cam, Photos and Drive apps, WP could’ve survived.
@@SimonVaIe Except for Apple, which Google already paid tens of millions of dollars every month to Apple for listing all the Google apps and services to iOS and Mac
I still miss my Lumia. Even compared to other android phones I owned, WP was just really responsive and easy to use. The software didn't bloat the phone, the screen was really bright outside and even if it did not have that many apps the websites functioned properly and the phone looked real slick.
The thing that I loved most with the Windows phones was the smooth navigation of the operating system. Even on low end models.
Yes. I tried my friends very lowend phone for few minutes and was insanely impressed how fluid it was. Like at least 100x better than any baseline Android phone.
This is the part that baffles the fuck out of me considering Windows's desktop reputation for being bloaty. Windows phone is still NTOS after all.
@@supercellex4D windows 7 was very bloated, but most of that bloat got removed in windows 8 and 10. Windows 8, other than it's terrible interface runs well, but unfortunately windows 10 added new bloat in the form of ads, tracking, and other assorted nonsense. Windows phone, being a stripped down version of windows 8 (essentially the best performing version of windows not counting XP or older), is pretty efficient. Remember that android, especially at that time was mostly coded in the abominable language known as java (android has always been significantly more bloated then regular desktop linux).
@@itdepends604 Windows 7 wasn't that bloated PC wise it ran on a P3 if you tried enough. The issue is people even lambasted Windows 2000 and XP for being bloated, WindowsNT is many things but optimized for small hardware isn't one of them. I would've expected it to perform about as well as iOS or those Linux phones running KDE plasma (I.E. not especially fast), seeing as it is another desktop OS crammed into an SoC
best part, it was so well made
Roots bloody roots.....
I don't know why I am happy to see a Sepultura album cover on a video about Windows Phones
I always thought the Live Tiles concept was so cool and unique. I remember jailbreaking my first iPod touch just so I could install a "Windows Live tiles" theme so I could try it out (without having to have a Windows phone)!
Live tiles are still amazing. The biggest killing factor is that there just aren't that many UWP apps, and almost no third party UWP apps actually use live tiles. Games used to use Live tiles back in 2014 but they don't anymore. I tried my best to find apps with live tiles but there are barely any.
the thing is, Live tiles are still better shortcuts than static grid of icons. because of how you can organize them, change size depending on your personal priorities or if it has good live tile feature, plus I much prefer scrollable home screen than pages, although combination can be used as well. This is why I still use tiles with SquareHome on Android. widgets as live tiles feel much less bloated and more precisely constrained, plus it doesn't take genius to guess that tapping on a tile that shows current weather would get you to weather app. Some apps with more ambiguous notifications can still retain some style or icon in the corner so you can tell what it belongs to, not to mention that you can color-code the tile background to associate with certain apps. all these cues + specific arrangement of tiles makes finding what you want much easier, and generally remembering the layout.
With stupid grid of icons you don't have much of a layout to begin with, and I don't know why everyone ended up stuck with this crap which originated in some launchers for Windows Mobile 5/6 and somehow 20 years later it's still same.
There is nowhere near enough scrutiny of Google's role in killing this platform.
Yeah, imagine if youtube and maps was available on Windows Phone ...
Not because of Google apps etc but because of peoples like you comes up
The video is about live tiles not windows phone os.
Probably cuz Microsoft is so big that they really shouldn't be bullied around by anybody. For so much smaller company I think there would be a lawsuit but Microsoft kills as much competition as Google. They buy everything and s*** look at what just happened with Xbox were they bought a whole bunch of game studios and then just killed them
@@tasosjw that why is it wrong.
What do you mean Apple never showed interest in copying the system? IOS widgets are basically live tiles, the widget page is functionally identical to a WP home-screen!
My thoughts exactly. Besides back in the day Windows Phone introduced things such as WiFi direct, which shared WiFi access among your contacts, Miracast and so many more that were directly copied by Apple and Android.
Widgets are all unique looking and easy to find what you are looking for. Live tiles are just a sea of mono colored squares, easy to get lost in. Despite the animation, nothing draws your eyes to them.
@@destructodisk9074 Pretty sure you haven't experienced a WP for long enough to make such a statement.
@@vedanshchn I owned one because I thought I would like live tiles. It just made things harder to find quickly because everything looks the same at a glance. Even when spending time organizing things to make things easier to find, the sea of squares and rectangles was just not helpful. And the live aspect just didn't help. I had a Windows phone for a year before I went back to Android. Some people loved them, but the majority of the public did not. There is a reason tiles were not adopted to be the basic icon replacement on other OSes. People don't want them. If they did you would see the most popular Android builds using widgets like this for every icon. People who customize their Android experience would be doing this. Almost no one implements this, outside of a few nostalgia obsessed folks. It isn't practical.
If they were live tiles instead of live advertisements, I am sure it could have been a game changer!
agreed.
So true.
Problem is they didn’t integrate into existing APiS like notifications which apps would want to use
True!!!
Ouch!🤕
This might be the first time I've been thrilled by a sponsorship! Ecosia deserves much more promotion!
Thank you 💚
I've had a Windows Phone and loved it. The lack of apps pushed me back to Android where - for years - I used SquareHome launcher. Even on a folding phone or a tablet, SquareHome works perfectly. I've recently finally switched to a more folder-oriented setup (with Folder Widget app) which still has somewhat of a resemblance to tiles. I've always found the default Android icon & desktop setup to be incredibly boring and ugly.
Nokia Maps ecosystems of 2012 was ahead of any Maps application today.
Indoor maps for shopping malls, AR, maps and navigation in different apps so no fuss on using them both at the same time, complete offline functionality (I had 100 MB a month at this time), the list could go on and on.
Great video as always, but I don't think you talked enough about the fact that part of the idea of live tiles was to pull together windows pc and the Microsoft phone, but the vast majority of pc users never even saw a windows phone in their life and just resented the changes that seemed to be a backwards step for the pc.
I loved the windows 10 menu live tiles options. It really grew and I find it useful.
If you are on Windows 11 you can bring back the Windows 10 start menu and live tiles using a program called ExplorerPatcher.
I never had a Windows phone, but to this day I admire its appearance.
same, Windows Mobile 6.5 and Phone 7 are my favorites and I like firing them up in a emulator on my PC (though for Windows Phone 7 emulator I need to use a Windows 7 x86 VM in running in VMware Workstation)
Loved windows phone so much. I have a couple screenshots of my homescreen that I still look at once in awhile.
Even if they weren’t live the variable sizes and lack of wasted corner space….
@1:00 that was a nice editing touch with the “Rose tinted glasses” 👌
Love to see you're still smashing it Marton!
live tiles are the absolute best. i honestly never had the problem of not finding my apps. the thing that killed windows phonen was lack of google services.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 with Windows 8 was my first smartphone. The live functionality of the tiles was not of big interest, but I loved the minimalistic aesthetic of the OS design. Now I use Android and the colorful rounded icons are in no way a pleasing sight.
What was also awesome with the Lumia 1020, is that it had a 720p OLED display and it had AOD before Android did. 720p is tze sweetspot for phones in my opinion, because it's perfectly sharp but doesn't waste battery life in unnecessary resolution to be processed. My current phone has a 4K display and it runs in 720p mode since I got it.
I have two of them
As another reformed Windows Phone advocate, your words hurt because they ring true.
use to have one, live tiles may look too simple but once you own it, you feel different in cool way, too bad not many devs work on it
I really wouldn't have minded if these had come back as widgets on the Surface Duo. Still love using that phone.
Convergence was a popular concept of that era. The idea that a single application would run on all our devices and have a similar interface. Its great in concept, but reality proved otherwise. We all interact with different platforms (computer, tablet, phone, console) in fundamentally different ways, both physically and mentally.
I thought this was a couple years old video with that thumbnail and title. Really miss Windows Phone sometimes.
My whole life I have been tinkering with Android phones and OSes.
I've used and coded KLWP multiple times.
I've used every mainstream launcher out there.
I sorted my apps into many different layouts.
Nothing comes remotely close to the Square Home Launcher that is Windows-like with tiles, yet it uses Android widgets for the live tiles to display weather, music, etc... Very customizable
I still use what is little left of them on Win 10, was always very fond of them.
Also, when I had to design a menu once I went for tiles-like layout, just because of how clean, simple, and functional they are
Every failed piece of technology has its fans. Just think about the minority who like small phones.
even the Microsoft's Biggest Failure - Microsoft Kin Phone (aside from me of course, though never got to use it, I just love everything Windows CE)?
As a Windows Phone fan, I've been waiting for such a video for a long time!
I loved Windows phone, but I never had live tiles active on anything but the News feed. I couldn't imagine having half the tiles updating constantly.
yall gotta try full screen windows 10 start menu, looks very clean.
too bad I upgraded to Windows 11... This is the one thing I miss from Win10
Nah I'm good
@@pencilcase8068Yeah, I share that sentiment.
lol that was called Windows 8 and it was a usability nightmare.
@@HenryBloggitit is still a usability nightmare, much poorly executed, requires an explorer restart every time you move an icon around, and I'm pretty sure it was either some intern's trial period project, or someones gotten fired for it. Still looks hella clean tho
You can still use live tiles on mobile. I do (Launcher 10 and Square Home both have that).
It still looks so clean and futuristic
Microsoft missed out on Smartphones which would have helped with the UI for Gaming Handhelds. The user experience on Handhelds is frustrating.
I worked at Best Buy back in 2014. I loved Windows 8. The big tiles were awesome, in my opinion. It was so easy to set up, but people were so confused. I just never understood it. I worked as a Geek Squad agent and I'd do small Windows 8 lessons with customer groups. It was really fun.
I think Microsoft was just too early on the road towards vertical integration. Because it's more difficult to properly support multiple form factors and input devices with a single code base. Also mobile devices needed much more optimization regarding efficiency and performance. So it was the obvious choice as developer to strive for horizontal integration. These days it's much more different.
You can have horizontal integration with Linux applications because they also run on Windows via WLS and running them on macOS isn't impossible either (many times you can cross-compile, it just works or you can use a VM). But you can also have vertical integration with Linux apps as well, running them on Linux tablets or phones. A single code base can simply cover all form factors and platforms because pretty sufficient open-source frameworks and toolkits exist.
So maybe we will see something like the ecosystem Microsoft envisioned but much more open and free for users and developers to work with.
Great analysis, as usual.
I'm also a 'recovering' Windows Phone fan, and actually a Windows defector, as last year I moved all my PCs to Linux. Microsoft has given up on trying to design better user experiences and transformed into a 'money first, spying second, anything else last' kind of company, like Adobe.
I loved live tiles on PC because I used them as widgets to make up for the notification centre kinda being trash. I also pinned all kinds of important but lesser used apps to the start menu in W10. But the W11 start menu is just awful, and the widgets menu is hidden away and very few apps bother supporting it compared to tiles. I replaced the start menu with StartAllBack, so I doubt the widgets next to the start menu will even work for me when it comes lmao
I used Windows Phone back in the day and absolutely loved it. But this was the Ballmer era of Microsoft where so many easy wins were completely fumbled, this among them. They had the war chest to basically fund all the top apps in the world to make the best versions of themselves for the platform, but instead Ballmer decided to spend billions buying Nokia for no good reason and just assumed developers would show up to a distant third place platform, which basically conceded the market to Apple and Google. And oh yeah, trying to shoehorn this excellent touch interface into a mouse-driven OS.
I don't blame Ballmer at all buying Nokia. Imo it was actually good move. But hiring Elop was absolute shit decision. Worst thing ever. It was calculated that each day he worked costed company 18 million euros... PER DAY 🙁
@@jothain Curious why you think it was a good move? They didn't need to own Nokia to get Windows Phones manufactured and all it did was alienate the existing hardware partners they had, at an obscene cost that was ultimately just written off. Maybe I'm missing something though.
I loved my Lumia 920, experience was something else. With windows now on snapdragon, msft should bring back the windows phone, would be a great addition to the surface lineup
I had the Lumia 1020 and i LOVED the phone. Had one of the best cameras with videos holding up quite good up to day!
I used Windows phone until 2019. And the only reason I stopped is because the battery crapped out. I loved it, but it was slowly falling behind the times. There was no TH-cam, Instagram and many other local apps. However, I appreciated the fact that some of the UI, eg in Music app, was so unique. And the camera was superb. The colours were not boring. I also loved that the phone never hang even with the limited specs. I had to move to Android though, but I always wished that other apps or OSes could copy some of Microsoft's homework (except the tiles) like the fluidity and UI of apps. I thought I was weird for liking Windows but I am grateful that other people appreciate the good things about it
The reason I bought the HTC Windows phone 8s was the Metro UI ❤
But later I found out that it didn’t even had an Instagram App nor it did had an auto rotate toggle 💀
Sold it within 4 months 😅
fair decision lmfao
Yup. Google played a major role in Windows Phone's downfall because they didn't make any app for it, and when someone did make an app for their service, Google shot it down. This sent a message to developers that the platform wasn't worth it to invest into by creating apps for it
I think the worst thing was that brightness toggle. You could only change from 25% to 50% to 75% without opening settings
@@aarspardoesn't need windows phone to exist because of people like you not Google
@@sys935 uhhh, okay I guess?
I use launcher 10. Had a Lumia Phone when it was supported by MS.
One of the major failures for metro tiles was the lack of user customization without 3rd party apps. Microsoft locked it down to an annoying level where you were at the whim of the developer to actually implement. Without being able to actually customize the tiles (add icon, images, size variation for some) it became limited to a degree that became determental.
Honestly, tiles and start menu/task bar customization is a larger reason that I've kept windows 10. Everyday use apps pinned to task bar. power user and hardware apps tiled on start and stylized with 3rd party software.
Microsoft tossed it out to die when they locked user ability to utilize its potential when devs didn't.
02:46 SEPULTURA CARALHO
Would always be my favorite GTUI
For those of us of a certain age, live tiles were a flashback to Windows 1.0. Its interface was composed of non-overlapping, resizeable tiles, with active content. It also had a black bar across the bottom of the display, which was the MS-DOS command line. Compare that to the Windows 8 taskbar or the black bar up the right side of the earlier versions of Windows Phone.
Then there were the default color choices looking very much like the standard CGA cyan, magenta, white, and black.
It just looked like Windows 1.0 High Definition 2010 Edition.
I also loved the UI, and in particular the Live Tiles, but I sure wished thy would have made them into widgets.
Why did Windows Phone/Mobile fail? The app ecosystem. The dev platform was great. And for not being familiar enough to traditional UIs. Which prompted the developers of Windows Mobile to make drastic changes, a little to late and desperately. It broke a lot of the uniqueness.
Continuum was an interesting feature. But a bit too early. I would loved to have a full desktop experience hiding in my phone. But they didn't have Windows for ARM fully ready back then.
Now I rather wish that iOS implements that feature for macOS apps
device soc load would always be higher and that means always way more going on in background then also gpu load and ultimately that destroys battery life.
Yeah there are lots of *cool* things that don't actually make any sense ultimately - live tiles are a great software example.
Bro was the only person in the world who loved the tiles format, i hated it back when i had a windows phone
For me Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 was the peak !!!! Just love the O.S!!! ps: still have my red Lumia 920 here!!
and I finally managed to fire up a Windows Phone 7 emulator inside a Windows 7 VM!!!
Agree agree agree... Microsoft should have made THIS on surface duo
I'm still using live tiles with a desktop called Suarehome on my Android phone.. and I love it.. on a desktop.. it was bonkers..
I still love my Zune. I had three different Windows phones (HTC, Nokia, HTC again). It was just the lack of apps that made me go with an iPhone after that.
I loved Live Tiles on Windows Phone but never really cared for the "live" aspect of them. It was great being able to resize the tiles to give priority to my most used apps. And being able to make them transparent with a background image was the height of home screen nirvana.
But one pet peeve I've always had with live tiles was how Microsoft absolutely refused to design a home screen that was aesthetically pleasing right out of the box. Sure, I didn't mind customizing my home screen, but that's not what people saw when they looked at demo units in the store. What most people saw was a color vomit of mishmash tiles all crammed together without any care or cohesion.
I still use Square Home, a windows phone launcher for android. Started using it when I eventually had to replace my old Lumia 950 and is has been on all my samsung phones since then and will continue to use it until I can't. I hate the fact that in every generation of phone they change things just to copy someone else or to change something that was working but just wanted to make it different. I like the fact that with whatever phone I buy I can just use the same layout.
The reason I liked tiles (not "live" tiles specifically) was that they allowed a grid layout in the start menu, something long overdue. But I also liked the customization that came with them, I liked being able to change the width of the start menu, I liked grouping, arbitrary layouts and perhaps to a lesser extent changing the size of the tiles themselves. The fact that I don't really mind tiles being gone now that the Windows 11 start menu has a grid layout with plain old icons only reinforces that belief.
I think theres still some potential in the simple design, if pages were implemented instead of vertical scrolling, and the tiles were not used as ad space. Microsofts abuse and misuse of them killed them, fundamentally i believe theres some potential in the 'simple smart phone' market especially
I like it because I can change the size of the icon. In Windows 10, I just put them in the live tile and vary the sizes depending on how often I use them, rather than putting them on the taskbar. The taskbar is only used to pin web browsers and file explorers. I don't like pinning an app on the taskbar, as it can easily misclick or get cluttered when multiple programs are opened. I do agree that the notification and "live" in the live tile can be confusing.
I am using an Android launcher called Square Home just to get the Windows Phone UI + "Live Tiles" back. I love the UI so much, and to me it's actually feels like you are using your whole screen instead of small icons everywhere.
Live tiles made sense for a smartphone interface, I loved it when I had WP. Just no apps.
I always wanted a windows phone, my cousin had one back in the day….I had a iPhone 6 or 6s at the time.
Its to late now to get one, just like the BB key 2. I love the phone but no more updates and stupid expensive since they are no longer in production.
Blackberry Key 2 is still actually pretty usuable despite the age, and where I live a refurbisher still sells Windows 10 Phones for some reason
yep, I too love live tiles on my nokia lumia 7XX (actually forgot the model lol)
I prefer live tiles over how (now) google do their apps icon.
and yep, I've organized my live tiles so I use my muscle memory to operate my phone
Annual releases would have been a better strategy. Tying OS releases to Windows Desktop was stupid.
Love the mention that you need distinct color for icons which I fully agree with, as iPhone just announced icons only being changed to all the same color.
As soon as Windows Phone was announced, I looked into it for as much detail as I could find, and I found a lack of widget customisation, and no wallpaper configuration either, which meant the UI was locked into a version that Microsoft deemed appropriate you the user.
Android, on the other hand, offered customisation of all aspects of the screen from the start.
Aside from the lack of 3rd Party Application support, it became a non-starter from the get-go.
And when Windows 8 appeared, my first response was think, Windows 7 is so much better!
I had a windows phone (samsung focus) and sold it a few months after because of the lack of apps but for the time i had it the experience was fluid with no lag
Live tiles for an always on display would be really cool actually
I’m a long time Mac user but I had a Windows Phone and I loved the live tiles, they were the best implementation of a widget, because you could “extract” one part of the app to have always on your Home Screen as a shortcut (a radio station of a radio app, a music album from a music app, a movie from Netflix, etc.) widgets are ok but live tiles were the best.
I thought Windows Phone was going to take over enterprise like BlackBerry did. They could have had the best integration with MS Office and been the most manageable by IT. Seems like a big missed opportunity.
my primary school's geography teacher held on to Windows Phone 8.x long after it was discontinued
Could've lived with windows phone even without app support, if edge wouldn't reload the page each time you switched back to it, made multi task a problem.
Lumia 930 was a sweet phone to look at and hold
Windows was an amazing phone of its time. I got it in my 3rd grade.
It had amazing app store because Indian government thought that this was going to replace Android.
The camera was far ahead of its time and the best thing is the speakers that came with it.
But after 2016 the quality of apps went bad.
I accidentally broke the screen and I had to parcel phone to 25 km away to get it fixed because of lack of service centres.
The back panel was too fragile. It broke even if you used covers.
I stopped using it when it's battery got pregnant and I couldn't find a new battery even in the most wealthiest city of india, Chandigarh.
Later I shifted to Samsung
i first had a windows mobile 5 phone, then mobile 6, those where very poorly executed windows ui, but then windows phone with the live tiles came and i was blown away, after the os died i tried for years to mod my androids as close as possible to live tiles, until the best launcher that had all the functionality became incompatible with newer phones i finally let id go, now i use a lumia like launcher, but boy, how i miss the live tiles
I don't use Windows , but, I must admit that I have owned two Nokia winphones and prefered them over Android or Apple.
I also think Windows 8.0 was such a nuisance on desktop that it killed mouse interaction with the start menu since it became vastly easier to do everything by search than deal with it. And live tiles became associated with that.
The Live Tile that I loved the most was the People app. Microsoft did contact management MUCH BETTER than anyone else, and nothing like it existing on iPhone today AFAIK. I could create a tile for my team members and get alerts whenever they emailed, posted something, and would even import their info from Linkedin.
It's sad to think that we have all just had to live with a sub-par user experience just because Apple and Google want to get young people addicted to their phone instead of enabling Business users (RIP Windows Phone, Blackberry).
I still use a tiles android launcher. I love it. I even have "cubes" (not sure how they are called) which are a tile I can rotate to show a different app/widget. The positioning and colour of app icons on stock android were totally confusing to me. I never found the apps I was looking for. There were so many colours and shapes which was overwhelming my senses. Now I just have a dark grey background, black tiles and every icon is yellow. The icons are very simple and every tile is a rectangle of course.
That everyone finds my layout to be confusing and I find the standard layout confusing tells me my brain really works differently.
I stayed away from Windows phone due to the lack of apps. Good thing someone made a Live Tiles launcher for Android so I was able to experience it.
what's weird it's it still looks modern and cool after all these years. like most user interfaces from that time look outdated today but not the live tiles and metro ui
I miss windows phone so much. I really loved that system and those Nokias phones. They had sth more in them
Windows phone didn't failed by itself, when the Microsoft CEO changed, they intentionally killed it, they intentionally discouraged app developers to stop making apps for Microsoft mobile platform, they intentionally changed the OS look in windows 10 version and made it look uglier and buggy, before that it was super smooth and optimised, Microsoft intentionally wanted to get rid of their mobile platform and they did it, smoothly.
Had several Windows phones when they were still viable. Live tiles were great and a breath of fresh air. Lack of apps killed the platform
I had the Nokia Windows phone back in day, it was gorgeous but there were just no apps support..google even stopped the you tube app.
This could work well with eye tracking like in the vision pro / quest pro. As where you're looking would be essentially be an input and decouple it from scrolling with your hand.
6:00 Did you just use a concept they showed off for DESKTOPS to review the phone OS?
Man I miss windowsphone. I held on untill a core Banking app i needed got removed from windowsphone.
I tried one when they were out because I thought I would love the clean look compared to Android. Ended up being turned off by hunting for apps in a sea of mono colored squares. Went back to Android and just got more into heavy customization to make my phone look clean, but also enjoyable. And then in 2020 I committed the ultimate sin of a Windows user since 1995... I switched to the Apple ecosystem across all devices 😲
Iam still using live tiles in my yoga book c930.
4 years after having to get an android the only UI improvement over wp is the nav bar instead of buttons, live tiles would be great if most devs gave a damn about it, app grids with mostly useless/redundant desktops and separate notification panels are just a cheap utilitarian solution
Live tiles were not only over-complicated, but I think were too overwhelming. Even to this day, regardless if I am on Android or iOS (yes, I switch it up every few years), I keep a widget for weather and reminders, everything else are just notification bubbles. They remind me I got something to check up on later, but without overwhelming me when I am on the home screen.
I was in college when these windows phones became popular. Even as a college student bank in the days with no UX experience, I knew so many basic UX things they did wrong. How on earth can a team of designers screw the ux up so bad and then double down on it. They never took any feedback from customers.
Interesting to hear from someone who actually liked Live Tiles. I remember when Microsoft rolled them out in Windows 8, how many of us desktop Windows users intensely disliked the imposing of the Xbox UI onto Windows. Lots of Windows users hated the new design, and pushed for the return of the Start Menu and the removal of UI elements that were designed for console and phone, but foreign to desktop. Not saying Live Tiles were inherently bad, but the strong backlash against them from Windows' core userbase on desktops definitely played a role. Great video overall.