Now with a huge number of devices, a well-received OS and the backing of a huge company like Microsoft, one would expect Windows Phone to have caught on quite quickly. Several certainly did think it would displace Android and iOS, what held Windows Phone back was a combination of two things, mentioned above. Microsoft and developers.

Microsoft had developed a very locked down platform with only a bit of wriggle room for devs and users. Like Apple, Microsoft had shipped a smartphone platform that as fast, fluid and functional but limited in its functionality. Unlike the iPhone, Microsoft had many competitors. They needed to get updates out and fast. The first update came in the second year of Windows Phone , codenamed NoDo, this update brought copy and paste to Windows Phone 7, improved the multitasking and fixed several bugs in the OS.

It was a useful update, but began a worrying trend for Microsoft. While Android received major updates frequently and iOS received a major update every year with minor updates being issued in between, Microsoft was so far behind they needed to adopt the Android mentally rather than the iOS one in other to catch up. It seemed that they knew this when rumours of another update, Mango as well as stirrings of Apollo began to hit the internet. As this rumour gained steam, another event created waves in the Windows phone world.

A year after Microsoft unveiled its original Windows Phone 7 project, the first major new update was released. Windows Phone 7. This update was the last Windows Phone 7 update for several users and added many staples of the Windows Phone experience. First of all, behind the scenes, Microsoft enabled support for new hardware and direct X Graphics. This would require manpower that the firm was not willing to divert from its new project, Apollo, the next step for Windows Phone.

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Live tiles were resurrected in this update. Mango allowed apps to update more often as well as enabled deep linking. That is to say, one could pin multiple sections of an app to the start screen. The start screen would become more alive than it was before in this update. Speaking of which, one of the complaints about the original Windows Phone software was about how difficult it was for you to get to your apps via the app list.

Without pinning that specific app to the start screen, one would have to hunt and peck around the app list. Microsoft listened to user feedback and provided a jumplist feature that activated when there were 45 or more apps installed. You could then tap on a letter and jumps to apps that you needed to access.

Microsoft also enhanced the messaging functionality here. Where the messaging app was just a simple text and SMS app, after Mango, it became a full-fledged messaging hub with access to both Facebook and Windows messenger. You could fire off a message on Facebook, go off-line and then switch to text seamlessly.

It was a useful and powerful tool for communication, especially for a people focused OS like Windows Phone. Now with all these social networks, one might think the Windows Phone People hub would become cluttered with updates from here, there and everywhere. The email app was similarly enhanced and refined, previously on Windows Phone managing multiple accounts required each account to have its own tile, which could lead to a cluttered start screen for some.

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Mango enabled linked inbox functionality, allowing the user to link multiple inboxes into one email hub. It also added support for threaded emails, a shocking oversight for the company behind Outlook. Multitasking was also massively improved. Windows Phone multitasking had been poor and temperamental with no way to quickly switch apps besides jumping to the start screen and selecting the app again.

Mango fixed this by implementing two features. Fast App resume and a new multitasking view accessed by holding down the back button. Firstly, fast app resume changed the behaviour of apps which were updated to support it. Previously when you swapped away from Windows store apps, you had to restart them from start. Now, the apps assumed a saved state and remained in memory for quite a while, allowing one to switch back through the new cards based multitasking view. For instance, if one was viewing a twitter app and switched apps or locked the screen, whereas the old WP 7.

This vastly improved the user experience and allowed apps to work almost as well as their Android and iOS versions. Speaking of apps, there was a huge elephant on the room there.

A List of Useful Office Software and Apps for Windows Phone

When Windows Phone was a fledgling operating system, it was all well and good that it had few apps, yet a year later in the lifecycle of the OS and the number of apps in the store were still shockingly low with many apps being non-existent or poor caricatures of their Android and iOS selves. In addition to this, while Microsoft had announced several new features for Windows Phone 7. From little conveniences like locking screen rotation, to issues like creating and editing music players as well as hardware limitations. These frustrations when added to the app gap issue slowly began to cut down the optimism that reviewers and enthusiasts initially had for Windows Phone.

Windows Phone 7 would receive two more updates, Tango and 7. It would be rendered obsolete by the upcoming Windows Phone 8. The first of the two updates was Tango, this update was mainly used to enable lower end devices with MHz processors and megabytes of RAM. Nokia quickly took advantage of this and released the Lumias , and All low to mid-range devices to round out its stable of Lumia devices, a trend that would repeat itself over and over again until the name Lumia would become synonymous with Windows Phone.

The final update for Windows Phone 7 would be Windows Phone 7. Its roll out was a disaster as many carriers and OEMs declined to update their phones, and several phones which did get the update became bug-ridden.

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Eventually, Microsoft stopped talking about it and Windows Phone 7 was relegated to the past. An interim OS which had captured the interest of the people for a time, but failed to hold their attention. In , Microsoft introduced the world to Windows Phone 8. For Windows enthusiasts it was both exciting and disheartening.

Exciting in that it represented a new paradigm for Windows where the phone and the desktop OS were moving much closer together. This unification came at a terrible cost however. As we mentioned earlier, the Windows Phone 7 series was discontinued with no upgrade path to Windows Phone 8. Especially affected were people who bought the then just released Nokia Lumia , it was had excellent hardware but was saddled with crippled software.

Microsoft attributed this stare of events to kernel changes and hardware incompatibility in an attempt to deflect criticism. The spectre of this decision still haunts the company today with constant reassurance being needed for each progressive software update. Windows Phone 8 advanced the Windows Phone platform in several ways. X devices were capped at 16 GB. Each device boasting up to date hardware specs and unique designs.

It eliminated the gutters on the start screen, allowing the tiles to cover up all the visible space. There was also more customization added here, while Windows Phone 7 had allowed you to move your tiles around and change their colour to a limited palette, 8 allowed you to resize your app tiles, whether built-in or third-party.

There were three sizes which provided a different experience with the smallest tile size offering merely an icon view, the medium tile showing moderate information and the wide tile being especially useful for live information previews for apps like IM and weather apps. Microsoft also added a few more accent colours bringing up the total number of available colours to 20 and an optional one which could be configured by an OEM or Carrier Verizon red and Nokia blue for example.

The UI also underwent a subtle redesign with all tiles and icons becoming flat and angular, best viewed in the Office App and OneDrive tiles. Microsoft expanded the Xbox integration from the games hub to all entertainment related hubs on the phone, this included the Music and Videos hub. However, not all functionality here was carried over with syncing being degraded and the ability to rent or buy videos being stripped completely.

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In addition to all these woes, the hub lagged noticeably on low end hardware until GDR 3. The Zune desktop tool was rendered useless for WP8 devices with a new sync told being released. Unfortunately, as with all things related to the Zune transition, the new software client was clunky and inefficient with the much lambasted Zune suddenly becoming loved by fans after its demise. The Games hub received a redesign, a new green and gray colour scheme to match the new music hub.

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Beyond that, its functionality remained mostly intact. In practice, you could make use of this as a handy guest feature for handing out your phone to others to use for whatever reason. The second feature was the rooms feature, if you had several members of your family using Windows Phone, you could add them to your family room and share calendars, notes as well as group chat. Unfortunately, the relative unpopularity of Windows Phone hamstrung this feature for most users.

The Wallet app stored your payment details like Paypal and debit and credit cards, it also allowed users to store cards like club cards and membership cards. The implementation of this feature was left to the carriers who for the most part neglected it.

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Effectively rendering it useless. Other than that, the Wallet was a pretty good passbook replacement, with third-party apps even offering ways to convert Passbook.