Microsoft and Verizon somehow managed to kill the kin phones twice. The first generation came out in 2010 and was designed by Danger – the company behind the Hiptop (aka T-Mobile Sidekick). Danger was home to the likes of Andy Rubin and Matias Duarte, who should know people who are familiar with the history of Android pretty well.
We’ve covered the Kin story before, now we wanted to focus on what happened in the decade that followed. Well, Kin’s fate was sealed from the beginning, it seems, since the… Windows Phone 7 platform was announced in early 2010.
Evolution of Metro UI: 2nd Gen Zune • Zune HD • Windows Phone 7
Originally Microsoft thought it could follow the same game plan as with Windows Mobile and indeed the PC license for the software, let others worry about the hardware. The company has some hardware requirements, which held back early WP7 handsets. For example, initially only WVGA (480 x 800px) resolution was supported. There was also an approved chipset list, which left WP7 handsets behind Android in the CPU core count race.
You can read our early review of Windows Phone 7. The list of cons tells the story of a seriously undercooked operating system – no copy/paste, no multitasking, no USB mass storage mode, no system-wide file manager, no Wi-Fi tethering and so on and so forth.
Hubs were a core idea of Windows Phone 7
Despite this, the first WP7 phones were launched later in 2010, coming from various makers – HTC, Samsung, LG and even Dell. They were all already making Android devices, but now the creator of the dominant desktop OS (and one of the standout mobile OSes from years before) had joined the game. Could this be the end of the fledgling Android OS? Well, in hindsight, no, not at all. Speaking of hindsight, Microsoft employees were a little premature when they held a fake funeral for the iPhone, especially in the success of Windows Phone.
Let’s take a look at those early offers. For example, there was the HTC HD7, a successor to the legendary HD2. There was also the HTC 7 Pro, which had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, much like the HTC Arrive, which harks back to the “communicator”-style devices HTC was building in the early days. The HTC 7 Surround had a slide-out speaker instead, which was an odd choice considering the early versions of WP7 weren’t great for music (there was no equalizer for it).
HTC HD7 • HTC 7 Pro • HTC Arrive • HTC 7 Surround
While HTC was responsible for most of the roster, there were others as well. As a sequel to Samsung’s Omnia, the original of which is one of the more impressive Windows Mobile devices. LG chipped its own famous smartphone brand Optimus with the LG E900 Optimus 7. The Dell Venue Pro looked like a reliable business phone with its vertical sliding keyboard and its eyes on the BlackBerrys.
Samsung I8700 Omnia 7 • LG E900 Optimus 7 • Dell Venue Pro
For 2011, Microsoft managed to secure the partnership of the largest smartphone maker in the world – Nokia. The new Lumia series debuted with the Lumia 800 and 710. Since the Finns were in a hurry, most Nokia N9 hardware reused in making the Lumia 800. Those two were the only WP7 phones Microsoft’s new key partner managed to deliver, taking some of the wind out of Windows Phone 7.
Nokia Lumia 800 • Nokia Lumia 710
Both were powered by the Snapdragon S2, one of the few chipset on Microsoft’s approved list. With a single CPU core, it seemed a bit underpowered for the end of 2011, given that the LG Optimus 2X entered the market in May. Guinness Book of Records as the first dual-core phone. This is one of the occasions when limited hardware support dragged down WP7.
Of course it wasn’t WP7 anymore, Microsoft released a new version called Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango”. It was already September roll out to older devices and the Lumias came right out of the box.
This is what the launch version of Windows Phone should have looked like – as we note in our review, it added important features like multitasking and Wi-Fi hotspot functionality, plus smaller ones like letting you choose a local file for a ringtone. In mid-2012, the update was actually mandatory as the Windows Marketplace requires v7.5 for downloads.
The original version 7.0 was woefully incomplete, but later in 2012, we found out that the situation was much worse – Windows Phone 8 was announced in June and it was soon confirmed that older devices will not updateleaving them stuck on the now-defunct 7.x branch.
Why? Well, there was a reason why WP7 phones were lagging behind in the CPU core count race. Despite external similarities, the two operating systems were very different internally – WP7 was based on the Windows CE core (which previously powered Windows Mobile), WP8 was based on the new Windows RT (which ran Windows 8 tablets). This provided multi-core support, superior graphics with higher resolution displays, NFC and more.
As a consolation prize, the older phones received the Windows Phone 7.8 updatewhich embellished the user interface, but failed to address the core operating system limitations.
We haven’t talked about apps yet, but it’s about time we did. Every new OS starts with a limited number of apps it can run, which is painful because smartphones are all about the apps. However, WP8 was so different from WP7 that software developed for the original 2010 and 2011 phones just wouldn’t run on the new ones, forcing developers to start from scratch.
Heading into 2013, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices & Services units. The €5.4 billion deal made Microsoft the leading manufacturer of Windows Phone devices as other brands scaled back their involvement.
The deal closed in 2014 and concluded in October rebranding effort began to change “Nokia Lumia” to “Microsoft Lumia”. Other manufacturers were still in the game, but just barely – Lumia phones accounted for 90% of phones using the platform at the time.
Microsoft continued and into 2015 unveiled Windows 10, which was supposed to be the latest version of Windows. Just a day later, it announced the mobile version of the operating system. This also went through some rebranding, with the “phone” being dropped and going back to “mobile” – Windows 10 Mobile.
Unsurprisingly, a long list of Lumias was billed as the first devices are updated to 10. Microsoft had no intention of repeating the same mistake and leaving its users stuck on an old operating system while starting from scratch.
The Lumia 1020, a Windows successor to the Nokia 808 PureView, was not invited to the party, but it stayed with WP8.1. However, the Lumia 930 and the giant (well, 6″ seems compact these days) Lumia 1520 went up to 10.
Let’s go back to the 2012 Lumia 920 (which was also stuck on WP8.1) for a moment. It was the first phone with Optical Image Stabilization, also known as OIS, which (at least according to Nokia itself) gave the PureView belief. It also did the multiple aspect ratio of the 808, where it could record both 4:3 and 16:9 images with as little resolution as possible. By the way, the promo campaign for the Lumia 920 got Nokia in trouble.
Nokia Lumia 1020 • Nokia Lumia 930 • Nokia Lumia 1520 • Nokia Lumia 920
Heading into 2015, the Lumia source dried up, but it went out with a bang – the Lumia 950 and 950 XL launched at the end of 2015. These were the best Windows phones ever made. However, there were only a handful of Lumias that launched with Windows 10 Mobile, the other two being the Lumia 550 and 650.
Microsoft Lumia 950 • Microsoft Lumia 950 XL • Microsoft Lumia 550 • Microsoft Lumia 650
The Lumia 650 was launched in 2016 and was the last of its kind. In 2017 Microsoft pulled the plug on WP8.1 with Joe Belfiore saying that bug fixes and security patches will continue, but there will be no new features for the phones stuck at 8.x.
In January 2019, Microsoft started recommending Windows Phone users switch to Android or iOS. It’s official in December waved offpromising to support only Office apps for current devices until January 2021.
Microsoft had given up on making its own operating system for smartphones, but it wasn’t out of the smartphone market yet. In 2020, it unveiled the Surface Duo with two screens. It ran on Android, but Microsoft heavily tweaked the UI with ideas for powerful split-screen multitasking. It wasn’t a foldable phone, but it had some of the same advantages (and disadvantages).
This was followed by the Surface Duo 2, which improved on some early flaws (mainly around the camera, battery and lack of a cover display), but these devices are still niche products rather than serious competitors in the market.
Microsoft Surface Duo • Microsoft Surface Duo 2
There should have been a bigger one Surface Neo (with two 9″ screens), which was planned to run Windows 10X instead of Android, but with the same multitasking UI ideas. However, the project was delayed and later quietly canceled. Just like Windows 10X itself, by the way.
For what it’s worth, some of the work done on 10X was released with Windows 11 (10 really wasn’t the last version). Windows 11 can run ARM-based Android apps on x86 PCs and it can run x86 Windows apps on ARM hardware. Microsoft finally has the unified operating system it dreamed of, not that it would make a difference to its smartphone ambitions. Today, Microsoft sees the smartphone market as an opportunity to sell apps and services, not phones.