I both love and hate Windows 10 for Phones.
Most of what there is to love about Windows 10 on phones comes from the prior Windows Phone DNA and the addition of some of the nice features from the desktop. But that isn't the interesting part of this article. I talk highly of Windows Phone regularly. And Windows 10 has disappointed me in some ways, and I think it is time to talk to those points (even though the OS is only in beta and all of this may change).
Firstly is performance. While I'll wager that this will certainly get better. I don't think we will see it get back to the same performance level it delivered historically on the same hardware. And I'll be honest, that was always a big point for me. It was one of the things which genuinely differentiated WP from the pack. It was a new OS, designed from the ground up to be mobile first and it made the specs in Android phones look completely silly. As if to confirm the power hungriness of this OS, the rumoured devices coming when the phone OS launches are 6 and 8 core behemoths with 3GB of RAM. I've owned tablets with lower specs. I understand that this is somewhat of a necessity given the unified OS and Store approach, but it is one thing I will miss.
Next is Continuum. While I would expect some hardware requirements such as an external display you are capable of connecting too and perhaps even the requirement for a BT keyboard and mouse, it seems like they are making the requirements even more complex than that. Basically, no current gen phones will support this feature. And the feature won't be as good as everyone wants it to be. If you're bogging down my phone to put an OS which can run on a desktop on there... I don't want to be limited to running phone apps with a new layout. Especially not if I'm buying a brand new, top of the line phone just to get that functionality. Continuum for phones, from what I've seen, turns a phone into the Windows equivalent of an iPad with a keyboard. Frankly, I'm not sure what I really wanted out of Continuum on the whole, but at the moment, this doesn't feel like it is it.
And that is really all of the gripe I've got. And it boils down to the same thing. In this OS unification, it is Windows Phone users that lose and other Windows platform users that. The loss isn't great. But in some ways I feel like with the time since the last hero device for this platform and the fact that the OS probably won't run superbly on any current gen hardware that maybe this time around MS should have abandoned WP8 devices.
Firstly is performance. While I'll wager that this will certainly get better. I don't think we will see it get back to the same performance level it delivered historically on the same hardware. And I'll be honest, that was always a big point for me. It was one of the things which genuinely differentiated WP from the pack. It was a new OS, designed from the ground up to be mobile first and it made the specs in Android phones look completely silly. As if to confirm the power hungriness of this OS, the rumoured devices coming when the phone OS launches are 6 and 8 core behemoths with 3GB of RAM. I've owned tablets with lower specs. I understand that this is somewhat of a necessity given the unified OS and Store approach, but it is one thing I will miss.
Next is Continuum. While I would expect some hardware requirements such as an external display you are capable of connecting too and perhaps even the requirement for a BT keyboard and mouse, it seems like they are making the requirements even more complex than that. Basically, no current gen phones will support this feature. And the feature won't be as good as everyone wants it to be. If you're bogging down my phone to put an OS which can run on a desktop on there... I don't want to be limited to running phone apps with a new layout. Especially not if I'm buying a brand new, top of the line phone just to get that functionality. Continuum for phones, from what I've seen, turns a phone into the Windows equivalent of an iPad with a keyboard. Frankly, I'm not sure what I really wanted out of Continuum on the whole, but at the moment, this doesn't feel like it is it.
And that is really all of the gripe I've got. And it boils down to the same thing. In this OS unification, it is Windows Phone users that lose and other Windows platform users that. The loss isn't great. But in some ways I feel like with the time since the last hero device for this platform and the fact that the OS probably won't run superbly on any current gen hardware that maybe this time around MS should have abandoned WP8 devices.
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