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Windows Phone will not receive new features, and there will be no new Windows Phone hardware. The initial release was on October 21, 2010:
During the weekend, Microsoft's Joe Belfiore tweeted confirmation of something that has been suspected for many months: Microsoft is no longer developing new features or new hardware for Windows Mobile. Existing supported phones will receive bug fixes and security updates, but the platform is essentially now in maintenance mode.
Microsoft's difficulties in the mobile market are no secret, but for a time the company looked as if it was keeping Windows Mobile as a going concern regardless. Through 2016, Microsoft produced new builds for the Windows Insider program and added new features to Windows Mobile. At around the time of release of the Windows 10 Creators Update in April this year, that development largely ground to a halt. Windows Mobile, which already lacked certain features that were delivered to Windows on the PC, had its development forked. PC Windows development continued on the "Redstone 3" branch (which will culminate in the release of the Fall Creators Update later this month); Windows Mobile languished on a branch named "feature2."
[...] We might well wonder why Microsoft didn't say so sooner and instead strung along not only the platform's fans but even OEM partners; it's hard to imagine that HP would have built its Elite x3 phone had Microsoft been clearer about mobile.
Even with this announcement, there's still speculation that Microsoft is going to bring out a new device—something phone-like but not a phone—that'll compete, somehow, in the mobile space. For all the rumors about a "Surface Phone," though, it's unclear precisely what this device would do that is meaningfully different from anything else on the market or if it will be compelling enough to reverse the company's mobile fortunes. For now, all we can do is mourn: the best mobile platform isn't under active development any more, and the prospects of new hardware to run it on are slim to non-existent.
They should release an app that runs full Windows on an external display when an Android smartphone is docked. Put those 8-10 cores to good use.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @04:42PM (5 children)
WP7 /was/ the best mobile platform when it came out, and there were high quality phones that used it too - WP8+ however are garbage and good riddance.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @06:35PM (2 children)
It was so sweet to watch Windows Mobile vs Android suffer the same problem that Desktop Linux vs Windows had.
No Applications. No Developers of applications, unless Microsoft paid them handsomely to port their apps to WP7/8. That was the only to get some top drawer apps ported to Windows Phone.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:07PM (1 child)
The crazy part is that so much of that was self inflicted. One would have thought that Microsoft of all companies understood the value of backwards compatibility, yet Winmob7 burned any bridges with the earlier PocketPC lineage.
Observe on the other hand how you can now get cheap as dirt Atom based tablets running Windows 10, that are able to handle even things from the 3.1 era of software (Atom CPUs are 32-bit).
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:40PM
. . . and Windows Phone 8 burned compatibility with Windows Phone 7. Yes, really.
(I am NOT a cowboy and there is nothing wrong with this speed.)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:21AM (1 child)
WP7 /was/ the best mobile platform when it came out
There are a lot of folks who gauge "best" by marketshare. [techpinions.com]
Windoze Phone 7 was released on October 21, 2010.
At that time, the MSFT numbers were pretty small and had been getting smaller for some time.
So, "best"? Not so much.
...if you want to judge "quality" by marketshare.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(A Linux user who gets tired of marketshare comparisons from M$ fanboys.)
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday October 12 2017, @07:22PM
I haven't used windows since I was in school at the computer lab. Ask my boxes run Linux or OpenBSD. WP7 was awesome. Android and iOS have apps and all that bs. WP7 worked extremely well for communication, even if I didn't have all kinds of stupid games to beg me to give them my CC info.