This week WhatsApp shuts down service - ends connectivity - for a number of older smartphones. This includes some Android phones, a few iOS devices, and all Windows Phone devices. If you're still using a Windows Phone device at this point at the tail end of 2019, there may be no mercy for you in the days to come.
It will be an end of an era at Microsoft next week, an era that may have divided the company and the tech community far too long. Come Tuesday, December 10, all Windows 10 Mobile devices, be it for consumers or for the enterprise, will no longer be supported. With Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile behind it, Microsoft may finally be free to focus on its next strategy for mobile, which seems to be about building apps around a common Fluent design that will look and work well on its upcoming Surface devices.
At this moment and for the foreseeable future, it's a good idea to avoid opening MP4 files in WhatsApp. There's a bug in WhatsApp for both iOS and Android where a malicious person can send a specially-crafted MP4 file to ultimately control a users' phone. This bug was patched, but not all people in the world have said patch right this minute.
Just as former Microsoft exec and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop feared, the mobile market has become a two-horse race between Android and iOS. More than that, however, Android has overtaken Windows as the most Internet-connected platform and iOS, particular iPadOS, threatens to displace Windows on some fronts. In some alternate reality, however, Windows Mobile could have been the dominant mobile platform, a possibility that, at least according to Microsoft founder and ex-CEO Bill Gates, was destroyed by the US government's antitrust lawsuit in 1998.
Lumia owners, both from Nokia and Microsoft, your days are numbered. At least if you're still running Windows Phone 8.1. It might be a shock to some that that version of Microsoft's defunct mobile OS still exists and still runs. It might not be a shock, however, to hear that Microsoft is pulling the plug on it this year. Fortunately, Redmond has a bit of mercy and a path forward for the few still holding on to some of these phones for dear life.
Bill Gates may not have been Microsoft CEO when Android arrived, but the outspoken billionaire still counts the software giant's failure in the smartphone segment as his "greatest mistake." While Microsoft may have had its own phone OS, in the shape of first Windows Mobile in 2000, and then Windows Phone in 2010, despite heavy investment the platform never managed to be anything other than a third option in the iOS vs Android war.
Facebook has decided that its remaining Windows Phone users have had enough time to switch to a different platform: it is ending support for its family of apps on the defunct mobile platform. The change will apply to the Facebook mobile app, Instagram, and Messenger, the company has confirmed. Users have one month left to decide whether losing the apps is motivation enough to upgrade their handset.
Launched in late 2015, the Lumia 950 XL, next to the HP Elite x3, was the last great Windows Phone. But with aged hardware and an obsolete operating system, the phone may seem to be completely useless now. Ironically, it seems to have actually gotten a resurgence in popularity thanks to a few new hacks. But now, thanks to the cumulative work of a few such tinkerers, almost anyone can easily install Windows 10 on ARM on the Lumia 950 XL and prolong the device’s usefulness in a completely different way.
Microsoft is preparing to say goodbye to Windows 10 Mobile, warning hold-outs that their smartphones will no longer get support by the end of the year. The ill-fated phone platform failed to make a significant dent in iPhone and Android sales, and indeed now Microsoft is recommending that owners migrate to Apple or Google's platforms.
Microsoft may have given up on its own Windows-based smartphone platform but at least one of its partners hasn’t yet. If you’re still itching to get your hands on an honest to goodness Windows 10 Mobile phone, one of the last of its breed, then you might have to make a trip to the UK for it. Or find a way to ship it from there. Because OEM Wileyfox has just started making and selling its Wileyfox Pro phone again because, according to them, their customers demanded it.
It was not as disastrous as the Windows ME or Windows Vista (though some might argue that it was) but Windows 8 and even Windows 8.1 were met with far more resistance than Microsoft was expecting. That unwelcoming atmosphere was extended to Windows Phone 8, which was actually less problematic, forever cursing that “8” generation. Given those factors, it’s somewhat surprising that Microsoft has continued supporting the OS this long though now it is finally giving out the dates when Windows 8/8.1 and Windows Phone 8.x can effectively retire.
Lumia phones are pretty much dead. Windows RT is even more so. But who says you can’t have both? Microsoft probably never imagined, much less wanted, its Windows Phone Internals tool to be used this way, but developers like Ben Wang, a.k.a. imbushuo, aren’t going to take no for an answer. Wang has more or less successfully gotten Windows RT to run on recent Lumia phones, like the Lumia 640 XL, and is now sharing the process so others can join in the fun. That is, if you consider this fun.