Back in December 2019, Microsoft finally killed off Windows 10 Phone as it announced the end of support. The company’s grand plans with Lumia and Windows Phones sadly never became the success it needed to be in order to be able to compete with the likes of Android or iOS.
Thus Windows 11 Phone never became a real official thing outside of concepts. However, there is a free unofficial way that makes it possible, albeit the experience may not totally be free from flaws. Dubbed Project Renegade, the mod enables users to try Windows 11 on Qualcomm Snapdragon phones, among other devices.
↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin
Windows Phone 7 and 8 were amazing, and probably my favourite mobile platform of all time. I’m still sad that the duopoly made it impssible even for Microsoft to gain a foothold, because their efforts definitely deserved it. They didn’t just blindly copy Android or iOS, but came up with a truly original, unique, and in my view, superior mobile operating system, and in a fair market, they would’ve been rewarded for it, and Windows Phone would have a perhaps small, but profitable segment of the market.
In the vein of Bernie can still win, I still have this faint belief that Microsoft hasn’t completely given up on the smartphone market. Now that they’re serious about Windows on ARM, they might use it as sneaky way to get application developers on board, so that their applications are ready for the big Surface Phone a few years from now, complete with Windows Phone-inspired features and UI. I know this won’t happen, but let me enjoy my non-existent future, please.
I don’t want to rely on big tech anymore, but I might make an exception for an up-to-date Windows Phone. I’m only human.
Thom, this is one of those times where you and I are on the exact same wavelength. I could have written your summary word for word right out of my own head! I’d love to see a revival of my favorite mobile phone OS, and I’m definitely going to play around with Renegade even knowing full well it will never go anywhere.
I don’t know if it’s available for GrapheneOS, but I’m currently running Square Home on my Pixel and while it’s just a launcher and is literally only skin deep, it does bring back some of that Windows Phone 7/8 feel. And even now, seven years after giving up on the platform, I immediately felt at home with it.
I still think Blackberry 10 is the best mobile OS hands down. But Windows Phone was actually a fairly nice system as well.
Everybody hated Windows 8 because they tried to bring the Windows Phone UI to Windows. That clearly failed hard but, while the tiled view may be gone and the start button rules supreme again, the Windows Phone UI toolkit really did not go anywhere.
Windows Phone applications were “universal apps”. Universal Windows Platform ( UWP ) in Windows 10 was the full expression. This is treated as a legacy API these days but the UI framework is essentially identical to WinUI 3 which is the most current UI toolkit for Windows. The Uno Project allows you to use the WinUI 3 API to build cross-platform apps that target both desktop and mobile platforms like iOS and Android. So, you can essentially still use the Windows Phone API to build iOS and Android apps today.
https://platform.uno/dotnet-apps-start-here/
From a software ecosystem point of view, it would not take Microsoft much effort to bring back the Windows Phone platform. If they continue down the path of Qualcomm X Elite Surface laptops, they are not that far away on the hardware side either. And with Windows 11, they are edging towards a more closed and locked-down platform.
With mobile, the big problem is applications. But if Microsoft can get enough developers building iOS, Android, and Windows apps using Microsoft toolkits, adding Windows Phone as a target platform would be easy.
It could happen.
Will second the BB10 sentiments. I had a Z10 upon release and the HDMI dock for it which was pretty neat. And then the Z30 with the paratek antennas – that phone worked where nothing would. Even having the hub on android still never was as smooth or intuitive. I miss it every day.
It should be noted, Project Renegade does not allow you to install Windows Phone 11. It allows you to install Windows 11 on a phone. It is the full desktop UI, including the start button. It will let you run Linux as well.
Some Windows 11 applications will behave similarly to Windows Phone apps of yesteryear but that is because the modern Windows toolkit ( WinUI 3 ) is effectively still the Windows Phone GUI from an API stand-point.
The monopoly of Android and Apple has to be stopped, I hope Microsoft pull this off.
https://troubleshoot.dev/