Anyone else excited about Cityman?

That's what I meant (and why I called them WindowsFanboiCentral ). If even they lead their review by bashing the WP10 ecosystem, you know the platform is in trouble.

Compared to the L1020 you would notice a huge improvement in shot-to-shot time, so it might be worth a look. As a L1520 owner though the only things I'd really like in the XL version are the return of wireless charging, the dual SIM option, and the slightly smaller size of the 950XL compared to the L1520. Not quite 'must buy'.

 

Yes, doesn't bode well but there's no one to blame but Microsoft, years wasted ignoring the platform now it could be too late.

And as for the 1020, I don't think the increased photo taking speed is enough to counter the mess Windows 10 mobile is now so I'll stick with it. Works well for everything I need mostly so not eager to effectively become a beta tester for W10M.

 

L1020 user here - and ill be keeping it. That ars review was spot on for me - continuum smells like RT to me, no interest in it whatsoever. Add the recent OneDrive fiasco/betrayal to all these phones' other non-selling points, and ill be staying away, and recommending to anyone who will listen to stay away also.

 

Agreed that the OneDrive about-face left a very bad taste. That taste is going to get worse once I will actually be forced to move my music off OneDrive. As for Continuum, I don't think there's any chance that they'll abandon universal apps, so in that sense it's unlike RT. I suspect continuum is just going to be there and keep being supported. I don't think it'll see widespread use for quite a while though, until 'continuum enabled monitors' start popping up all over public spaces. Maybe 2020?

 

Sure glad I jumped to the Galaxy Note 5. I'm happy with it. Would like a full version of Outlook for Android and a more fully featured PDF Annotator.

 

I just don't get Microsoft sometimes. They have a brand new Remote Desktop Preview app based on the UWP, but it doesn't run on phone yet... so there goes one huge area with potential for Continuum (as a thin client).

File Explorer on phone doesn't support network shares, ftp, etc. so that limits some more areas.

And then the stupidest thing of all is in gaming. Why is the Minecraft Windows 10 edition not a Continuum app? Why does Continuum not support an Xbox controller? No one at all would ever say things like "there is no real use for Continuum" if it turned your phone into a portable gaming console.

There are so many great things they're doing, but so, so many idiotic things too. (Like releasing a phone as a flagship for an operating system that isn't finished yet, or launching a new flagship in the US on the day of Thanksgiving, or the tons of horrible UI decisions they've made in the past two years).

(Also, I see so many comparisons between Windows RT and Continuum, and yet Windows RT was far more full-featured. You can't even snap an app in Continuum, among many other deficiencies compared to RT.)

 

OK, USB on the go is kind of cool:

 

On AT&T it ends up being the same because you lose the $25/month discount when you sign a contract.

 

What a shame, this will undoubtedly be the last chance MS gets and they blew it. If only they had Astoria ready for release it would have solved 99% of their issues, the app store. Continuum is quite a disappointment, I'm not saying it's not cool, it is. But it's nothing revolutionary, changing the UI depending on the screen has been done before.

The phone might be worth buying if only as a nostalgia piece to remember when MS officially blew their last chance. It's amazing how obvious these things are, like how obvious it was that Windows RT would be a complete disaster, yet they still continue forward with it. MS seems so dysfunctional, so many great ideas but such piss poor execution.

Oh well, goodbye windows phone, it was nice knowing you.

 

Hey, great, you just gave me yet another reason to buy the 950XL!

I still think MS has some things going for it here, but I do expect user numbers to stay low for. The fact that WP10 looks like (in fact 'is') Windows 10 might bring in some people to the platform. Not the kids obviously, they want the latest games. The success of Windows 10 hybrids does mean apps are going to be available. The fact that WP10 is so close to Win10 means that MS could keep the OS alive with 'relatively' little effort, making it unlikely that they'd dump the all-important mobile sector any time soon. So if they bring out one quality 'surface phone' per year, it would remain possible to run WP10 on a modern device. I'm OK with that. Now whether that trickle of new users will ever be large enough to reach critical mass is up in the air. It certainly doesn't look like something that will happen in one or two years.

TL;DR: my best guess is that we'll have nice Windows 10 phones with a bad app selection for a good long while to come.