tl;dr: I love Windows Phone, but I am leaving it for good now.

People who know me or have been following me on my blog or social media, know that I have been a Windows Phone advocate from the very beginning and always been a fan and supporter of the platform.

I occasionally tried out other platforms out of curiosity, but I always found myself back on Windows Phone after a while. Only recently I wrote this blog post after having ditched an iPhone again.
But now it seems, that I will leave the Windows Phone platform for good.

The main reason is that I am far from impressed by the speed and efficiency in which things move forward there.

Merging their mobile OS with their desktop OS to gain synergies has admittedly been a clever move by Microsoft, but one, that came at least a year late (actually it is not even finished yet, since none of the devices owned by me, my family and friends has received an update yet). The industry on the other side has moved forward greatly in the meantime and has moved away from Windows Phone irreversibly, to the end that I do not see a possibility that this could change again at some time.

The last straw that I saw for Windows Phone was project Astoria which would have allowed running Android apps on it. But this project apparently had encountered insurmountable problems and got cancelled. Astoria could have closed the app gap and made more (and higher quality!) suddenly available on Windows Phone.

Because honestly: Apps do matter! And a lack of apps is a good reason to ditch a platform. Especially when it comes to things like smart gadgets like watches or IoT devices. Being able to use my Pebble smart watch was initially the biggest driver for me to look into iOS and Android.

So I got myself a Moto X Play and I must say I really like the device for a couple of reasons:

• Close to stock Android which makes it nice to use and it shows good performance (compared to the crap Samsung is putting on top of Android).
• It was relatively cheap, given its specs.
• The battery lifetime of 2,5 days is fantastic.
• Most importantly: I can use my Pebble watch.

So I look back at the last few years as a Windows Phone user with a little melancholy knowing that this platform had great potential and was superior in many aspects. But for some reason it just wouldn’t happen for Windows Phone and the industry turned away from it. That’s probably what Betamax enthusiasts must have felt like when VHS finally took over. You know you had a great thing going but not enough other people care. But hey, let’s not be bitter about it and see what the future will bring.