[ckz]

I'll second this. WebOS was conceptually way ahead of its time compared to contemporary versions of iOS, etc. A lot of its UI paradigms (switching apps as cards, etc.) ended up being adopted later by the big names as well. Just not ready to pivot that hard as a company and carrying a ton of legacy baggage as a brand at that point.

Windows Phone was similar. Superior product (not just technically--in usability testing too), but late to the party and lacking cultural caché considering its parent company.

I'm also biased though. :)

[pjmlp]

And multiple reboots on the SDK requiring throwing away perfectly working code, broken promises on which devices would get 8.1, broken yet again for 10, eventually driving away even the more hardcore advocates among us.

Now what is left is an anemic team trying to push WinUI/WinAppSDK, while pretending all of that didn't happen, and that the developer community is still willing to put up with it.

[ckz]

That too. WP7 brought the premise of the amazing UX to the table and then the 7 -> 8.1 -> 10 stuff was a mess for the devs who still did want to invest.

Though I'm not sure how much users noticed that fiasco (my SO didn't) and honestly, even when WP7 was getting updates and looked healthy it was pulling teeth to get companies to make a 3rd app.

[Aloha]

Windows Phone had the best UX of any of the mobile operating systems, it was something I could hand to a user who'd never had a smart phone before, and it was much more intuitive for them - they could figure it out without help.

Sadly they never got enough market share (or perhaps investment by MS to pay for third party apps to get developed) to get the pool of Applications needed to attract users, which is unfortunate.

The one side effect of the 'easy to newcomers' UX, was experienced users had to forget a bit about what they knew about how a mobile device was supposed to work to use it - thats not a huge barrier, but I suspect it also made adoption by existing power users a little slower.

[ckz]

IMO your last line there really hits the nail on the head with what I saw both on the ground and in the data.

Windows Phone was absolutely crushing it with first-time smartphone adopters, but for folks switching it was tougher, because WP didn't use depend on the whole "grid of siloed apps" concept as much. If you'd already used an iPhone, it took a second to unlearn.

And considering anyone making smartphone apps in 2010 was still on the early-adopter side of the curve--they'd already experienced that way of using a phone. There were still a lot of first-timers in the following 5 years, but the folks at the agencies and companies making the software weren't them.

[tsunamifury]

No this... was not true. I did extensive usability testing on MetroUI and it confused users as it lacked visual cues, had massive homogeny issues between functions, and lacked visual differentiation enough to let me remember where anything was.

Hate it or love it, skumorphism educated billions on how to use a smartphone -- no one else even came close.