On the imminent launch of Microsoft’s Surface Duo mobile device, I’d like to reminisce about my love-hate relationship with Windows on phones. Yeah I know, a post about Windows Phone in 2020, crazy right?
I won’t go into details on what the Surface Duo is — a quick search will tell you all you need to know. And technically it’s not “Windows” on the phone, as it runs Android, but it does mark the return of Microsoft to the mobile space after the demise of its Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile efforts.
It was 10 years ago when Windows Phone 7 launched (yes, the first version was 7). Back then, the iPhone and Androids were already the dominant players in the market, and out comes this new OS from Microsoft that’s aims to become the third ecosystem; well many dismissed it — perhaps rightfully so, as history would confirm — from the beginning.
But I wasn’t one of those people. At the time, I still had not transition to smartphones and was looking for something different (I was a late smartphone-bloomer). Well, Windows Phone 7 was vastly different and I quickly fell in love with its brightly coloured live tiles, use of negative space, and its overall “I’m not going to follow what everyone else is doing” attitude.
Admittedly, when it came to features it was a bit lacking — but excusable for a first release I tell myself. The launch hardware was also somewhat hit or miss — tho the same can be said with many of the Android releases at the time. For all its shortcomings however, Windows Phone did get something right, which was its focus on design.
On the surface (pun-intended), Windows Phone speaks loudly with its blocky live tiles and use of overtly large font, but a lot of its smart and conscious design choices were more subtle and easy to overlook.
The home screen for example had an empty column of nothingness on the right, save for an arrow icon. People hated that column— and Microsoft would eventually cave and remove it — but it did serve a purpose. The empty space was there to offset the live tiles to one side, giving the home screen a more compelling look (it’s similar in principle to the Rule of Thirds in photography, where you would offset the subject of a photo to one side).
And speaking of that arrow icon, have you noticed that it would do a little bounce as you reached the end of the home screen? It’s a subtle reminder that you can swipe right to access the app list for more applications.
The home screen was not the only place where the OS would hint at more content. Within apps, you’d get a panorama layout where the background flows horizontally across multiple pages and a sliver of the next page can be seen along the right edge.
I have always felt the panorama design was a very smart way to simultaneously convey 2 ideas. First, it gave us a next page indicator without actually giving us a next page indicator; and second, it showed that the phone is just a small window to a larger canvas of content that may not necessarily reside on the phone itself.
The application bar was another smart design that puts the most commonly used actions at the bottom of the screen, with additional commands hidden away by ellipses. This control was standard across all applications, and together with layouts such as the aforementioned panorama, it made using Window Phone with one hand quite natural.
While Windows Phone 7 had its share of rough edges, by the time that Windows Phone 8 and later 8.1 came out, the platform felt almost refined and had enjoyed some successes, mainly by Nokia which had — surprisingly at the time — bet the farm on Microsoft’s OS. However, the time of 8.1 marked a shift in design philosophy that would carry over to its Windows 10 Mobile successor.
Windows 10 Mobile was altogether quite a different beast than its predecessor and utilitarian by comparison. The beautiful panoramas that had graced Windows Phone started disappearing in 8.1 and were almost non-existent in Windows 10 Mobile. Ease of one-handed use went out the window as hamburger menus at the top-left became the standard rather than application bars at the bottom of the screen — on this particular point, it seemed like such a step backwards given screen sizes were growing and not shrinking, that I felt compelled to create a concept on fixing it:
Whatever the reasons — perhaps it was the realization that the world wasn’t ready to embrace a third smartphone ecosystem on aesthetics alone, or perhaps it was the inevitable outcome of trying to unify the Windows 10 desktop and mobile experiences — Microsoft seemed to have lost faith in the design language that it pioneered. Windows 10 Mobile was successor to Windows Phone in name but much of the original’s vibrant DNA had sadly been lost.
Windows 10 mobile never reached the same level of brief success — if you could even call it as such — that Windows Phone had. It would eventually be discontinued in 2017, marking the end of the Windows Phone journey.
And that brings us to this moment, 10 years after Windows Phone’s launch, that we are once again on the verge of a phone launch from Microsoft. Unlike Windows Phone, Microsoft’s Surface brand has fared much better in the market and for years, Windows Phone fans have been clamouring for a mythical “Surface Phone” to revive the glory of their beloved OS. The Surface Duo may be the closest we are going to get to that dream, even if it won’t be running a Microsoft OS.
