Android is Using AI to Fulfill the Promise of Windows Phone (Premium)

Anyone still pining away for Windows phone needs to pay attention to how Google is evolving Android with AI capabilities. And no, this platform isn't somehow "catching up" to Windows phone. It's succeeding where Microsoft failed.

I still hear from people who miss the innovations that Microsoft brought to its now-dead mobile platform. And I still rarely hear from those who actually suffer along with a Windows phone, as if by denying themselves they are somehow making a point.

I get it. I was the original Windows phone enthusiast, and I wrote the very first book about this platform. And while I never insulted your intelligence by pretending everything was fine, as certain shameless enthusiast blogs did, I held on longer than I should have. It was just hard to believe that ideas that good---and backed by the combined might of Microsoft and Nokia---could fail.

Belatedly, however, I realized that those ideas weren't actually all that good. And that the many reasons Windows phone failed can all be traced back to those ideas not resonating with the companies that would---or would not---produce the apps and services that ran on Windows phone.

These are the same ideas that Windows phone enthusiasts still cite when mourning the loss of the platform. Live tiles and hubs, key among them. Both spoke to a desire on Microsoft's part to respond to the iPhone, not by copying it as Google did with Android at the time. But by rethinking how people might use smartphones and trying to make a better user experience.

I wrote "trying" there. Back in 2010, I was convinced that these ideas were, in fact, "better." What I didn't understand at the time---what Microsoft didn't understand---was that this design was hostile to the companies and brands that it needed to make Windows phone a success. What it didn't do was design a smartphone platform that was better for the entire ecosystems. That's why it failed.

Hubs are the more obvious problem, so let's start there.

Hubs were special apps that provided integrated experiences that tied together functionality from multiple online services and standalone apps. The Photos hub, for example, let you browse your photos on your phone, photos from any number of connected online services, and photos that your friends and other contacts were sharing from social media services, all in a single place.

This sounds like a fantastic and user-centric idea. After all, technology is supposed to make life easier. If you want to view, share, or comment on photos, you just think ... Photos! What could be easier? Contrast this with the normal experience, even today, where you must think about the specific app first, remember where it's located on what home screen, and then launch it. Oops, wrong app. Maybe it's this other one. On and on it goes. I call this "whack-a-mole." And you do all the work.

The problem with hubs is that the services that need to hook into this system in order for it to work at all---Flickr...