One specific thing that just annoys me is the outline that appears when you select a message in the messaging app. There are so many little things like the boxes not extending the length of the screen, having janky animations etc. Before Windows 10 Mobile, I hadn’t scrutinized combo-boxes and context menus (because who does that), after Windows 10 Mobile, I’m left wondering what happened to QA. When you compare Windows 10 Mobile to Windows Phone 8.1, Android Marshmallow or iOS 9, W10M sometimes comes off as very amateurish regarding things that shouldn’t even be an issue. I had a few more issues around Windows 10 Mobile, but they all boiled down to one thing – the core user experience is severely lacking. It seemed logical for Microsoft to keep the two apps separate until the integration was ready, but Microsoft ultimately released updated the main messaging app to now be half-assed at SMS and Skype integration in terms of reliability. There was also a Skype preview app which did the same thing but had the Skype integration. This app was simple and did everything it needed to do. The other irritating thing about this is that Microsoft had an SMS and MMS client for most of the Windows 10 Mobile preview period that wasn’t integrated with Skype. Now, Microsoft is selling their flagship Windows Phone devices without a complete version of one of their flagship services Skype – it would be laughable if it weren’t so embarrassing. I’ve gone off about Skype before, but then Windows 10 Mobile was in preview and not publicly available yet so it was yet impactful. It’s quite hard to imagine something so self-apparently suicidal, yet Microsoft did the exact same thing with Windows 10 and its Skype messaging app. 10 months later, Apple then launches flagship devices with a preview messaging app. Imagine if Apple announced iMessage for iOS devices, then proceeded to release the app for Android devices and then continually improve it on rival devices.

In this respect it is similar to Windows Phone 8 as compared to Windows Phone 7.5, aside from all the stability and smoothness of the either of the two. Windows 10 Mobile as it stands now is not solid and – aside from universal apps and their associated benefits – offers few user facing updates. Microsoft is pushing the mantra of Windows as a service with frequent updates for all devices delivered at once, but fails to realise that for this to be appreciated, the service must first be solid with updates to add features. Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mobile is out in the wild in the form of the Lumia 950, 950 XL, 550 and some other third party devices in Japan, but it’s still not a perfect mobile OS yet.

Skype freezing windows 10 2016