As a long time Windows Phone user since Windows Phone 7 (HTC 7HD) it’s making me sad, that Windows 10 Phones are getting closer to dying every day.
Everybody who try my current phone, a Lumia 950XL, agrees that its a nice phone. And stuff like continuum and Windows Hello are quite impressive. But the lack of apps continues to be a major issue.
It’s no longer the high profile apps like Instagram or Facebook that’s missing (Apart from Pokemon Go) its the middle layer, the local taxi app, local transportation app, local .. local.. local. Everything I need to interact with my city.
The solution to this is simple: Bring back Project Astoria
Astoria was the cancelled project that would enable android apps to run on Windows 10, a Android subsystem. Rumors has it that it actually worked too well? Could it be a threat to Universal Windows Platform? We got the Linux subsystem with 1607 so we are closer than ever.
Would anything bad happened to UWP if Windows 10 for Phones could run Android Apps? My prediction is no. History has shown that the missing apps are not coming anyway, so by allowing Android apps to run, that would simply make Windows Phone useful for a lot of people.
Would Microsoft loose “face” if they did this? Properly a little, but not as much as they do on a daily basis right now.
I’m not really talking about bringing the complete “Google Apps” suite to Windows Phone, I’m talking about all the 2nd tier apps that makes the world work. Download from Play is properly a requirement, but maybe it could be Amazon AppStore?
One quite nice consequence of adding an Android subsystem to Windows 10 Phone, is the possibility of separating the phone, so the Android part could be “private” while the rest of the phone is “work”.
let’s make this happen 🙂
