<story><title>Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-08/microsoft-to-cut-7-800-jobs-as-it-restructures-phone-business</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>newsreader</author><text>I own a Lumia 925, my wife owns a Lumia 640, and we use a Lumia 520 as our home line. I realize that Windows has a small share of the mobile phone market in the US but everybody that I&amp;#x27;ve ever met that owns a Windows phone is pretty happy with their purchase -- I am. Apple phones are too expensive for my budget, and I tried helping a family member with his Android device and quickly realized I had made the right decision buying a Windows phone. I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to see how the new OS (Windows 10) works on my devices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavlov</author><text>I was a fan of the original Windows Phone 7 and since then used WP for years (until work requirements caused me to switch mostly to other platforms).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been trying the Windows 10 betas on a fairly high-end Lumia (1520), and I just can&amp;#x27;t understand what Microsoft is doing. The entire system has apparently been rewritten using the &amp;quot;Universal&amp;quot; APIs (the same thing as Windows RT&amp;#x2F;10 basically).&lt;p&gt;That must have sounded great on paper, but the reality is baffling. Everything that was working great in WP8 has been replaced with half-assed implementations that feel more like second-rate Android OEM apps.&lt;p&gt;Worse, there don&amp;#x27;t seem to be any new features in Windows 10 Mobile that could offset the pain of the UI downgrade... Except that weird new mode where you can connect your phone to a keyboard, mouse and display and use Windows Universal apps that way. Is there a single Windows Phone user that asked for that?!&lt;p&gt;I loved Windows Phone 7 because it was a holistically designed system that made perfect sense on a phone. All that seems to be gone in Windows 10 Mobile, replaced by Microsoft&amp;#x27;s traditional &amp;quot;Windows everywhere!&amp;quot; platform strategy bloopers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-08/microsoft-to-cut-7-800-jobs-as-it-restructures-phone-business</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>newsreader</author><text>I own a Lumia 925, my wife owns a Lumia 640, and we use a Lumia 520 as our home line. I realize that Windows has a small share of the mobile phone market in the US but everybody that I&amp;#x27;ve ever met that owns a Windows phone is pretty happy with their purchase -- I am. Apple phones are too expensive for my budget, and I tried helping a family member with his Android device and quickly realized I had made the right decision buying a Windows phone. I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to see how the new OS (Windows 10) works on my devices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GFischer</author><text>I am currently recommending Lumias for a specific user group - non-technical users that need WhatsApp, maps and light browsing, and are on a tight budget.&lt;p&gt;A cheap Windows phone outperforms a cheap Android phone significantly (and is apparently much easier to learn the UI for that user group), and these users cannot afford an iPhone.&lt;p&gt;They lose out on the Android ecosystem and the Apple experience, but I currently believe they&amp;#x27;re the best choice at that price point (100 dollars or so). Of course, those things vary, if a new Android version is significantly better on low-end hardware I&amp;#x27;ll probably go back to recommending them (mostly because all apps in my country are Android-first).</text></comment>