As someone who owned a Windows phone around that time, and knew others who did as well, the shared opinion was that it was a pile of crap.
Nokia went for Windows because of the acquisition target, not because of quality of the OS. With that, they prioritized business strategy over product quality, and we all know what happened after.
My memory is completely different. I was an iPhone user, but I bought a Nokia Lumia 710 (I think) to play with and I was thoroughly impressed. It was fast, fresh, the tile interface really worked well for phones - it looked much better than the boring grid of apps and gave useful information at a glance.
But since Microsoft were 2-3 years late, there were not many apps. And then they shot themselves and all people who already bought a Windows Phone device in the foot, by completely forking the ecosystem with Windows Phone 8. Leaving early adopters stranded on Windows Phone 7 and no ability to run newer Windows Phone 8 apps.
> As someone who owned a Windows phone around that time, and knew others who did as well, the shared opinion was that it was a pile of crap.
and had no apps. Windows Phone/Mobile had atrocious developer share. There few apps that were available were of terrible quality. Ironic, considering this happened in the era of a sweaty Balmer screaming "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"[1]
Nokia went for Windows because of the acquisition target, not because of quality of the OS. With that, they prioritized business strategy over product quality, and we all know what happened after.