Mobile Nations Yearly: A quick look back at 2015

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A year in review.

Surface Pro with Windows 10

Surface-Pro-3-windows-10 (Image credit: Dan Rubino / Windows Central)

For our final edition of Mobile Nations Weekly in this calendar year, we're mixing things up a bit. To be honest, a look back at the last week would be pretty dull anyway — thanks to those holiday things, the people who make the news take some time off, which means the people like us that write the news and the people like you that read the news get to take some much-deserved time off too.

So instead of a week-long look back, we're going to to a year-long look back at the biggest news to hit Android, BlackBerry, Apple, and Microsoft in 2015. It's been a long year, so let's get right into it!

Windows Central — 10 for all

2015 was the biggest year yet for Microsoft with the company's hardware and software roadmaps finally aligning in October. This year we saw the release of the Surface Pro 4, ground-breaking Surface Book, Band 2, Lumia 950 and 950 XL and who could forget HoloLens? Combined with the Windows 10 being on nearly 150 million computers and Microsoft's refocus on gaming on the Xbox One at E3 and the company increasingly has turned itself into a hardware juggernaut.

However, not all is perfect as Windows Phone market share continues to slip and some of that new Surface hardware requires some bug-fixing software updates.

What will happen in 2016? The highly anticipated 'Surface phone' is expected to be released in later in the fall and the Windows 10 OS will undergo even more feature additions as multiple updates under the 'Redstone' banner begin in earnest. Can Microsoft's one OS future succeed? We're about to find out. At the very least, we can all agree Microsoft is now one of the most exciting companies in tech to watch.

Android Central — Nexus Notes

2015 was a big year in the Android world. (We say that every year, right?) But seriously, there's a lot to look back on — the phones, the software, the companies and beyond.

With all that happened in the year it's tough to narrow things down, but here are just a handful of stories that are a great reminder of all the big stories from 2015.

CrackBerry — PrivBerry

2015 was an interesting year for BlackBerry and while the verdict is still out, it could ultimately be one that changes the course of the company for years to come. I mean, come on. They released an Android device. While it's incredibly hard to run down every single highlight in this short section, here's some of more interesting tidbits, including where BlackBerry showed off the all-new BlackBerry 10 slider that really wasn't, announced the best version of the BlackBerry Passport and shocked many by taking out what was considered by many to be their biggest threat in the EMM space.

iMore — iPad goes big

2015 was the year Apple took everyone who'd been complaining about lack of spring releases, new product categories, and old product updates, and made us all beg for mercy. So. Much. Stuff. It's impossible to list it all here—we'll have a separate roundup for that!—but here are the highest of the highlights.

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Derek Kessler
Derek Kessler

Derek Kessler is Special Projects Manager for Mobile Nations. He's been writing about tech since 2009, has far more phones than is considered humane, still carries a torch for Palm, and got a Tesla because it was the biggest gadget he could find. You can follow him on Twitter at @derekakessler.