This excellent designer imagined what Windows Phone would look like in 2024, and it makes me sad

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Windows 11 Mobile exists only in dreams.

Windows 11 Mobile design concept
@Proloyoncloud on Twitter imagines what "Windows 11 Mobile" would look like in 2024. (Image credit: @Proloyoncloud via Twitter (X))

What you need to know

  • Windows Phone is dead and I won't let it go. 
  • Microsoft killed Windows Phone in a tweet a few years back, throwing away years of developer work and billions of dollars in investment. 
  • Microsoft dabbled with Android and the Surface Duo range, but that seems to be dead too, now. 
  • Despite Microsoft's phone hardware efforts being dead, we can still dare to dream, proven by designer Proloy Karmakar. 

In an alternative universe: the year is 2024, Windows 11 Mobile just overtook Apple iOS in global market share, clinching 31% of the phone using masses. More affordable devices that don't compromise on overall quality proved incredibly popular with businesses, owing to seamless integration for device management via Azure Active Directory. The devices also became increasingly popular with the every day consumer, too, owing to superior AI-powered camera technology, alongside sleek but heavily customizable user interface. 

The app gap is no longer an issue, as progressive web apps became increasingly powerful, complete with direct hooks into the Windows 11 Mobile OS. Microsoft also just kick started a UWP 3.0 initiative, to help developers take advantages of synergies between Windows 11 Mobile, Windows 11, and Windows on Arm, starting with the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Phone 4. 

It's fun to dream. Perhaps fun is the wrong word, but in any case, Windows Phone is dead dead dead, and never coming back. Even still, it's fun to imagine what could have been. An excellent graphic designer by the name of Proloy Karmakar just posted a series of concept images for what "Windows 11 Mobile" might have looked like, and it's a gut punch reminder of what Microsoft potentially sacrificed. 

Using fluent sign elements, Windows 11 3D design philosophies, and layered acrylic glass-like textures, Proloy deftly offers a glimpse at what Windows 11 Mobile might have looked like. 

It's funny, because it's ironically not far removed from the latest version of iOS, which is becoming increasingly "Windows Phone-like" in recent years. Apple apps on iOS devices can now be expanded from being simple icons, growing out into live tile-like widgets. Apple's iPhone now also features various other Windows Phone features that are more than a decade old, including always-on displays. 

I bet Microsoft wishes it had Windows Phone in 2024

Proloy Karmakar images a world where Windows 11 Mobile exists.  (Image credit: @Proloyoncloud via Twitter (X))

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella expressed in a recent interview that one of his biggest regrets is killing Windows Phone. That fact must sting ever harder in the AI world, given that Microsoft no longer has any control over the direction of mobile computing. There was a time when Windows had a dominating "smartphone" position with its stylus-heavy pocket PC range. It allowed Apple and Google both sweep in and create a more intuitive human-computer interface, and now, Microsoft can only eat scraps from both of these platforms, which lock Microsoft out of the equation. 

Related: The enormity of Microsoft's Windows Phone shut-down mistake is becoming increasingly apparent

Without a mobile platform of its own to speak of, companies like Google and OpenAI have swept in and added their own AI services as the "default" on iOS and Android. Very few people will actively switch away from whatever is set to "default" on these devices. As such, Microsoft has no foot in the door to proliferate its own AI services like Windows Copilot, its Microsoft Edge browser, Bing search, or even things like Xbox cloud gaming. At least Microsoft stands to make profits as the "IT department" for OpenAI, though. 

The short sightedness over Windows Phone will cost Microsoft future computing paradigms as a result, but it doesn't have to be this way. The rise of Qualcomm as a serious player in the Windows PC space could eventually lead to laptops that have phone-like telephony features, without having to connect your own existing device. What if those devices got smaller and more phone like? It's certainly a reach. But hey, it's fun to dream. 

Be sure to check out Proloy's full thread of Windows 11 Mobile concepts here, and let us know in the comments what you think.  

Jez Corden
Jez Corden
Co-Managing Editor

Jez Corden is a Managing Editor at Windows Central, focusing primarily on all things Xbox and gaming. Jez is known for breaking exclusive news and analysis as relates to the Microsoft ecosystem while being powered by tea. Follow on Twitter @JezCorden and listen to his XB2 Podcast, all about, you guessed it, Xbox!

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jlzimmerman
    "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella expressed in a recent interview that one of his biggest regrets is killing Windows Phone. That fact must sting ever harder in the AI world, given that Microsoft no longer has any control over the direction of mobile computing."
    On behalf of so many of us who have been around here for many years, I would like to say....*clears throat* WE TOLD YOU SO!
    Reply
  • Arun Topez
    So after all these years, the OS would still look the same with just adding Copilot and MS Launcher panel? lol Seems in line with Microsoft.

    It looks nice though, but way too limited for today's standards. Even the limited iOS home screen is able to do more than that now. But the other mockups are nice, but need a bit more optimizing for mobile size.
    Reply
  • tomworthjr
    I had a Windows Phone. Switched from an iPhone 4 or 4S to a white Lumia. Loved that thing so much, the camera was YEARS ahead of its time! It was shockingly shortsighted for Nadella to kill it, and I always thought that he was doing it just to put another in the coffin on the Ballmer years. But we all knew that Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, Microsoft’s biggest rivals, would never let Windows get a foothold on their own platforms, so a long, expensive, painful buildout that was already several years underway was the only possible play in a world that would one day be not only mobile first, but virtually mobile only. We still are not in that world, but Microsoft is nowhere to be found in the mobile space. Satya is infinitely better than Ballmer, but this monumental own goal was incredibly damaging. Heck, Microsoft dumped $10B into OpenAI without batting an eye; they could have easily afforded to play the long game in mobile. But that would have had a lot of credit go to Ballmer, and Satya is not about that, in my opinion.
    Reply
  • taynjack
    tomworthjr said:
    I had a Windows Phone. Switched from an iPhone 4 or 4S to a white Lumia. Loved that thing so much, the camera was YEARS ahead of its time! It was shockingly shortsighted for Nadella to kill it, and I always thought that he was doing it just to put another in the coffin on the Ballmer years. But we all knew that Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, Microsoft’s biggest rivals, would never let Windows get a foothold on their own platforms, so a long, expensive, painful buildout that was already several years underway was the only possible play in a world that would one day be not only mobile first, but virtually mobile only. We still are not in that world, but Microsoft is nowhere to be found in the mobile space. Satya is infinitely better than Ballmer, but this monumental own goal was incredibly damaging. Heck, Microsoft dumped $10B into OpenAI without batting an eye; they could have easily afforded to play the long game in mobile. But that would have had a lot of credit go to Ballmer, and Satya is not about that, in my opinion.
    If this is true, that Nadella made a personal, emotional decision, then maybe Microsoft should consider chatGPT for it's next CEO.
    Reply
  • errole
    I think it would still not work because they would have no Apps. Look at Windows PC, No store apps that are good like IOS. I cant even say android. But it would still be bad. They begged and gave money to dev. and nothing came from it.,.
    Reply
  • naddy69
    "I bet Microsoft wishes it had Windows Phone in 2024"

    I bet they don't. Microsoft was 10 billion dollars in the hole when they killed phones. They would be 25 billion dollars down by this point and STILL have nothing to show for it.

    "Windows 11 Mobile exists only in dreams."

    For you maybe. For most people it exists only in nightmares.
    Reply
  • MisterBear
    With all the horror that Windows 11 is, if Microsoft wildly announced a new Windows Phone, I'd be in line to get one (knowing they'll likely kill it in two years), and then maybe I wouldn't cringe so much when using Windows 11. I don't think it's too late to release a 3rd competitor, but it's more likely Microsoft will continue to ingest their slow poison.
    Reply
  • lostrune
    Like back then, developers wouldn't bother coding for Windows Mobile, unless MS paid them a ton of money (but even some wouldn't do it at all, like Google apps, because they don't want another competitor)

    You'd have a very good phone with barren apps. It's still good for phone calls though (I hear they call those "dumb phones" now and are already available in stores)

    Or they can team up with Huawei (who is under US injunction and thus can't use Google Android and Marketplace), so they have to get their own apps - but they have the support of the Chinese CCP and a billion population
    Reply