This dinosaur has succumbed to the inevitable

Yesterday I bought myself a new phone.

I can’t say I even wanted to upgrade.  I loved my little Microsoft Windows phone.  It’s easy to use, and synched in with my Microsoft
account, so that anything on it went back to my laptop and my home PC. Very
convenient.  Yes, you can do this with
other ecosystems, but we’re Microsoft users, and it was so easy.  Log in with your Microsoft account and things
just worked. 

Microsoft stopped supporting Windows phones some years ago. I
don’t use many apps, and my phone has served me well for years, so it wasn’t an
issue. Or hasn’t been to date.

So why did I change?

Work.

Whiteboards, for example. 
Remember when the ultimate in whiteboards was to have one that printed what
you wrote on it?  That old heat sensitive
paper that faded, so that you had to photocopy it straight away?

Maybe not?  It was a
long time ago.

Nowadays, you take a photo of the whiteboard on your mobile
phone.  Likewise, draw a diagram on
butcher’s paper, or put some Post-It notes around the wall.  How do you share them?  You take a picture on your mobile phone, then
you share the image.

It’s all Bluetooth, but Microsoft phones (or my phone,
anyway), only shares with other Microsoft phones.  It certainly won’t talk to any of the Macs we
use at work.

Or take speakers. We do conference calls.  A lot of big companies do.  But the sound quality is so bad our team
invested in a bluetooth speaker. Which works beautifully but guess whose phone
didn’t talk to the Bluetooth speaker. 
That means when I’m taking the call, I can’t use the speaker.

The deciding factor was when we chose to use What’sApp to
communicate within the team.  It was even
in the Microsoft store.  I installed it,
but do you think it would let me join the work group?

No. 

So, I finally caved in and upgraded my phone.

So long, little Microsoft phone.  You were good to me.