British banks chuck smartphone apps out of Windows The UK's largest retail bank, Lloyds, has withdrawn its app from the Windows Store, and the bank's web page now redirects to a 404. TSB's Windows mobile app has also disappeared. Although the Windows Store has mobile apps for Barclays and RBS's NatWest – both have around 18 per cent market share – Lloyds is far and away the …
HTML5 based websites do mean that 'apps' are less important since the sites are device agnostic. But apps are expected if not needed and an absence of them is noted. A banking app is possibly more secure than a website or potentially more secure?
Hard to see anyone bothering to develop for WinPho or even testing compatibility of mobile sites. I know HP has brought out their business workstation phone but that's the only one. I'm not aware of any others. Businesses saw the potential of WinPho tying in with their existing Windows systems but for whatever reason MS bottled it and developed for other mobile platforms more than their own.
I like my Win phone, and the previous one too. Cheap, fast, reliable, good phone software. Also when I've showed it to people, they've liked it too.
But it's shit for apps, and there's been little improvement. I had an iPhone 5 in between my two work Lumia 7xx phones. Our company's batch of 7 iPhones all went wrong within 2 years, 2 failed within 6 months - and one of the replacements for those only just lasted a year.
Came back to Win Phone 8, there were still almost no apps - despite reading that the app store had hit over 100k.
I searched for a torch app, as they'd still failed to build such a standard function into the OS. There were loads of them, but all but 2 or 3 of the 10 I looked at demanded access to the address book in permissions. Hmmm... I admit I didn't try the paid for ones, but I'm sorry a torch app isn't something I'm willing to hand cash over for. I'd grudgingly happily pay 50p, if I'd set up a card with MS's app store, but that wasn't going to happen, due to the lack of apps.
Now there's no development and no future. So I guess I'll be off to Android. Which is a shame.
Personally I don't care too much about apps, I do that on my tablet. The phone is a communications tool for me. With a minor side order of mapping. Which MS have also bollocksed up by dropping support for Nokia's sat nav, while not updating their own mapping tool to cover it. So the phone has lost turn-by-turn instructions.
I don't dispute your general point, but specifically Windows 10 Mobile has a flashlight built in to quick actions. There are plenty of distraction apps in the app store, but if you need a specific utility you're less likely to find it than on other platforms. In hindsight, perhaps Project Astoria would have made the task of supporting Windows Phone apps easier and resulted in fewer apps quitting the Windows apps store?
I don't know if I could have deliberately devised a strategy to sell a phone platform in such comprehensively self-destructive manner.
I support iPhones for work, so I have to use something else day-to-day just to prevent a logic tumour from developing inside my brain but I've used WP for a while. The sad thing is, I more or less actually like it (even WP10).
I am continually amazed by MS's sheer infacility at, even after buying out a real manufacturer (the only one at that point) and doing what I can only describe as calculatedly worse than nothing for 2, going 3 years. In this marketplace.
I barely care about apps - doing things that require something that specific is what I have real computers for, and the very last kind of thing I want on a tiny screen. I have an iphone, and miss very close to nothing in between switching, but even if so many apps on either monopoly shop are meaningless, I can't deny utility is missing on WP side as a result.
A banking app is kind of one I do want, which so far my own bank still provides at least this week (when it can keep its own systems online, that is).
An account management app is also kinda useful, which vodafone for windows phone /doesn't/.
I'm prepared to accept the carrier's judgement on WP's importance to the market.
MS, end the charade. waste billions on just giving it to me instead. it'll be tax free, just like eviscerating nokia.
I remember arguing with them about paying off a mortgage. They couldn't give us a settlement figure for weeks on end - and then started to threaten us because we had missed a payment ! So despite wanting to pay the entire mortgage off they were obsessed with continually chasing a couple of hundred quid off us even though I was trying to pay them tens of thousands. Then when we did pay off the balance they tried to charge us a £300 admin fee! This wasn't in the original contract so we told them to stuff it. After several more angry letters to us they gave up. Absolute waste of time of a bank.
I still think WP8 pisses all over android - I've liked WP since the 6.5 incarnation. But the lack of apps finally drove me to Android, which had admittedly got much less sucky since KitKat.
If MS were serious about WP (and that's a bit if - they never acted as if they were) they should have noted how being the best (Betamax) isn't the be all and end all when competing with platforms (e.g VHS - who sewed up the rentals market, and froze Betamax to a slow death).
BB10 is by far the best mobile device OS I have used (Work phone is WP8 btw and now android person phone). Only Phone I haven't required additional apps for what I consider should be core functions and was a solid little handset with a decent keyboard.
However its deader than Windows Phone where the apps just stopped working even though they were mostly HTML5 sites in an app :(
Unless you have a Nexus or Pixel phone, your opinion of what you THINK Android is, is fundamentally flawed. You are confusing what your OEM has done to Android, with Android.
A Nexus or Pixel running Android 7.1 is worlds away from a Samsung running something based loosely on marshmallow.
Yep, the Motorola G and X are pretty close to vanilla Android. My last change was from a Nexus to a Moto G (2nd gen), and I felt right at home on the G (which I bought unlocked from Best Buy -- not from a carrier). OTOH, when friends ask me questions about the "Android" phones they buy from carriers, I usually am unable to help them because it's all broken bloatware, and none of it works the way my "real Android" phones work.
Microsoft themselves have made Windows Phone what it isn't today.
The Windows Phone moonshot was rising, and then stalled and sunk as Microsoft control showed failure to show confidence in the mission.
Can't really blame a Bank for abandoning a sinking phone, if this is an intentional move and not an error.
Prolly less though because you're assuming that people with a Lloyds account *and* a Windows phone all choose to bank online with their phone. I have an Android but I don't use that for online banking; I prefer something with a keyboard for that kind of thing.
So I'm going to go with FOUR people... tops!
Depends, de-fenestrate is an open window. If it is closed it would be trans-fenestrate.
Or maybe exfenestrate. defenestrate ought to mean to remove windows from -- I should use that to describe what I do to PCs encumbered with Microsoft OSes, but some people might get the wrong idea.
As much as I like my Windows Phone, I long since accepted that Microsoft blew it. My next one can't be Windows. They needed some way to overcome the cheap universal appeal of the Google advertising OS Android or the costly Apple iBling OS. And they needed something that ordinary Windows users would feel comfortable with. So they seem to have opted for the worst of all worlds, in what seems to be a regular bit of MS behaviour. Ending up with something that Windows users hated (Win 8.x), that slurped data and served ads like Android, but didn't have the style of Apple.
You know you can buy an Android phone, and DECLINE the Google stuff when you switch it on? Decline, skip sign in, and that's it. if you do this, none of the Google stuff works, and nothing is sent to Google, you have Android and you can do what you want with it.
If your tin foil hat is still letting in brain radiation, you can even disable the Google stuff (app properties, disable app), which removes it's executable permission, and removes it from the launcher, making it a VERY stock Android device.
I'm really happy with my Lumia 950 XL. Few apps I need are there (Barclays, Audible, Tado, Plex, SfB etc).
But I'm a business focused user, I have no desire for SnapChat or Tinder so wouldn't advocate it for the under 30's / blue collar guys.
If MS got their shit together with SfB and their enterprise clients on it they could revive it via marketing alongside O365. Would be marketed as a business focused device as the best client for O355 users perhaps...
Plus was a bonus that after losing mine a day before a holiday, I nipped into a EE shop and after parting with £90 and signing in I had everything back on a 650. Try doing that with an iPhone for the same money with a days notice!
Bought my kid a 650, bargain phone.
Loaded the backup of his previous WP8.1 1020 and was up and running in no time. Took a while to download all the apps funnily enough.
I use the RBS app because it uses a PIN to access the accounts quickly once set up. I don't do much with it but it is handy for checking the balance to see if I have been paid.
I do think it is a shame WP10 doesn't get the love, as ISPs and Mobile operators clearly show, two choices are definitely not enough.
Even if MS simply produce one or two devices, I will stick with it I think, since, like a previous poster, I don't care about apps-du-jour and being incessantly harangued by ads.
I prefer clean, downloaded maps and clean(er) search results, with noticeably less fake news.
@AMBxx
where is your vpn terminating to?
who owns the end point?
can you trust them?
a vpn to an unknown untrustworthy intermediary intercepting and relaying all your traffic is far worse than just using a raw uk retail BB connection.
Some people have no real comprehension of what a vpn does for you or how it works. Depending on your usecase it may not be beneficial for you.
Few occasions? you mean everyday if you are me. I hardly ever A) Go in branch B) Use internet banking in a web browser or C) use a Cash machine.
Almost all my bankings is via my iPhone App. You may not, but the majority do and its the trend we are moving towards. Want to know why the PC market is shrinking every year? because people do what they would have done on a laptop 10 years ago on their smartphone today, its also why Phablets are so popular.
Last time i shopped on Amazon? App on my iPhone
Last time i went on Facebook? App on my iPhone
Thats not to see i don't ever use my Macbook, but my primary Internet device is my Smartphone and thats the norm now, so if you don't have the Apps, you are irrelevant.
Wow you need to check your banking everyday? Fair enough then I guess. When I use a cash-point it's for nothing else other than withdrawing cash. If I need to transfer money I'll login via a browser, job done.
I'm not saying there's not a need for them or that everyone is in my position, I am saying I do not see why these things have to be on my phone all of the time. Same as the Facebook and Amazon app. Never on my phone, I'm surprised their on yours unless you've never looked at the permissions and the trackers or simply don't mind.
Each to their own.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
