What you must know
- A discovery made by MrMobiles on YouTube highlighted an app referred to as Launcher 10 that may flip an Android telephone right into a Home windows Cellphone OS.
- Customers can have an “genuine style” of what it was, outfitted with the boxy, rectangular tiles that the Home windows Cellphone software program featured.
- Microsoft discontinued Home windows Cellphone in 2017 and even ended service help for its Floor Duo 2 in October 2024.
Keep in mind the previous Microsoft Home windows Cellphone software program? Effectively, one other particular person does, too, and there is a program that may get it accomplished.
As noticed by our buddies at Home windows Central, YouTuber MrMobile, AKA Michael Fisher, found a technique to flip an Android telephone right into a Home windows Cellphone. MrMobile discovered an app on the Play Retailer referred to as Launcher 10, which supplies customers a “very genuine style” of what as soon as was for Microsoft’s smartphone. When you bear in mind the aesthetic of this telephone — and Home windows 8 by extension — then what you are in for.
Launcher 10 brings again these boxy, sq., rectangular icons or “tiles.” The app, when chosen to be put to make use of inside your settings, turns every thing into what the Home windows Cellphone OS was.
Apparently sufficient, many of the apps that you simply’re more likely to have in your gadget like Gmail, Spotify, Google Calendar, Pictures, and extra seem correctly via Launcher 10. Among the app icons on the tiles tackle Android’s “Themed Icon,” which is simply a top level view of the emblem inside it stuffed in with shade. Others, like Chrome, characteristic a coloured background with a recognizable emblem within the middle.
One other facet that could be very Home windows Cellphone is the notifications. MrMobile gave a quick glimpse at a notification, which retained that Home windows aptitude.
When you’re , you may watch MrMobiles’ full glimpse at Launcher 10. Moreover, the video highlights the app’s multitude of customization choices to get the appropriate theme. Nevertheless, MrMobiles delivers a warning to those that will wish to go that further mile with Launcher 10.
For these in search of a little bit of nostalgia, Launcher 10 may be the very best reward of the season. Microsoft discontinued its Home windows Cellphone OS in 2017. It did not come with out a heavy coronary heart as the corporate’s CEO Satya Nadella instructed Enterprise Insider in 2023 “the choice I believe lots of people speak about – and some of the troublesome choices I made once I grew to become CEO — was our exit of what I will name the cell phone as outlined then” (by way of IGN).
The Home windows Cellphone OS was in response to what Apple had accomplished with iOS and Google with Android, however it did not catch on.
As such, Microsoft bowed out of the software program facet of cell phones, however it nonetheless had its a telephone: the Floor Duo and the Floor Duo 2 foldables. Neither of these gadgets lasted notably lengthy as Microsoft detailed the finish of service for the Floor Duo 2 this yr in October. The gadget solely acquired one replace that took it from Android 11 to Android 12L.
It appeared that Microsoft was extra taken with “streamlining” its Floor ecosystem and there aren’t any plans to return the Duo.
Regardless of Microsoft’s rocky smartphone and telephone OS historical past, the corporate has taken strides to enhance its laptop relationship with Android telephones. In August, Home windows’ newest options for Cellphone Hyperlink for OS 10 and 11 rivaled Apple’s AirDrop with faster file sharing between PC and Android. Moreover, the devoted app makes this even simpler (and quicker).
Elsewhere, Microsoft even improved its Hyperlink to Home windows mirroring expertise for Galaxy gadgets with One UI 6.1.1 that very same month.
