Facebook will pull its apps for the Windows phone platform come end month. The apps going away include the Facebook app, Instagram and Messenger apps. Facebook will stop supporting its official apps on Windows Mobile starting on April 30th.
Windows phone Reddit users spotted this when they got notified that Instagram’s official app is going away this end month. The remaining users will have to resort to browsing Facebook and Instagram on their browsers or using apps like Winsta or 6Tag(was one my favourite) or pinning Instagram’s web app to your Start screen for easy access.
It has been a roller coaster for Windows Phone users(me included but for a while) when Lumia phones launched and lacked official apps from these social media giants and would resort to poorly made third-party apps up until the likes of Facebook brought their apps to the Windows phone store and now we’re back to square one – its now even worse since said third-party apps have exited the store since 2015.
Facebook’s apps have been the most popular free apps for the Windows phone platform and the social media giant bidding farewell to its apps is going to hurt the remaining users. The Windows Phone platform has been on its death bed since Microsoft announced that they were killing it off in 2016 due to low sales that are still affecting even existing giant smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung.
The remaining people who’ve stuck with Windows phone for various reasons such the preference to their devices cameras, privacy issues with iOS and Android or Facebook itself. Redmond-based tech giant stopped issuing software and security updates from last year December(Windows 10 Mobile version 1703 support ends in June and version 1709 ends in December) and that should worry users as this could be masive loopholes for hackers.
Is there an app for that? may come to rescue the remaining hopefuls but we can all agree that there’s a lot of inconveniences made using a windows phone in 2019 if it can’t even do the basic functions of a phone.