Summary
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Fans are keeping Windows Phone alive with 8Marketplace, an unofficial store and app patcher.
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8Marketplace fixes old applications: TweetIt now works with Bluesky; Facebook links to Argim.
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Despite its official death in 2017, community updates keep the operating system usable and its legacy alive.
The rivalry between Android and iOS is a story as old as time, but years ago they weren’t the only major operating systems available on a phone. Microsoft had its own mobile operating system called Windows Phone, and although the idea of bringing its operating systems onto mobile devices seemed like a great idea at the time, the company ultimately left the market to allow Google and Apple to compete on their own.
However, even if Microsoft was done with mobile operating systems, the Windows Phone fan base was not. There’s something about Windows Phone that people really like, so faced with the permanent demise of their precious operating system, they did what any good fan base does: they kept it going as a community effort. Now, almost nine years after the death of Windows Phone 8.1, its unofficial market has just received an update.
Your Windows restart button gets an update: it now does what you tell it to
It’s about time, honestly.
You can finally use Bluesky on your Windows Phone 8.1 device
It’s about time, I would say
As spotted by Windows Central, Windows Phone 8.1 fans have received a new update for their unofficial store. While Windows Phone 8.1 fell out of support in 2017, its store only followed suit in 2019, meaning fans have been without an official way to get apps for around seven years now.
Fortunately, there is an unofficial way to download apps on a Windows Phone 8.1. It’s called 8Marketplace and replaces the official store with fans. It also offers fixes for older Windows Phone apps to make them more relevant to the needs of today’s users. For example, 8Marketplace is tweaking the TweetIt app, which was once the go-to app for accessing Twitter (now X), so that it works with Bluesky instead. Additionally, the Facebook app was adapted to connect to the Latin American social media site Argim.
While I can’t imagine there are too many people still using a Windows Phone as their daily driver, it’s always heartwarming to see fans’ efforts to keep a discontinued product alive. As long as one person cares enough to continue to maintain it, the legacy will endure.
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