[com2kid]

> I suspect that WindowsPhone 8.1, the nicest phone software ever, was descended from that design effort.

Windows Phone 7 was a direct decedent. WP 8.1 was an iteration on that design language.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Right, I had a WindowsPhone 6.5 device from HTC, and it was rather meh on nice hardware. But it could boot an Android from XDA on SD card with little fuss, and that was an improvement ;-)

Now I'm just hoping the incumbents copy enough of the good design to make the loss bearable.