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Windows Phone 7.5, 8.0: Microsoft just killed push notification services

And there'll be no more Find My Phone for owners of the two older Windows smartphone OSes.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

Video: No new features, phones for Windows 10 Mobile.

Microsoft has hammered one more nail into Windows Phone's coffin, announcing that Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.0 will no longer receive notifications.

As of today, February 20, the company will be switching off mobile push notification services for the two old versions of Windows Phone, which are no longer supported.

Along with no more notifications, the affected Windows Phone versions will no longer receive live tile updates, and the 'Find my phone' won't be able to locate a lost phone.

"Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.0 have reached their end of support dates, and thus services for these versions of Windows will be discontinued over time," Microsoft said on its user forum.

Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.0 were released in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

Microsoft ended support for Windows Phone 8.1 in July last year but for now notification services will continue to work for it, as well as for phones on Windows 10 Mobile.

Microsoft announced in October that Windows 10 Mobile would no longer receive new feature updates.

The company hasn't let go of mobile entirely, focusing on new categories of devices, such as Windows 10 on Arm for always-connected LTE laptops, while it has been developing iOS and Android apps to enhance the experience of using a smartphone with a Windows 10 PC.

Microsoft completed its $7.2bn acquisition of Nokia in April 2014 shortly after appointing Satya Nadella as CEO.

Nadella opposed the Nokia deal led by former CEO Steve Ballmer and by mid-2015 Microsoft had written off most of the Nokia purchase, killed off its smartphone devices business, and begun sacking thousands of people it took on from Nokia.

One of the key problems for Microsoft was attracting app developers to its mobile platform, which in turn didn't provide enough incentives for device makers to build hardware for it either.

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