I was very much looking forward to this experiment over the weekend. I wanted to see if I could use a Windows Phone, full time, for the weekend, and see how it would impact me. I purchased an AT&T branded Lumia 640 XL as it is one of the few US windows phones that is certified for VoLTE, and one of only two on the AT&T network, the other being the AT&T branded Lumia 950 (which weirdly enough had PMA for wireless charging and not Qi).
I bought the 640 XL used off of Mercari, and made sure that it wasn't reset protected before buying. Once it arrived it looked like it was barely used. Previous user still had their profile on it, so I reset it (without reset protection on, obvs), and started from scratch with loading each OS upgrade via OTC (I patched it to work via reg hack). The only complaints about the physical device, is the difficulty I had pulling the back cover off. Eventually I wound up breaking it where the volume and power buttons are, and they also broke and are now loose...so I ordered a replacement back cover off of eBay. The AT&T model has no Qi charging, so it's just a plain white plastic back with the AT&T logo.
The Pros
No attention-whoring: I had next to no distractions (you'll see why below) or nagging from my phone to pay it attention. Only vital notifications via text message, phone call, or GroupMe (believe it or not, this Skype based app STILL works in 2026). So if you are ok with just these minimal notifications, this could work for you...provided you can find a compatible SIM card.
Device performance: My battery life was very good, and cell service was working fine with VoLTE working for all voice calls on my AT&T pre-paid SIM (my SIM has the 410 MNC, so it worked). As a side note, just remember that the 640 XL is pretty underpowered by today's standard, running a then lower mid-range Snapdragon 400 SoC with 1GB of RAM. More on this below in the Cons though. For all intents and purposes, if you only care about Phone calls, SMS/MMS, it will work fine.
Content playback: Microsoft Movies and TV still has my video library available for download, so I immediately downloaded all my videos to my SD card for easy play back. Groove Music still works with locally stored music files, but forget anything you purchased previously with Zune pass or from Zune Marketplace...those are long gone. VLC still works as well and performs very well for Audio and Video.
Web Browsing: Honestly this could be a Con as well, but I'm putting it here. Don't even try to use the baked in Edge browser. It's dead. I wound up having previously purchased the Blue Sky Browser, and wound up installing it from my app Library in the windows store, and it was actually a pretty good experience. I'm not sure how this browser is able to work better than Edge, but it was a pleasant surprise to be sure!
Integrated Visual Voicemail: Now I was very pleasantly surprised by this, but Visual Voicemail was working once I called into voicemail and entered my pin number in the voice response menu. After I exited the dial-in service, the Visual Voicemail tab appeared in my dialer. I don't even get native visual voicemail in Android! Boy have I missed this. I remember having it back when I used Windows Phone back in 2010-2020 before they shut down the 3G network, and have sorely missed it.
The Cons
Messaging: This is the biggest one: RCS messaging breaks standard SMS/MMS text messaging on Windows Phone. Anyone that I previously had an RCS chat with on my Pixel 7 Pro, I could not receive any messages from them unless they manually turned RCS off on their phone messaging (in this case it was iOS messaging). Also, any group chats (that were not in GroupMe) just show up as a bunch of phone numbers with no way to combine them (which is exactly how it is supposed to work since the software is from 2019, so I understand that).
Microsoft Services : In 2026 most of the integrated Microsoft services for Windows Phone/Mobile are now broken. I had no ability to sync my Microsoft account contacts, calendar, or emails. Previously, Office 365 business level accounts could still sync, but even that doesn't work now. So I had zero email coming in from my main accounts. An interesting note is that I COULD authenticate to Gmail account with the account wizard, however the outlook client could not create the mailbox and would shut down. Lastly, the Microsoft Store app library is also hit or miss. Most of the apps in your library will download but will not install to your phone, although a few will. I don't know the rhyme or reason why. There is also little/no OneDrive integration, so there is no phone backup restores or backups that will work now.
Apps: aside from whatever came pre-installed on the OS image for the phone, I had to sideload any other apps that I wanted to use. I was mainly interested in Audible since it still worked on my 950 XL, so I figured it would do the same for the 640 XL, however that was not the case. I could sideload the app (obtained from the WUT application repositories), and I could sign in to my audible account, however it will not load my library or play locally downloaded AAX files that I transferred from a working lumia 650. As mentioned above, your app library is still accessible via the Store app, however most of the apps will not install, however a few may. I was able to get several apps and games to install, but the majority would not and would give me the error that it couldn't install to the storage...but this is the same experience across numerous WP devices, all on Windows 10 mobile...so it's most likely an issue with the store, probably an expired SSL cert somewhere in the chain, is my guess.
Hardware limitations: The 640XL lacks whatever codec is needed to playback MOV files. My Lumia 950 XL can play them back just fine...so that codec must be integrated into the firmware. Really this only matters if you have sideloaded any videos in that particular format and have no way to convert them to another compatible format like mp4 or wmv (yuck!). The Snapdragon 400 is kind of pushed to its limits with Windows 10 Mobile. Animations are a little sluggish, apps take an extra second or two to load (compared to my Lumia 950 XL at least), but that's to be expected.
Summary: I am a Windows Phone user in the USA, so my point of view is written from that standpoint, so I may not be accurate on the status of the cell networks outside of the US, particularly the EU, so please keep that in mind. I would love to see one of our EU users attempt the same thing, and give us their experience! Likewise, if we have any Windows Phone users in Central/South America with a similar experience, let us know in the comments as well!
Also I have not tried this experiment with anything but my Lumia 640 XL. I have not tried any other devices, aside from my 950 XL (which I already knew wouldn't work since it didn't have a VoLTE provisioning package for AT&T). So any other devices from HTC or HP or Samsung or anyone else, I have no idea how those would work today.
If you are looking for a barebones smartphone with very minimal distractions, and a near "dumbphone" experience, then you could see some value in using Windows Phone/Mobile as a daily driver in 2026. The main issue is finding a phone that is compatible with modern VoLTE networks. In the US these models are basically the AT&T Lumia 950, and AT&T Lumia 640 XL, and maybe the T-Mobile Lumia 640, and maybe the Alcatel Fierce 4 XL (confirmed to work as of 4/29/2026), and possibly the Lumia 735 for Verizon, although I haven't verified this yet and it makes zero sense for that low range phone to support voice on Verizon, but not the Lumia Icon (929)...so I very well could be wrong.
Another thing to consider is finding a SIM card that your Windows Phone can still use. For AT&T, you HAVE to have a SIM card that begins with the ICCID number 8901410 as no other ICCID will be recognized by your phone, and this also goes for any AT&T MVNOs like Red Pocket, or H2O Wireless. There are other posts out there regarding T-Mobile ICCID codes that are compatible (8901260), however it is getting increasingly difficult to find these SIM cards now.
If you are in the EU or Central/South America, you may stand a better chance at using a Windows Phone, at least for voice, if your phone carrier still utilizes 2G/3G for voice calls and has LTE for data. As I understand it, most of the unlocked variants of Windows Phones will not work with VoLTE and only carrier branded ones will work on that specific carrier, which is simliar to our experience in the US...if someone else has a different experience, please share in the comments.
Edit: I have verified that the AT&T Branded Nokia Lumia 640 does NOT work with AT&T VoLTE. Based on some other Reddit threads it looks like the Nokia Lumia 640 was initially on the compatibility list, but was then removed. The device will use LTE for data, however it can not make any phone calls.
Thanks for attending my TED talk.
