Anyone that knows me knows that I'll always be nostalgic for Windows Phone. Indeed, it's the best smartphone platform of all time. And what's the point of being in charge of a tech publication if I can't crack my knuckles and hammer out a couple of thousand words about them when the mood strikes me?

Windows Phone, in its modern form of touchscreens and tiles, lasted about a decade, starting out in 2010 with support finally ending at the tail end of 2019. During that time, a wide range of devices were introduced, from pretty much every OEM that you can think of.

Indeed, in those early days, companies like Samsung, HTC, and LG all threw their hat in the ring, along with PC OEMs like Dell, Acer, and later HP. But as we all know, by 2014, Nokia dominated the space.

Indeed, if you look at lists of Windows Phones produced, the OEMs get less and less recognizable over time.

But there were definitely some amazing devices in the era. Having reviewed possibly more than anyone (or at least as many), these are my top seven Windows Phones:

7 Alcatel Idol 4S Windows

One of very few good Windows 10 Mobile devices

If you take a look at a list of Windows Phones to launch with Windows 10 Mobile, the brands are mostly unrecognizable, aside from Microsoft and HP. By that point, most devices were either decidedly mediocre, like the Lumia 950, or billed as a 3-in-1 PC, like the HP Elite x3. The Alcatel Idol 4s was the only one from the Snapdragon 820 era that was really just a great phone.

The Idol 4S packed a 5.5-inch AMOLED display, 4GB RAM, and a solid 21MP rear camera. It's also one of the only Windows Phones to have a glass back, a standard for modern smartphone design. Indeed, that metallic glass back and metal frame made the device feel premium at a time when Windows Phone fans were craving it the most. We were nearing the end of the era, as this was one of the last devices produced for the platform.

One other thing that was cool is that it actually shipped with a Gear VR-style virtual reality headset. It came with a suite of apps and games, but as you can probably guess, it wasn't populated with much more after that.

6 Nokia Lumia 1020

It needs no introduction

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is probably the most iconic Windows Phone. Far beyond its time, it had a 41MP 2/3-inch sensor, giving it camera chops that were unmatched for years to come.

Photos used oversampling to take a 38MP image, combine pixels, and turn it into the best 5MP image possible. The original image was stored, so you could go back in later and "reframe" the photo, zooming in up to 4x without losing quality. It wasn't until five years later with the Huawei P20 Pro that companies really started taking lossless zoom seriously again.

The hardware wasn't the only camera innovation that Nokia brought to market with the 1020. The Nokia Camera app introduced easy-to-use manual controls for things like brightness, ISO, white balance, and focus. It wasn't a complex pro mode that you had to use, just sliders that were set to auto by default.

With its unique and iconic design and camera innovations that took half a decade for other companies to match, you might be asking, why doesn't the Lumia 1020 top this list? Frankly, it wasn't actually a very good phone. First of all, the camera was painfully slow. The camera took time to load, focus, and shoot, and then it took several seconds to save the image before it could go again.

Launched in July 2013, the Lumia 1020 packed a Snapdragon S4 Plus processor, since Windows Phone 8 only supported that one family of chips. We were just four months away from devices like the Nokia Lumia 1520, which packed the much more powerful, quad-core Snapdragon 800.

The successor to the Lumia 1020 was codenamed McLaren, and that always seemed like the dream device. It would have taken that innovative camera and put it in more mature hardware.

5 Yezz Billy 4.7

Probably the most underrated phone ever

One of the downfalls of Windows Phone was that it got to be so well-known for running on low-end hardware that it became this race to the bottom. But to gain that reputation, there were some really good entry-level phones. My personal favorite was the Yezz Billy 4.7, named after Bill Gates himself (Yezz's Android phones were called Andy for Andy Rubin).

Under the hood, the Billy 4.7 had a Snapdragon 200, 1GB RAM, and 8GB of storage. The camera was decidedly mediocre with an 8MP shooter that lacked a Lumia Camera app to back it up.

But this thing was just a delight to use. It had a 4.7-inch 720p display, a much higher quality screen than entry-level devices of the day. Moreover, it weighed in at just 120g, far lighter than the half-pound slabs we carry in our pockets today.

It's amazing how much a slim profile and a pretty screen can make a phone pleasant to use, but honestly, when was the last time you saw a 4.7-inch phone that lightweight? The closest I know of is the iPhone 6, which came in at 129g.

There's one other thing. The Yezz Billy 4.7 came with three replaceable backs, in red, white, and blue, making it fun to customize according to your mood.

4 HTC One M8 for Windows

Software was a choice

When Windows Phone 8.1 launched in 2014, the US market was starving for premium hardware. We had the Nokia Lumia 1520 on AT&T and the Lumia Icon on Verizon, which launched with Windows Phone 8, but the Lumia 930 was only sold overseas.

That's where HTC came to save the day. The One M8 was the only Windows Phone ever launched with a Snapdragon 801 chipset, and the handset was already a winner with its metal unibody and front-facing speakers. That's because the device had been on the market with Android for some time.

One of the neat things about the smartphone market a decade ago was that some devices offered choice in the operating system you got, and the HTC One M8 had the most choice. You could get the Android version with HTC's Sense Android skin, the Google Play Edition, or the Windows Phone.

While it had a bit more power than the rest of the Windows Phone market at the time, and it was the first dual-camera phone, I think part of the appeal of the HTC One M8 was just that it was metal. We all loved our polycarbonate Lumias in pretty colors, but there was something special about the One M8's build.

3 Nokia Lumia 520

The best-selling Windows Phone

If there was a single reason that Windows Phone became known for working well on entry-level hardware, it was the Nokia Lumia 520.

I bought my Lumia 520 for $30 at a Microsoft Store. It wasn't activated, I didn't have to agree to a contract, and it wasn't a sale. That's how much this phone cost at that time.

And for a $30 phone, it was really good, at least for an entry-level phone of 2013. It had a 4-inch 480p display, a 5MP camera with autofocus, no flash, and no front camera. That rear camera was decent though. It was obviously terrible in low-light, but its color reproduction lived up to the Nokia Lumia name.

The camera also recorded 720p video, and the reason that's notable is because its successor, the Lumia 530, didn't. The Lumia 530 had a fixed focus rear camera, a downgraded screen, half the storage, and recorded 480p video. In all ways besides the chipset, the Lumia 530 was a downgrade. That's what I mean when I talk about a race to the bottom. Nokia had become so successful selling cheap hardware that it started building some of the cheapest devices it could, and the Lumia 530 wasn't even the worst.

The Nokia Lumia 520 became the best-selling Windows Phone of all time.

2 Nokia Lumia 930 or: Nokia Lumia 1520

Finally, modern flagship hardware

The Nokia Lumia 930 is my personal favorite Windows Phone, and before you bite my head off, let's include the Lumia 1520 here too. They were essentially the same phone, with Snapdragon 800 chipsets and 20MP cameras. The Lumia 1520 just had a giant 6-inch 16:9 display. Which of them you preferred came down to preference, and mine was the Lumia 930. If your preference was the 1520, just pretend it took this spot on the list.

The Lumia 930, in my opinion, was the most gorgeous Windows Phone of all time. Like the Lumia 925, 830, and 650, it has a metal frame, and came in four colors: black, white, green, and orange. Later, Nokia introduced limited edition black and white variants with gold-colored frames. It did the same for the Lumia 830. It had a 1080p AMOLED display, albeit missing the beloved Glance AOD functionality.

A launch device for Windows Phone 8.1, it included a quad-core Snapdragon 800 chipset, packing significant performance improvements over its Snapdragon S4-powered predecessors. Not only was it fast, but it had a great 20MP camera, which wasn't limited by the issues that plagued the Lumia 1020. It didn't have the same level of lossless zoom, but it was fast and it took amazing photos.

The Lumia 930 never made its way to the United States, although the identical Lumia Icon was available on Verizon. Unfortunately, the Icon only came in black and white.

With the lack of the 930 in the US, Windows Phone enthusiasts started carrying lower-end devices. The Lumia 830 was billed by Microsoft (the device was branded Nokia, but it was released months after the acquisition) as an "affordable flagship", with its metal frame and PureView camera. Still, it had a Snapdragon 400 under the hood, which actually had almost the same CPU as a Snapdragon 200. Why? Because the Snapdragon 600 was never officially supported by Windows Phone, and there was never a Windows device to use it. The Snapdragon 600 series didn't debut in Windows Phones until the Windows 10 Mobile era.

1 Nokia Lumia 920

Don't fight. Switch.

When I think of the Windows Phone, I think of the Nokia Lumia 920. It came in bright colors like red, yellow, and cyan, and while it was made of polycarbonate, it felt so premium. Add to that an AMOLED display and an 8MP PureView camera, and it just seemed like the perfect package for its day. It wasn't a specialty device like the Lumia 1020 was, and it wasn't a budget kind like the Lumia 520. It was just a great smartphone.

Nokia was the company that showed us that plastic phones didn't need to feel cheap. Samsung phones of the era, with their plastic removable backs, felt like toys, while Lumias looked and felt different from the rest of the market.

Another thing I associate with the Lumia 920 is just hope for the platform. It was a Windows Phone 8 flagship launch device, and at the time, things were looking up. Shortly after launch, Nokia launched one of my personal favorite ad campaigns of all time, called "Don't fight. Switch." It had all the Apple vs Samsung clichés of the era, from showing Samsung users using NFC to transfer photos (no really, tapping your phone against another to share photos was a top-billed reason for NFC back then) to calling the iPhone users "iSheep". When a fight breaks out, someone using a Lumia 920 asks, "Do you think if they knew about the Nokia Lumia they'd stop fighting all the time?" In response, the other person says, "I don't know. I think they kind of like fighting."

Classic. It totally captured the smartphone enthusiast landscape of the era.

Like many Nokia Lumias, the 920 had a couple of offshoots, the Lumia 925 and the Lumia 928. The Lumia 928 was a Verizon exclusive variant (there was a time when Verizon just demanded exclusive variants in order to be sold by them) that's frankly not even worth talking about. The Lumia 925, on the other hand, is another classic. It was the first Lumia to feature a metal frame, and is considered to be one of the most beautiful devices from the Windows Phone 8 era. It was one of somewhat few Windows Phones that were sold by T-Mobile.

In conclusion...

There were a bunch of devices that I'd have loved to include on the list. The Lumia 735 (which came under Nokia branding, and later Microsoft branding as an exclusive to Verizon) was one of my favorite mid-rangers from the Windows Phone 8.1 era. And given that the Lumia 530 was so horrifically bad, the Lumia 635 ended up being the spiritual successor to the classic Lumia 520. HTC's Windows Phone 8x was a classic as well.

Windows 10 Mobile support ended in 2019, and there hasn't been a new Windows Phone since early 2017. Of course, if Microsoft reboots the platform, I'll update this list in a heartbeat.