Windows Phone 8 hidden feature: “Windows installation disc”

In addition to offering you all the Android news available on a daily basis here on Android Authority we also check out the competition from time to time to see how they’re doing. For the good of the consumer, and whether it’s iOS, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, rival mobile operating systems are definitely required to coexist with Android in this complex mobile environment in order for innovation to go forward.

But since it’s still the weekend in various parts of the world, we’re going to wear our funny hats today and briefly check out Windows Phone 8 and a hidden feature that’s certainly not available on other mobile OSes: a strange black screen of death. In case you’re not familiar with the blue screen of death – which is how error message appear on Windows-powered machines, especially in case of older Windows versions – then you’re not going to find the screenshot above that humorous.

But it looks like that’s how a Windows Phone 8 error choose to appear on a WP8 smartphone. Apparently the error is real, and the image has not been doctored. What’s so special about it you ask? Check that #1 step that says:

1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.

Sure, any smartphone is a miniaturized computer. But these sort of computers do not require installation discs, or at least not in the traditional Windows PC kind of disc the error must refer to.

Apparently the error only surfaces in case you want to install different (unsigned) firmware on the device, and it makes some sense to see it in such an instance. But maybe Microsoft developers, and there are definitely some smart ones there, should find a different way to tell you that something’s wrong, preferably one in which the words “Windows”, “installation” and “disc” are not all used in the same phrase.

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