Last updated three years ago, the old Windows Phone 8.1 client for Evernote is being officially withdrawn. It's still available in the Store for older devices but will disappear shortly. In theory, if installed, it should carry on working with Evernote's servers, but I'm getting error messages today.

All this follows the withdrawal of Skype for Windows Phone 8.1 and it seems that we're in the window (no pun intended!) now for the older OS and devices whereby previously essential services are becoming in accessible. Having said that, we're talking about phones introduced in 2012 and 2013, since most devices after that can be upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile and thus take advantage of modern UWP applications and the improved Edge browser.

The irony (in Evernote's case) in the mention of Edge above is that, while W10M has a much better browser that's capable of presenting Web services without the need for a dedicated application, Evernote doesn't have a web-accessible form for phones, i.e. it only seems to exist as an application on mobile - and no, you can't fool Evernote's server by geting Edge to grab the 'desktop version' or using Landscape mode. So if the app is broken then the service is inaccessible!

While this may be seen as somewhat shortsighted of Evernote, given the size of the Windows ecosystem, remember that the PC version is Win32 and continues to be updated and to work. It's even packaged in the Windows 10 Store, so we're just talking about the old Silverlight version for Windows Phone here.

Mind you, given Evernote's pricing changes last Autumn, I've already covered in detail how to get your Evernote content into Microsoft's free OneNote system, wherein it's available on the Web and on every platform known to man, without ever once charging you money. So hopefully you did this and today's developments are irrelevant to you now?

Here's a quote from the Evernote blog anyway:

As a company, we’re also trying to get better at staying focused. This means spending more of our time and resources on developing our core note-taking products, Evernote Web, Evernote for Android; Windows; Mac; and iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Of course, staying focused often means letting go. As of June 29, 2017, we’ll be discontinuing support for BlackBerry and Windows Phone. If you currently use Evernote on these platforms, you may continue to do so. Evernote, however, will no longer be available for download on these devices and we won’t be making any further updates.

Your notes and notebooks will not be affected by this change. As always, any notes you’ve saved and synced to Evernote will always be available to you on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, or via your desktop web browser.

It could be argued that with the advent of Microsoft's OneNote and Google's Keep, each major OS provider has its own note-taking facility and that Evernote's time has come and gone, but there are still people who use it (and pay for it) and the lack of a UWP application for the service is still something of a shame.

The client for 8.1 (and W10M compatible) was supposed to be withdrawn from the Store as of June 29th, but it's still there if you're quick. Mind you, on all my devices I'm currently getting errors, so all bets are off for the future.