I had moved back into town and needed a phone. What I had was OK for making calls but nothing else. It was an old "Clam Phone", with a screen no larger than my thumb. It's pretty bad when your mom picks up your phone and tries to tap the screen but to tell her, "Umm, it's not a touch screen". I finally got frustrated with that phone, so I went to Best Buy to get something that was a lot smarter. At the time I didn't even know Microsoft made a Windows Phone, so when I got there and found out the one phone that was on sale (they were trying to get rid of the phone) was a Windows Phone 8, I jumped on it so fast. The sales rep was surprised that I picked that phone over the others on the shelf. It was the 521, which was only $100. I used the 521 for about a year and a half and loved it. I got so used to the WP8 setup that I had to go further. I picked up the Nokia Lumia Icon a month ago and just haven't looked back since.
I love to be different, so I kept going with the Windows Phone and probably will continue to do so. To put it another way, when my friends all jumped to get the Xbox or the Xbox 360, I grabbed the Wii.