[this post started in another discussion on the future of WP that included things like apps and market share]
We have many threads about why people would stick with WP over iOS or Android, discussing removed features, considering switching to another OS, or wondering whether WP will survive. All those threads mix arguments about apps, market share, devices, and OS features.
I'm hoping here we can discuss Windows Phone purely as an operating system, so without debating the lack of apps. What's good about WP, and what's missing. I'll be updating this post based on the responses. Here goes:
Features where WP either leads or at least competes:
Security: MS is good at keeping things up to date and safe. So is Apple, and so is Google on its own devices, but other Android phones are at relatively high risk, many running unpatched old versions of Android.
Live tiles for me are still a winner. I'm not a huge fan of widgets, I really like the clean and consistent look of the WP start screen. The transparent tiles are awesome as well, I love being able to change the whole look of the tiles by changing the background pic. leonelfunes32 mentions below that the tile animations make the phone look more 'alive' - agreed! From Xandros9's massive dump (his words), the WP start screen is more customizable than iOS.
I love that the start screen can pan forever, as opposed to the screen-by-screen movement on iOS. Android now has the infinite app drawer which is a similar feel, but that shows all installed apps, and only with tiny icons, so not quite the same. A win for WP10 imo.
The glance screen is fantastic, I'd miss that on iOS. I think some Android phones do this now?
WP and Android allow mounting as an external drive, iOS does but with big limitations. iOS doesn't allow you to drag an drop media files to the phone without using iTunes, and even then I recall that certain movie files would have to be dragged 'into apps' inside iTunes if you wanted to access the file in that app later. Quite a pain! A win for WP10 and Andoid.
Notification sync is heading in the right direction, although it's still somewhat buggy. I get the sense that this is better for iOS on a mac, not sure. Does Android have anything like that? A Windows app that can show and dismiss Android notifications? If not, this is a major plus for WP.
I think volume and track control on WP is miles better than on iOS. I love that we can get the full play/volume control by pressing volume up, both for media and phone sounds. A tiny thing I like: I can tap and drag the volume bar anywhere I like, I don't need to carefully grab a 'handle' on the volume bar. It's the little things.
I also love that we can peek at the date by partly pulling down the notification shade. On iOS I need to pull their notification page way down, and even then I might be on the wrong page.
Not really an OS thing, but I love the hardware camera button.
Continuum: I've started using this a bit more. Neither Android or iOS have anything like it.. yet.
WP has native support for pinning separate (groups of) mail accounts to the start screen as separate tiles with individual counters. That's pretty nice. Personally I have grouped work related accounts and private accounts into two tiles. Very convenient.
WP can project the screen to miracast enabled screens and receivers. iOS has AirPlay which requires an Apple TV box (yes?), and Android has ChromeCast which requires a ChromeCast receiver and compatible apps. It seems like WP is using the more open standard here.
Hands-free operation, for example listening and responding to texts as they come in (based on fpena911's post here). Cortana can automatically read incoming texts aloud, offer to respond, and then read back to you what your answer will be before sending it, all hands-free. Google can read the text to you when you ask. Not sure how iOS does this.
I prefer the WP dialer over the iOS dialer. WP supports landscape view (iOS doesn't), and dialing a number on WP shows suggested contacts with partial name or number match. iOS just shows the numbers you just dialed, and that's it.
Features where WP lags:
Somehow it seems like Apple and Google are willing to refine the design a lot over the various releases. Google Now looks a million times more fresh and clean than the clunky Cortana page. Page transitions and transparency effects look fancier and well-designed on iOS. In the early days the stark look of WP stood out compared to the static grid of icons on iOS and Android. Remember when the tile animations on WP felt amazingly cool? Those days are gone, to me the others look better taken care of by now.
Personally I get the sense that NFC payments work better on the others (don't use it, so not sure).
The maps app and in particular the POI database in WP is inferior to Google's, so until a Google Maps app appears on WP (which is never) or until MS vastly improves the POI database, imo WP lags on that front.
The App Switcher on WP is a bit clumsy. It's a tad slow, tough to quickly dismiss all aps. On iOS it looks slick and works snappy, don't recall the latest Nougat app switcher.
The Photos app is slow in detecting new pictures, and photo preview (for me at least) takes a second to show a processed / sharpened version of the picture as you swipe through them. You also cannot swipe to the next picture while zoomed in. The experience is much more intuitive on iOS, not sure about Android.
The stability of WP is still lacking as of 14393.189, at least on a 950XL. I've had loss of audio, irrecoverably crashing camera app, loss of GPS, malfunctioning brightness settings, misbehaving panning in the photos app, you name it. I don't recall struggling this much with iOS, but admittedly it's been a while. [thanks CraigCole for bringing this up]
Power management / battery life seem a bit hit or miss. It's been better lately, but there are still times where the phone gets hot seemingly for no reason, with a corresponding drop in battery life. Again I don't recall this from my iOS days. I wish we had a full blown Win10 task manager so we could see every single process that's misbehaving, and report it. [thanks CraigCole for mentioning battery life]
I think brightness control on iOS is better than on WP. On iOS you get a slider in their 'controls' panel. It's annoying that the iOS sliders for volume and brightness are on different screens, but at least there's a slider.
iOS supports official ad-blocker extensions for Safari that can be downloaded through the app store. Pretty handy for people on limited data plans. Edge mobile doesn't support extensions, and WP doesn't allow editing of the hosts file which could have been a workaround.
iOS supports custom keyboards that can be installed from the app store, and I know Android also supports custom keyboards. WP doesn't have anything along these lines.
iOS offers more variety in built-in text-to-speech voices. Just for the various varieties of English there are 22 possible voices to choose from, and the list of languages spans two screens. I think WP has the four voices, and that's it. Plus in iOS you can use the Siri voice for TTS, while on WP you cannot use the full Cortana voice for TTS.
That's all I can think of for now. Are there other OS features that are better or worse on WP compared to iOS and Android? How is Cortana vs. Siri and GooGal (nameless Google lady)? Can you think of other features?
________
Assorted comments from Xandros’ mega post on iOS :
WP has more freedom in changing app notification sounds
WP has a more advanced camera interface
iOS doesn’t have automatic (without user interaction) Text-To-Speech of incoming text messages
iOS puts GPS navigation info on the lock screen
iOS has better accessibility options
iOS doesn’t show ‘resuming’, most apps recover their state immediately
Assorted comments from Xandros’ mega post on Android:
WP has a more visually appealing task switcher (yes? X doesn’t like the rolodex view in Android)
WP has better (or more?) actionable notifications
Android offers many more ways to tweak the UI and UX
Android gives a heads-up before ringing alarms (clever!)
We have many threads about why people would stick with WP over iOS or Android, discussing removed features, considering switching to another OS, or wondering whether WP will survive. All those threads mix arguments about apps, market share, devices, and OS features.
I'm hoping here we can discuss Windows Phone purely as an operating system, so without debating the lack of apps. What's good about WP, and what's missing. I'll be updating this post based on the responses. Here goes:
Features where WP either leads or at least competes:
Security: MS is good at keeping things up to date and safe. So is Apple, and so is Google on its own devices, but other Android phones are at relatively high risk, many running unpatched old versions of Android.
Live tiles for me are still a winner. I'm not a huge fan of widgets, I really like the clean and consistent look of the WP start screen. The transparent tiles are awesome as well, I love being able to change the whole look of the tiles by changing the background pic. leonelfunes32 mentions below that the tile animations make the phone look more 'alive' - agreed! From Xandros9's massive dump (his words), the WP start screen is more customizable than iOS.
I love that the start screen can pan forever, as opposed to the screen-by-screen movement on iOS. Android now has the infinite app drawer which is a similar feel, but that shows all installed apps, and only with tiny icons, so not quite the same. A win for WP10 imo.
The glance screen is fantastic, I'd miss that on iOS. I think some Android phones do this now?
WP and Android allow mounting as an external drive, iOS does but with big limitations. iOS doesn't allow you to drag an drop media files to the phone without using iTunes, and even then I recall that certain movie files would have to be dragged 'into apps' inside iTunes if you wanted to access the file in that app later. Quite a pain! A win for WP10 and Andoid.
Notification sync is heading in the right direction, although it's still somewhat buggy. I get the sense that this is better for iOS on a mac, not sure. Does Android have anything like that? A Windows app that can show and dismiss Android notifications? If not, this is a major plus for WP.
I think volume and track control on WP is miles better than on iOS. I love that we can get the full play/volume control by pressing volume up, both for media and phone sounds. A tiny thing I like: I can tap and drag the volume bar anywhere I like, I don't need to carefully grab a 'handle' on the volume bar. It's the little things.
I also love that we can peek at the date by partly pulling down the notification shade. On iOS I need to pull their notification page way down, and even then I might be on the wrong page.
Not really an OS thing, but I love the hardware camera button.
Continuum: I've started using this a bit more. Neither Android or iOS have anything like it.. yet.
WP has native support for pinning separate (groups of) mail accounts to the start screen as separate tiles with individual counters. That's pretty nice. Personally I have grouped work related accounts and private accounts into two tiles. Very convenient.
WP can project the screen to miracast enabled screens and receivers. iOS has AirPlay which requires an Apple TV box (yes?), and Android has ChromeCast which requires a ChromeCast receiver and compatible apps. It seems like WP is using the more open standard here.
Hands-free operation, for example listening and responding to texts as they come in (based on fpena911's post here). Cortana can automatically read incoming texts aloud, offer to respond, and then read back to you what your answer will be before sending it, all hands-free. Google can read the text to you when you ask. Not sure how iOS does this.
I prefer the WP dialer over the iOS dialer. WP supports landscape view (iOS doesn't), and dialing a number on WP shows suggested contacts with partial name or number match. iOS just shows the numbers you just dialed, and that's it.
Features where WP lags:
Somehow it seems like Apple and Google are willing to refine the design a lot over the various releases. Google Now looks a million times more fresh and clean than the clunky Cortana page. Page transitions and transparency effects look fancier and well-designed on iOS. In the early days the stark look of WP stood out compared to the static grid of icons on iOS and Android. Remember when the tile animations on WP felt amazingly cool?
Those days are gone, to me the others look better taken care of by now. Personally I get the sense that NFC payments work better on the others (don't use it, so not sure).
The maps app and in particular the POI database in WP is inferior to Google's, so until a Google Maps app appears on WP (which is never) or until MS vastly improves the POI database, imo WP lags on that front.
The App Switcher on WP is a bit clumsy. It's a tad slow, tough to quickly dismiss all aps. On iOS it looks slick and works snappy, don't recall the latest Nougat app switcher.
The Photos app is slow in detecting new pictures, and photo preview (for me at least) takes a second to show a processed / sharpened version of the picture as you swipe through them. You also cannot swipe to the next picture while zoomed in. The experience is much more intuitive on iOS, not sure about Android.
The stability of WP is still lacking as of 14393.189, at least on a 950XL. I've had loss of audio, irrecoverably crashing camera app, loss of GPS, malfunctioning brightness settings, misbehaving panning in the photos app, you name it. I don't recall struggling this much with iOS, but admittedly it's been a while. [thanks CraigCole for bringing this up]
Power management / battery life seem a bit hit or miss. It's been better lately, but there are still times where the phone gets hot seemingly for no reason, with a corresponding drop in battery life. Again I don't recall this from my iOS days. I wish we had a full blown Win10 task manager so we could see every single process that's misbehaving, and report it. [thanks CraigCole for mentioning battery life]
I think brightness control on iOS is better than on WP. On iOS you get a slider in their 'controls' panel. It's annoying that the iOS sliders for volume and brightness are on different screens, but at least there's a slider.
iOS supports official ad-blocker extensions for Safari that can be downloaded through the app store. Pretty handy for people on limited data plans. Edge mobile doesn't support extensions, and WP doesn't allow editing of the hosts file which could have been a workaround.
iOS supports custom keyboards that can be installed from the app store, and I know Android also supports custom keyboards. WP doesn't have anything along these lines.
iOS offers more variety in built-in text-to-speech voices. Just for the various varieties of English there are 22 possible voices to choose from, and the list of languages spans two screens. I think WP has the four voices, and that's it. Plus in iOS you can use the Siri voice for TTS, while on WP you cannot use the full Cortana voice for TTS.
That's all I can think of for now. Are there other OS features that are better or worse on WP compared to iOS and Android? How is Cortana vs. Siri and GooGal (nameless Google lady)? Can you think of other features?
________
Assorted comments from Xandros’ mega post on iOS :
WP has more freedom in changing app notification sounds
WP has a more advanced camera interface
iOS doesn’t have automatic (without user interaction) Text-To-Speech of incoming text messages
iOS puts GPS navigation info on the lock screen
iOS has better accessibility options
iOS doesn’t show ‘resuming’, most apps recover their state immediately
Assorted comments from Xandros’ mega post on Android:
WP has a more visually appealing task switcher (yes? X doesn’t like the rolodex view in Android)
WP has better (or more?) actionable notifications
Android offers many more ways to tweak the UI and UX
Android gives a heads-up before ringing alarms (clever!)
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram