Reasoning for using a Windows phone

[Mr Mendelli]

I would like to know some reasons for using or even switching to a Windows phone or mobile device. I made this thread just to see your opinions on why, so I can get some responses from real people, not reviews.

 

[etphoto]

Everyone going to have their own reason but for me the UI has to be top of the small list on why I am a user.

Twitter: @PhotographyET

 

[SammyD97]

I'm gonna try to answer this from my experience but at the end Oh the day what I find important may not be what you or someone else finds important.

1. The start screen: I love having ask my information in front of me all the time. Granted android has widgets but I've always found them out of place because they're among icons. Some are kind of big too. Basically I like the icon+widget in one thing. Also because I get tonnes of info without opening apps except if I need more details. For example right now from my start screen, I can see my next three lectures. The weather. The news. The stock markets, secondary tiles for each of my classes showing the next due task/next test or exam, The next air dates for the tv shows I watch, The last three emails I received, My workout programme progress and last but not least, when my next alarm will ring (I have odd sleeping hours so this is really important to me.).

2. UWP. Apart from Office, CAD software, and some niche software provided by my school, I use store apps on my PC. Being able to have the same experience across devices is magic and of course the ability to buy an app once and use it on 10 different device (working on a student budget here lol).

3. Ease of use. No complications no headaches.

4. Drivers? I think. I'm not sure if this is a driver thing but a workaround (school thing) for using a PC standard kind of thing works flawless on my phone while my iOS and Android using friends have tradeoffs to deal with. So I'm guessing W10M has common drivers with big Windows? When i saw this I decided ok then, it's Windows for me until I get that degree.

5. The theme colour permeates everywhere throughout the OS amd my app experience. I really like that.

 

[libra89]

There's a LOT of great comments here about why people use Windows phone.

Why do you still use your Windows phone? | Windows Central

I think that should offer you a great place to have your question answered from real people who are a part of this community.

 

[Mr Mendelli]

Everyone going to have their own reason but for me the UI has to be top of the small list on why I am a user.

Twitter: @PhotographyET

Does it still resemble Windows 8? Are there launcher equivelants like on android?

 

[PerfectReign]

Why I use Windows Mobile instead of the alternatives? It just works. For the way I work, I prefer the Windows Mobile ecosystem. I'm a technology manager and need access to both personal and work email/documents on my mobile device. We are given Samsung Galaxy S6 devices at work. They do function, but I prefer the functionality of Windows Mobile. I also don't miss the messages, Unfortunately the process com.android.phone has stopped

While I prefer open source, sometimes I need to be pragmatic.

I was using an Iphone 6S for a month. I gave up.


Sent from mTalk

 

[Mr Mendelli]

There's a LOT of great comments here about why people use Windows phone.

Why do you still use your Windows phone? | Windows Central

I think that should offer you a great place to have your question answered from real people who are a part of this community.

Thanks for the link!

 

[libra89]

Thanks for the link!

You're welcome! I suggest dealing with a page first there and you'll probably see a common theme throughout the comments.

 

[jason hogan1]

I would like to know some reasons for using or even switching to a Windows phone or mobile device. I made this thread just to see your opinions on why, so I can get some responses from real people, not reviews.

I can tell you why I used to enjoy Windows Phone and why I don't so much anymore.

The UI is superior. I've used everything else and hands down WP wins the UI contest to this day. If I was going to pick a phone where I just look at the UI all day and don't actually attempt to use it I would definitely go for Windows phone.

Office integration was better with Win phone. WAS better. Because MS has decided that they hate Windows Phone they've concentrated all of their development efforts on every platform except Windows Phone. This means that integration of pretty much everything works better on anything except Windows Phone. Same goes for Onedrive.

The hardware specs are superior. In another thread I was complaining about operability issues with my Lumia 950xl. Basically there are still more bugs than a phone of that price and maturity should have. Another user chimed in about the hardware specs and how awesome they are. And let me tell you, when my camera locks up and freezes it does it faster than any phone equipped with a slow processor of ever could. What good is iris recognition when the phone won't initialize the front facing camera? What's the point of having a fast processor and tons of ram when old outdated apps (because nobody writes for win phone anymore) freeze or just close while you're using them?

The screen. I love the screen on my 950xl. I like the screen best when its on. Waking it up from the glance screen requires at least three tries of pressing the power button. The first two are usually just a black screen. The third is mostly successful. Very rarely do I ever have to hold the button down for a full reset but when I do it resets better and faster than any other phone out there because of those amazing hardware specs.

The camera. The camera is amazing. Coupled with the screen they are an amazing platform for convenient photography. Unless you want to share or do anything with the photos. Sharing them via mms usually results in having to force close the photo app and reopen it to pick up the new photos. Then hitting the share button results in about a 50% chance I will get a message that the photo couldn't be attached. Of course force closing the messages app and trying again up to 3 times gets around this. But hey, I have amazing hardware specs! The photo refresh problem plagues any photo editing apps. They won't know the photo exists until you can get the gallery to refresh.

Outlook integration works great. Like the rest of office this is no longer the big deal it used to be. The other platforms have caught up. In fact the only feature ios and android are missing is the annoying error that my email account settings are out of sate and need to be fixed. It rings in about 10 times/day only to resolve itself. It's a known bug that MS isn't interested in fixing. If you're really fired up about owning a phone with awesome hardware specs that insists on buzzing your hip 100 times/day to tell you your email settings aren't correct for each account individually even though they are, I'll sell you a 950xl. At 10x/day per account with 9 email accounts (on different providers) it gets old.

Bluetooth. This phone connects to Bluetooth reliably. And then it randomly drops out if you overwhelm it by trying to skip more than one or two tracks at a time. It's ok though because due to it's superior hardware specs it mostly reconnects on its own, seldom requiring a total reboot. It also has a really cool feature where if you're streaming music a call.or text will only result in the loss of the ability to stream any more media about 30% of the time until you reboot. I think the chances are so low due to the awesome specs.

The popup keyboard is much better than the native ios or android keyboards. This is a good interface, even if you're typing lengthy rants about your phone. The difficulty is in getting it to pop up. Due to the phones amazing hardware specs about 40% of the time you select a text entry box and it doesn't pop up. If you're in edge you can switch tabs to something else and come back to try again, usually met with success. If you're in a different app exiting and going back usually does the trick, hopefully you weren't too far into what you were doing.

The app store has always been lacking so no surprise there but the problem is actually getting worse. There are people who say you don't need apps so don't let that bother you and sometimes they are correct. However when that one cool thing all your friends are using does come out you'll need to be comfortable with the fact that you are holding a phone with superior hardware specs and a sweet ui that you won't be using to run that app.

Yep, I'm bitter. MS did it.

 

[Ejay Lozano]

The microsoft ecosystem. I own a Xbox, a pc and several WP's. I hate apple and android seems to complicated. I've been a loyal Nokia fan since 1999 and had my 1st Windows Phone in 2011 (Lumia 800) from there I had a L900, L920, L830 and I'm currently using a L950.

 

[pidjones]

Really just one for me: of all the "smart" phones, it is the only one that has adaptive voice dial through my motorcycle helmet Bluetooth headset. My old Rugby 2 flip phone did it well, but Android failed miserably in every app I tried. I'm told by others that iThings are just as bad. Cortana is the only one that doesn't have to contact the mothership to look up a phone number that is on the phone and dial it. Or, dial the numbers spoken to it.

 

[Drael646464]

I'm gonna try to answer this from my experience but at the end Oh the day what I find important may not be what you or someone else finds important.

1. The start screen: I love having ask my information in front of me all the time. Granted android has widgets but I've always found them out of place because they're among icons. Some are kind of big too. Basically I like the icon+widget in one thing. Also because I get tonnes of info without opening apps except if I need more details. For example right now from my start screen, I can see my next three lectures. The weather. The news. The stock markets, secondary tiles for each of my classes showing the next due task/next test or exam, The next air dates for the tv shows I watch, The last three emails I received, My workout programme progress and last but not least, when my next alarm will ring (I have odd sleeping hours so this is really important to me.).

2. UWP. Apart from Office, CAD software, and some niche software provided by my school, I use store apps on my PC. Being able to have the same experience across devices is magic and of course the ability to buy an app once and use it on 10 different device (working on a student budget here lol).

3. Ease of use. No complications no headaches.

4. Drivers? I think. I'm not sure if this is a driver thing but a workaround (school thing) for using a PC standard kind of thing works flawless on my phone while my iOS and Android using friends have tradeoffs to deal with. So I'm guessing W10M has common drivers with big Windows? When i saw this I decided ok then, it's Windows for me until I get that degree.

5. The theme colour permeates everywhere throughout the OS amd my app experience. I really like that.

Widgets are also a huge performance drain.

 

[Drael646464]

The app store has always been lacking so no surprise there but the problem is actually getting worse.

That statement seems to fly in the face of facts, in terms of total UWP apps in the store (which have at least doubled if not tripled in the last two years), and easily ported apps that now provide major game titles like leo's fortune, and major app platforms like Instagram, facebook, and twitter at a level of support that never used to exist. The windows store used to be a ghost town before windows 10 was released. Windows 10 and the porting suites have made a huge difference to a platform that used to be like a deserted island.

Can you provide any evidence in support of this, to me, seemingly incorrect assessment of the rapid growth of UWP in the windows store?

I'd just like to understand how you came to this conclusion, that the UWP count, and support is "worse" than say, under windows 8.1 (where it was absolutely terrible).

 

[rollindice]

Why I use Windows Mobile instead of the alternatives? It just works. For the way I work, I prefer the Windows Mobile ecosystem. I'm a technology manager and need access to both personal and work email/documents on my mobile device. We are given Samsung Galaxy S6 devices at work. They do function, but I prefer the functionality of Windows Mobile. I also don't miss the messages, Unfortunately the process com.android.phone has stopped

While I prefer open source, sometimes I need to be pragmatic.

I was using an Iphone 6S for a month. I gave up.


Sent from mTalk

you took comments right out of my typing....it just works ,we love the functionality.

 

[anthonyng]

My aha moment was back with the introduction of the Lumia 920, I had all these devices and everything was done differently and trying to help others in my family was annoying because it was different everywhere.

Windows 8 was coming, it was going to be windows 8 on phone and desktop! Oooo the same, feel behaviour, whatever device, tiles... oooo... sync'd start! oooo fastforward, wasn't quite right, took stuff away, reboot, uwp windows 10.

Throughout this time period, my aha moment/goal hasn't changed. Having a commonality among my devices. Microsoft changed their stance on specific things for this goal so it has been a lot of ... sorta... in respect to this goal

My "here we go" moment was early last year I think when I finally saw Photos app show me what i wanted. My pictures, on whatever device, available to me. Actionable items, I could action on UWP stuff on any device, And then eventually messaging everywhere.

So that's my reason, I'm tired of all the different services, devices, behaviours for everything I do or use. I believe Microsoft gets that and not only is it windows everywhere mentality but it's also microsoft everywhere so that we can really be device AND platform agnostic.

Worry less about what I'm using how to get what I need and focus more on producing. However the best experience would be in Windows

 

[PerfectReign]

Widgets are also a huge performance drain.

My beautiful young bride says, "I hate widgets."

Of course, now that I switched her to a Lumia 640, she doesn't see them anymore.