-Possible long and unentertaining post ahead. You've been warned
My first smart phone was the HTC Touch Pro 2 running WinMo 6.1 and later 6.5. I really enjoyed the phone as it felt like a mini laptop to me. I became a ROM flashing maniac. After playing with an iPhone and a coworkers HTC Hero i ended up going with the EVO 4G on Sprint when it came out. I kept the phone 2 years, liked it even better. I stayed on android with the HTC One X, HTC One M7. After Windows 7 and 8 for phones had been released I had always been wanted to try them. I professed my admiration to others about the GUI etc. and even toyed with the available Windows launchers on my M7. I began to dislike Google for their prying "marketing" model. I had always disliked Apple for "inventing" everything and their rabid patent infringement cases, so when the Nokia Icon dropped i had my eye on it for a few months. I sold the M7 to a coworker and finally went Windows.
With the Icon i enjoyed the interface after the 8.1 upgrade. The stark clean headers and sms app was the highlights for me. The things i was a bit putoff on initially was the thickness which felt as bricky as the EVO 4G from years before and i was shocked the battery life was really no better than the M7 i replaced it with.
The love wouldn't last however. I don't blame it all on the platform as I do tend to get bored easily with my phones. The disheartening things were lack of apps (bet nobody has heard that complaint before), live tiles, RESUMING, Microsoft's commitment to OTHER platforms, their lack of commitment to project Astoria, slow camera, crashing browser, occasional freezes/unresponsive screen.
On the subject of live tiles, it's sometimes the little things that made me scratch my head. Like, why do i have a purple camera app tile that looks so out of place on my homescreen with the transparent ones. Had it been a third party app i could have at least pardoned it.
On the subject of apps, I'm not a heavy app person or didn't consider myself to be. I have 11 apps installed that didn't come with the S7 and there's 3-4 more I will get around to installing. As others have stated there's just not a good alternative Windows App vs Android or iOs and often no choice at all. If Microsoft really wants to play in the smart phone market they need to do whatever they can for apps be it have their own team of developers or subsidize third party apps. The amount of garbage pretending to be legitimate apps seemed to increase the past 3 months or so also.
Windows 10 - i tried a couple of the early releases. No surprise that they were unstable due to the nature of beta software. After trying the rc version and still had "resuming" and a hanging camera app i never tried another. Microsoft announced Astora wouldn't be happening anytime soon and at that point i made up my mind i would be going to the iPhone or back to Android.
I ordered the S7 when preorders went live. First Samsung phone for me and so far I like it better than any phone before other than my enthrallment with the Touch Pro 2. Had the iPhone 6S Plus 64GB been slightly skinnier and more price friendly i would have went that route as I've never been a Samsung fan either. So far the S7 is smooth as can be no matter how many apps I've opened. So far my only gripe with the S7 is Google of course. They push the Google+ account on you for games or app ratings and of course I feel a bit less secure than i did with Microsoft.
I really do hope now as much as i ever have that Microsoft becomes a viable competitor in all aspects with their mobile platform. For those that have everything the want / need with Windows Phone, my hat is off to you and keep using it.
Cheers all. Thanks for having me before now and I'll be lurking about as always following what I hope to be progress with the platform.
Happy St. Patrick's Day btw
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