What brought you to Windows Phone?

socialcarpet

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I'm interested to hear your stories.

How did you come to decided to take the road less travelled with Windows Phone when the majority of people choose Android or iPhone by default?

My story goes like this:

I used Palm Pilots for years. My first smartphone was a Palm Treo 180g back in 2002. I had a few non-smartphones in between (including 2 Nokia's, one was the iconic Nokia 3650 with the circular keypad), later a Palm Centro, then a Blackberry Curve and finally an LG Esteem (Revolution) Android phone.

Before I bought the LG, I had been looking at Windows Phones. I wasn't really sold on Android and the iPhone didn't click with me for a number of reasons.

I stayed on the fence for months. I'd go to the phone stores periodically just to play around with all the devices and I always found myself coming back to the Windows Phones. I just liked the UI more than any of the others, the keyboard worked great.

Every time I went to a phone store, I always wound up spending more time playing with the Windows Phones than anything else...

But, I was not really excited enough by the phones that were available at the time and a little uncertain about Windows Phone, a friend convinced me to go with Android. Against my better judgement, I got the best Android phone my no contract provider offered, an LG Esteem.

Flash forward about a year. My uncertainty about Android was confirmed, the thing wound up being a buggy mess. I realized I really do not care for the chaotic Android ecosystem in general with apps that don't follow good UI and interface behavior rules. LG did a terrible job supporting my phone, and my carrier was useless for help.

I was at the end of my rope with my phone and fed up with Android. The iPhone 4S was out, and I was leaning towards it, but the tiny screen, all glass construction, lack of LTE and good, but dull feeling OS just didn't excite me enough to want to sign a contract and shell out a few $100 to get one.

As much as my Android experience sucked, going back to Blackberry seemed like a step backwards. So I began to think maybe this is the time to make the leap to Windows Phone.

I came this close to buying a no contract Lumia 710 from T-Mobile, but I couldn't quite get comfortable with it. I remembered what my Android loving friend told me when I was miserable with my LG: "Don't buy a cheap smartphone and expect good results. If you're going to give the OS a try, get the best phone for it." He was referring to Android, which I wasn't about to try again, but it applied here as well I figured. If I want to try Windows Phone, I should give it a fair chance and get the nicest phone I could.

I was vaguely aware of the Nokia Lumia 800 and thought it was beautiful, but with no U.S. carrier and no LTE, it wasn't for me.

Enter the Lumia 900. I heard it was coming. I knew it looked very similar to the 800, which I loved. I knew it had a nice big screen (one of the few things I liked about my Android) and I had nothing but positive experiences with the Nokia phones I had owned in the past.

All the pieces came together for me then. I knew I liked the Windows Phone OS, now here was phone hardware that I was actually excited about, and it was made by Nokia which I had confidence in, especially given that they had committed 100% to Windows Phone. I figured there was little chance the "flagship" Windows Phone of the moment would be as poorly supported as my LG crapdroid was. That, plus the excellent price gave me the confidence to pull the trigger, and here I am. :cool:
 

Phen0m24

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Had several Verizon phones, watched people get smartphones and last year got the wife and I Optimus V's on Virgin Mobile. Decent phones, great pricing, no contract - but the service and speed were terrible.
Because I already have a Zune and a 360, I had heard Major Nelson talk about Windows Phone. Tried the Titan earlier this year, but it was too big. Got the Lumia 900, and although I wish it would do Flash and have some more screen res, I dig it. It's a gorgeous phone.
 

Laura Knotek

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I started with Nokia (Symbian) smartphones. Then I switched to BlackBerry. I had an upgrade available for 11 months and kept waiting for BB10, which was supposed to be "coming soon", according to RIM. I purposely skipped the OS7 devices, since they did not seem to be enough of an upgrade from OS6.

Then I saw the reviews of the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II from CES. At that point, I decided I wanted the Nokia Lumia 900, since I liked the hardware and build quality of my previous Nokia devices.

As I waited to get a new device, my BlackBerry got laggier and laggier, despite shrinking the OS and installing hybrid OSes. I was tired of the lagging, freezing, hourglass, "page too large" in the browser, truncated emails.

As a result, I stopped at the AT&T store on April 9 and was the first customer to pick up a cyan Nokia Lumia 900. I am very happy with my choice, especially since SkyDrive and Office integration is seamless. I also have apps not available for BlackBerry, such as Netflix.
 

cgk

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Mine is really straight forward, Nokia gave me a free phone in return for doing a couple of surveys.
 

selfcreation

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long story short...

when i started working in cell phones my first phone then was a HTC touch (WM, before Iphon and Android even exited. ) and ive done almost every single WM sints then . working in cell phones allowed me to try every OS on a month to month .


Windows stayed my FAV OS and when I herd about WP (3-4 years ago ) I couldn't wait to have it ( even before we knew what feature it was gona have ) think it was called PROJECT PINK? or something?

then when I saw the first WP in real life i instantly feel in love with , specially cause of the XBOX live integration.
( i was hopping more out of the Xbox intergration) but i still havent lost hope :)
 

cckgz4

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Zune access and the clean metro UI. I had a 3gs and loved the smooth experience but was tired of streaming my music.

Sent from Le Lumia de Cyan using Board Express
 

gapost

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Had a Palm phone for years. This spring, realized that Palm/WebOS was _______??

Last year, I was in the AT&T store and remember messing around with a Windows Phone and was pretty impressed with it. I am on Verizon for business so I checked out the reviews of the Trophy and was amazed at all the positive reviews. Ordered one and am really happy with it and hope WP goes big.
 

sentimentGX4

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Windows Phones were the cheapest on the secondary market, so I chose WP.

OS doesn't matter to me and I have always regarded Windows/Microsoft as a higher quality brand than Android/Google.

(Well, anything is higher quality than Android really... As a frequent user of Google and Microsoft products, that is my impression.)
 

fatclue_98

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I've been a life-long Palm OS user until webOS came out. I didn't like Sprint so I switched to Windows Mobile on AT&T and fell in love with MS Office and the Exchange integration. When the Pre + came as an unlocked GSM unit I dove right back into Palm. Until Leo the Hun totally and irrevocably F'ed up HP and webOS. Many apps started to go dark and the updates were almost non-existent. I, like so many others, had this nasty taste in my mouth caused by WM's constant freezes, soft resets, etc. which caused me to hesitate even looking at WP7. I'm glad I did, I can't say enough about it as I'm sure anyone who had read my posts will attest. From the early Treo with the flip-up screen to a DVP. Whew, what a strange trip it has been.
 

ninjaap

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My very first smartphone was a Motorola Q, with Windows Mobile. Been a fan of Motorola and WM since then and they even made me "MotoXpert" for the Motorola forums. Then I was saddened to hear that Moto was going to drop WM and use Android, but stated that they will probably go Windows Phone later on. I thought, well its cool, I'll stick it out see what android was about. I'm pretty sure I tried every Android Moto phone they had on ATT. It was cool and all, but that MotoBlur thing they had was just causing nightmares with the forum members. If you guys think that there's a lot of *****in going on around these here forums, then you haven't been to OEM forums. Holy ish!

Anyway, Google decided one day that they wanted to drop a bomb on the mobile world and announce that they were going to acquire Motorola. BAM!!! That definitely caught everyone by surprise. Even the Moto forum admins. By then, I had enough of MotoBlur, the Android crowd and Motorola. Obviously, my dream of a Moto running WP was down the drain. Gave up the forums and bought me an HTC Surround. A year later, a Samsung Focus. And here I am today, rockin a Lumia 900. What a journey it has been :D
 

willied

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Zune integration, awesome UI, different, and I like how we have options for phones, but there's also minimum requirements for phones so you really can't get a terrible phone like you can with Android.

I'm also not a fan of Apple (the company and iTunes sucks and I don't like using OS X), and I don't care for Google, but that doesn't matter since I wouldn't get an Android phone even if I did like Google since they are so buggy and hardly ever get updates.
 

cp2_4eva

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My story isn't too different. I had iPhones, I had a few Android phones. Android was an unstable iPhone ripoff that couldn't get me through my work day on LTE. Cool, but unstable. Metro is very minimalistic and clean, but at the same time gives alot of info at a glance. I used to be a specs whore, but I honestly didn't reap all the benefits from it. Those phones where good WHEN they were up. But I've had too many force closes and random reboots. IPhones are good phones, but too small and no LTE. for me once you go LTE, you never go back....comfortably.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express
 

eric12341

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Been using WM devices since my iPaq 1910,and then a dell axim x51v, after 4 years with that I decided I wanted a converged device so I bought an HTC touch pro which served me well besides the battery issues. Then in may 2010 sprint replaced it with a Touch Pro 2, I found out what WP was going to be like and at first I was a little disappointed and decided that WM6.5.3 or android was going to be my next phone. So I then began trying the android builds on my TP2 and while performance was lacking I decided to get a full blown android device before the arrive was released to have as an interim. Had an HTC EVO shift for a week and hated the experience and took it back and got an arrive, in addition to that I also felt I was betraying myself for leaving my heritage of Microsoft devices behind. Needless to say exchanging the shift for the arrive was the best thing I did. The arrive was a great phone but sprint's extremely slow 3G network strongly crippled the experience plus I also got tired of text messages cancelling my 3G connection in places where the network wasn't overloaded, that was a PITA when streaming things. Now I'm on T-mobile with an HD7.
 

foosball

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Palm had webOS which was a great mobile interface with lackluster hardware. Once the Palm ship sailed/sunk it was time to find the next best mobile OS. WP delivered.

Here's to Apollo and seeing WP deliver on the hardware side!
 

jiffffy pop

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My first smartphone was a droid eris. Phone was unstable from the start. I even did a complete wipe and did not load apps, took 5 minutes to dial and I couldn't even hit the answer button when I was getting a call. I had about 6 months left on my Verizon contract and saw that AT&T was the flagship for WP. I really did not want an iPhone since I had a Zune with Zune pass and Xbox live. Also another contributing factor of me leaving Verizon is their coverage. Their maps said I would have excellent coverage but got no service to one bar constantly draining my batteries, I know the eris did not have an antenna problem as my env received the same signal. I paid $150 etf to leave Verizon and got a Focus. I get full service with AT&T has in my area, something Verizon could not provide. I have nothing but positive experiences with WP and AT&T. Now I'm rocking the Lumia 900 and I couldn't be happier, no LTE in Detroit area yet but 4g is good enough for now.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express
 

baseballbert

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Nokia something monochrome screen---some flip phone of some kind---Motorola razr----BB Curve---IPhone 3G---Droid Incredible---IPhone 3GS---Samsung Focus---iPhone 4---iPhone 4S---Lumia 900

Android not so much, iPhone awesome devices, but wanted to try something different.
 

Kredrian

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Zune integration, awesome UI, different, and I like how we have options for phones, but there's also minimum requirements for phones so you really can't get a terrible phone like you can with Android.

I'm also not a fan of Apple (the company and iTunes sucks and I don't like using OS X), and I don't care for Google, but that doesn't matter since I wouldn't get an Android phone even if I did like Google since they are so buggy and hardly ever get updates.

A user after my own heart, except I use OSX. Otherwise perfectly agree.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express
 

awesumjon

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For me, I was never an iOS kinda guy. As for Android, i would get excited for the specs but whenever I'd use one it would just feel. . . Idk, bland I guess? BB didn't have the keyboards I liked (large fingers) and Nokia only had low endish phones available. Then I found out WP was coming and everything got me excited (plus Zune integration). In short, no other OS fit the pocket, but WP and its the best decision I made. I'm a fan for life now

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
 

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