So, I'm going to skip all the ****** nonsense and just tell my story...
I'm an IT guy, so you'd think I'd be all into cell phones and smartphones from day one, right? Not so much.
I refused to have any cell phone until late 2007. At that point, I picked up an HTC Mogul on Sprint... Windows Mobile 6.0. I really liked it. Thought it was great to have all my work email with me. Over time, I learned all there was to learn about it using reg hacks and what not (in fact, I was quite well known at PPCGeeks for my custom tweaks). I went on to have a Touch Pro 1 (hated it) and a Touch Pro 2 (liked it). Around that time, it was announced that Windows Mobile was "done", so I decided to go Android for a while and picked up an HTC EVO (noticing a trend here with HTC?).
The EVO was a great piece of hardware, but I constantly had trouble with the Android OS and in particular the firmware releases kept getting buggier and buggier. I also HATED the bloatware, so I ended up rooting it and doing customer ROMs and the like. Unfortunately, the experience just annoyed me more than anything.
You see, as a tech guy... I LOVE to tinker and tweak things, but I like doing to make things BETTER and FASTER, not to make them work properly. So after almost a year, Windows Phone was ready to go Mango. I picked up an HTC Arrive just in time to get the Mango update. That was awesome, but the hardware sucked... small screen and awkward keyboard and low processor specs were frustrating. I stuck with it though until HTC announced the Titan... on AT&T. Frustrated with the Arrive hardware AND the Sprint network, I switched. Picked up Titan over Thanksgiving for Amazon's Penny sale.
The Titan was a very good phone but had some glitches with hardware, and on top of it... whether we blame HTC or AT&T or both, it NEVER received an update. Not once.
Last September I went to NYC to the Nokia Lumia 920 launch party. It was a big deal, I was treated like a VIP (ie. given several freebie gifts) because of driving so far for the event yada-yada. Well, given the quality of the phone when I played with it there and the treatment, I picked it up on launch day last November.
Now this is the part you might think I'm a ****** for Nokia... being bribed and such... but not really. Regardless of what shortcomings there are (like lame speaker volume, FFC dust issues others have had, and flaky battery performance at times-- which are really AT&T's LTE issues more than anything), Nokia does an amazing job of supporting and growing the platform. Far more than HTC or Samsung are doing (and we all know why... Google is strong-arming them). In fact, Microsoft needs Nokia far more than Nokia needs Microsoft in this arrangement.
The truth is, I'm always a Microsoft supporter, and until I see a reason not to be, I'm also a big Nokia advocate. They're a great partner for Microsoft. Great hardware, great platform, and again-- in spite of shortcomings, they are going to conquer this war over time. It's just what Microsoft does. Although I hate it, there's a reason Microsoft is being quiet. They come out, learn from their mistakes, and they come out with a "fixed" release that's missing enough to interest us but frustrate us too... and then there's Version 3. Version 3 is where things change. Windows Phone 8 is version 3... and just like Windows 8, it's beginning to take off. But it's gonna be 3.1 that really seals the deal, I think... and I hope. History suggests I'll be right, but let's see what happens...