Bottom line up front:
- lack of phone desktop customization,
- lack of full file manipulation/control on the phone.
- lack of full range of smooth, really usable apps,
Oh, I did switch. . .twice. (I really wanted to like this OS!)
First was the Samsung Focus, with the older OS, and kind of crummy battery life. It did not have the apps I needed and the MS Store had multiple versions of the same app -some worked some did not. Tiles sometimes updated, sometimes did not. Also syncing was with that zune-thing at the time. . . yeesh! Not a satisfying user experience.
I switched (back) to Android
Second try was more recent. Switched from a Galaxy S2 to a NOKIA LUMIA 920.
-- MS store was a LOT better, 95% apps I needed, however those apps did not have the same capabilities and perhaps the OS limited their capabilities, but anyway, they did not work as well (sounds like an IOS user complaint about early android!) .
-- Phone physical quality was not as good as hyped...it scratched easily -too easily
-- Tiles worked better, but could not find apps tiles to make use of the screen in a way I liked, wanted or needed.
(could not get a full days appointments to display with weather and time updating above that).
One of the reasons I got the Nokia was to better tie in my phone with the windows 8 tablet I bought. It turned out that aside from knowing my name and some apps, and wallpaper, there were no advantages to using a winphone with a win8 tablet. . .
I dumped the phone, because I missed personalizing my screen for: my calendar appoitment*S, the quick flick to a planning calender screen, or a quick flick in the other direction to my tasks menu (separate from cal). Also I like 1x4 weather and 1x4 time on my home screen, (who would have thought it was a big deal to put a big clock, that reflected the real, changing time, on the face of WinPhone OS!)
So, as a phone it worked well enough, but WinPhone screen customizations were too limited. It simply was not versatile enough to support my life/work style. Certainly not as well as my next phone was -the Galaxy S4.
Oh, I did like the cordless charging of the Nokia, but it was not as big a deal as I thought it would be. . .still nice to have. .
I still would be interested in winphone -if:
#1. I could customize the first screen completely. (If I could swap out those mindless tiles for real widgets that provide larger amounts of useful data that I can format my way and absorb at a glance).
#2. the OS included a real, robust file management capability.
#3. It could retain the swipe in apps menu from the right and swipe between apps in from the left -those work well (I have used it with some android launchers -like action launcher which is a bit like that. ..sort of. .
Then it sounds useful and fun -in the work sense!
Hey, reading the other posts it seems that lack of quality apps is the biggest hit of the OS. Lack of functionality that some other OS/phones offer seems to be a common gripe; and then the customization hit. . .Pretty plain.
Shame, a company that can develop the Surface three should be able to do a better phone/ecosystem that they currently offer. :-(