My experice with Andriod for three days

[nynamyna]

Hi everyone,

I have been a windows phone user since 2011. I own a Lumia 1520 now. I wanted to try android Samsung galaxy edge + so I went and picked one up through att next plan. I tried all possible features of it including Samsung pay. I love its design and how sleek it is. But usabilitywise, I find it very hard to use. I went to the store to return it but she sent me back asking to give it sometime since I have 14 days to return. I am pretty sure I am going back to windows phone because I find this very hard. Here is what I find hard with android and what I miss

1. Live tiles- I can see my calendar appointment, email, message, missed call, everything right on screen . I am not able to do that in android
2. Glance screen. I am not sure if it has one. I have to explore more
3. Too many options. I get something or the other if I swipe anywhere in the phone
4. Apps and launchers are buggy. I tried lot of launchers to make my home screen user friendly but none of them did what I wanted.
5. I get hundreds of notifications and its hard to see what I want. I don't want to go to notification center for everything. Some of the themes has notifications on their tile some doesn't. In windows phone, I don't even open my notification center. I just see it on the tile
6. Dedicated camera button is something I miss too
7. They told me that integration with Microsoft services like onedrive and outlook will be better than Windows Phone. Absolutely not. Oulook app doesn't have notifications in it. I don't hate the email client in android. It is not even close to windows phone.

Ya, I know that this phone has fingerprint scanner, Samsung pay, and advance processor and all those crap. What is the point if it is not user friendly and if I don't like its experience. Also, I have most of the apps I need in Windows Phone.

Has anyone else felt the same way I did? I am returning my android today and may be pick 950xl soon. One thing I am pretty sure is, if Microsoft reduces the app gap and makes an awesome phone with metal design , I think it will become a great hit. After using android for three days, my belief in Microsoft's vision and design has increased.

 

[Hisham mubarak]

I brought my first wp when i saw a tv ad with lenka's song "everything at once"... That was the first impression i got with the wp "everything at once", just because of the live tiles... After using 3 windows phone(l510, l620, l535) i switched to android, because i cant play many games i saw in my friends mobile.. It was a moto g(v2) after using 1month i switched back to wp and brought my l640xl... There are many features I have missed from wp i don't remember all of them...
1) double tap to wake up
2) glance screen
3) battery drain
4) launchers are slowing my phone (without them not much customization)
5) many unwanted background processes (i cant stop all of them)...


There was many but now i don't remember all those..

 

[emjey]

What MS has to do apart from app gap is get a great marketing team. It already has an awesome OS.

 

[justonlumia]

I miss the Glance screen , Double tap wake/sleep when on my Galaxy A7

 

[Panos Athanasiou]

true dat true dat mate

 

[Panos Athanasiou]

if i recall some android phones support double tap to wake/sleep but most of the times high-end phones dont like 950/950XL doesnt have but i am pretty sure you cant live without glance screen no power consuming and so so usefull

 

[Steve Adams]

picking the laggyiest (nice word)! android phone does not help either. TOUCHWIZ is horrible. I have used samesong and others and the others been much better! If I were choosing an android phone now it would be either a nexus or a priv.

 

[Pinecone1532]

Have a few pointers which might hep in dealing with the issues you're having:

1. Try WP8 launcher. You can add a calendar widget to the home screen in a tile, it also has live tiles for the contacts and photo gallery and will display the number of notifications for pinned apps in the same way WP does - a little number in the corner of the tile. Only downside so far is you can't have the WP8.1 style wallpaper - its either full screen behind the tiles or nothing.
2. For the camera button, try A Better Camera - it'll let you use the volume buttons to take a picture (snapchat seems to let you do that too).
3. Idk about things like a glance replacement - my phone has an LCD screen so it would use up too much power, and in any case I never had it on WP anyway.
4. Double tap to wake should be there though - my relatively cheap phone runs Android 5.1.1 and has that although it can be a bit finicky at times. Check settings > display to see if you have it.
5. Outlook should do notifications - it does for me, maybe check its set up to ensure that it notifies you for all emails from each account and not just for your focussed inbox, which seems to be the default setting - but I admit they aren't as good as on WP where the notifications come in as the emails come in. If you want to use the default apps instead, set it all up as an exchange activesync account. You can avoid using google services if you want.

My overall experience with android is kind of mixed tbh. I don't love it like I do with WP, but the app situation is a night and day difference. I have every app I could ever want on android, and looking back to WP makes me realise just how much I was actually missing out on. Even where WP has the same apps, the degree of functionality they offer is so much less than the android equivalents. Moreover the overall functionality of android is so much better than with WP. Little things like being able to play youtube videos in a little popup player whilst doing other stuff (look for FloatTube). The hardware is also pretty impressive - 5.5 inch 1080p screen, a snapdragon 615, 2gb of ram, 16gb of storage, a 13mp camera and 4G for ?110. The design of the phone is boring but that doesn't matter anyway given that it has a case on it.

Yet I always have this worry in the back of my mind about whether what I'm doing is really secure or not, which isn't something I've ever felt on WP. I don't want to root my android phone for precisely that reason - I just don't know if its genuinely safe or not. If WP ever catches up to android in app terms I'd go back to it in a heartbeat, but for now only android really meets my needs.

 

[nynamyna]

Thanks for all the tips. I finally returned my galaxy edge plus and I am using my Lumia 1520

 

[slimchap]

What MS has to do apart from app gap is get a great marketing team. It already has an awesome OS.

If only MS can make me their Windows Phone Chief Executive Marketer in Nigeria, I promise to take the whole country for Windows