My One week Android project....

[blackfire]

Thanks for the updates. I'm test driving the new iPhone 6s Plus, but I'm keeping my HTC One M8 for Windows to play with Windows 10 Mobile and see how things evolve. I agree that apps really feel years ahead on iPhone or Android. Very polished experience; but I really do miss Cortana and being able to reply to texts as I receive them (as you mentioned earlier). In general, Siri is not as bad as I initially thought for when I need to initiate an action (saying "Hey Siri" has never failed so far). Also, if I can add some subjectivity, I like Cortana's voice a lot more than Siri's.

I hate that almost every picture go to Camera Roll on the iPhone. Even pictures I receive from WhatsApp. Feels pretty dumb in my opinion. OneDrive integration in Windows Phone is certainly better than on the iPhone, but at least usability is acceptable.

But as you say... the apps... it was (and still is) a huge reality check. I was one of those who usually say "I have all apps I needed", until I started downloading apps on the iPhone and started noticing the experience is quite better than using a mobile browser. I really hope Microsoft attract more developers with their bridges for apps from other platforms. As you can see on my signature, I'm mostly a Windows guy too. I'm almost certain I'll come back later on, and hope things are even better then. For now, I think I'm keeping the iPhone 6s+ this time around.

Good luck with your test drive, and let us know what you end up doing; if selling it as you said or changing your mind to keep it.

 

[realwarder]

But, that is what it IS about....Talk to anyone with an iPhone, or Android, it's all about the apps. It's also the reason why I am giving Android a test to see if it's actually better on the other side. And Microsoft knows this...

We used to have some of the apps that I wanted but, they got pulled at one point or another but, If they are giving us a updated Tune in on WIndows 10....when is the next time it's updated when WIndows 11 comes out (and we know that is NOT coming anytime soon)?

After all, on Tune in, I think it's the same app that we got back on Windows phone 7 (there is a LOT of apps like that, in the marketplace and NEVER updated)

I know... I was saying that tongue in cheek. We all know that other platforms have more refined apps. So it's down to how you use a phone. For me the core functionality is the most important. I'm not on Facebook. I don't care if twitter is a little clunky as I can still read a news feed perfectly ok. I'm not needing Tinder. I definitely don't have a need for SnapChat. Etc. If I can take some nice photos, find a way somewhere when lost or travelling, price check and read the news and email then I'm happy. Oh, and play a few small games to waste some time. I can do all that perfectly on Windows Phone. If I was a young single person I'd want more apps. But I'm not anymore.

So there you go. Windows phone is best for the family or older person, not for the young. So all you have to do if reading is work out which camp you're in. That is until Microsoft get some top companies to use the bridges to bring their apps (the ones I listed at minimum) to WM10.

(Of course if you're a parent and don't want your kid on SnapChat and don't want to pay out $700 for a phone to have it broken a week later, that's another great market for a totally usable and virtually disposable $79 WP.)

Sorry, getting OT although this is kind of foundational as you say. It sounds like Cortana is a strength of WP. I find her incredibly useful and getting more powerful by the month. Good to hear that despite the apps being weak, that other core functionality like Outlook and Cortana really are better on Windows.

 

[DavidinCT]

This is one area where WP easily beats Android. Android does have a built in function that will read texts to you and allow hands free operation. It is in Settings > Accessibility > TalkBack. The caveat is that TalkBack is designed for the vision impaired, and it will say aloud everything that happens, such as taps. However, I believe it will do what you want..

Wow that lasted about 20 seconds before I disabled that. I can see the use for blind people but, for people that are not blind, its the most ANNOYING feature I have ever seen. Just touching any thing it would say what your doing (as you said), I would not even be able to use my phone in public with that feature on !!!!

Otherwise, there are apps! Motorola has Moto Assist, which is brilliant. My wife has a Moto X, and her phone does what WP does as far as reading texts and offering total hands free operation. It switches on automatically while driving. However, it is not a built in Android feature, but rather Motorola. There is at least one good app that emulates Moto Assist pretty well, called Agent. It is free in the Play Store for trial, with an IAP upgrade. And FWIW, it was last updated 3 days ago! Agent - Play Store

If you miss Live Tiles and/or do not like the sea of icons, have you tried using widgets? In my opinion they're Live Tiles on steroids. I like them much better, since they're actionable.

Edit: Checked out agent in the store, I installed it right away(looks like it will do what I want, thanks!) at work but, maybe I will play with it tonight.

I will check it out, thanks ! Reading and replying to texts via voice is something I really could use. After having Cortana for so long, it's an EXPECTED feature. I guess sometimes the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Apps, Apps, Apps is one of the reasons I have been using the phone this long, It's really shocking how poor Windows Phone is on this aspect in a lot of areas. Even the facebook app is worlds better, the WP version just got updated, after years and I dont think it's even close to the Android or iOS version (my wife has an iPhone so I play time to time as she shows me a lot on her facebook profile) and this is just 1 example out of the 20 or so apps I installed on my LG G3.

There are + and - to each of them. Tomorrow is my 1 week. I will give a report later tonight but, I think there is more I need to try to play with.

 

[DavidinCT]

OK, after a little more than a week with Android and My LG G3 phone, I think I am going back to Windows Phone...

The Hardware Verizon LG G3 in White.
The Phone itself, as I said before, spec wise is a really nice phone, hardware is nice, display is pretty awesome and the camera does a great job, close to what the Icon can do. It's thinner than the ICON and a little sexier in some aspects. WITH this being said, I am putting this in hardware, not software (but it could be), Charging sucks on it, With a standard charger (about a year or 2 old, USB based charger), it slow charges, no way around it, what I mean is, when I put my phone on the charger when I go to bed with 14% left, I wake up 7 hours later with the phone on the charger every moment, it's at 28%...WTF ? Using a Quick Charge 2.0 car charger, on the way to work (a hair over a hour ride), it will take the 20% (after a little use in the morning) and bring it to 85ish %... With the ICON and a standard charger, it would be 100% over night.

Phone calls seemed good but, quality from people I called, not as good as my ICON, people complained they could not hear me, unless my mouth was right on the phone. One night I dropped my SIM back into my ICON just to make a few calls, then swapped it back.

The software.
Now, this is OUT OF THE BOX, no mods, no rooting, No 3rd party interfaces on it. I honestly think Android is a mess. What I mean, it just seems like the OS was patched from other OS's to make it what it is (something like I remember from WM days, where HTC would put their Sense interface over it and it did more bad then good on a lesser CPU'd phone). And understanding how android is setup for each OEM, I guess my feeling here is right.

The layout is what I mean as all over the place, different screens, different "desktops" (if that is what they are called), I have 3-4 screens by default by swiping left to right but, these have nothing in them till you go to your "ALL APPS" to move ones you want. So even on this, you have many places to find your apps and you could install 10 apps and you could totally forget about them, completely hidden from day to day view with no way to access them unless you dig in a little deeper.

One major annoyance that I found was AS DEFAULT, a notification, is a notification, is a notification, what I mean here is, a notification sound would pop up with the same sound for EVERYTHING. So, If I get a email, I would get a Ding !, if I got a text, I got the SAME DING and if I got a Facebook post, I would get the SAME DING. SO after a while, I kind of got numb to this sound, as I get a LOT of email from work, and a FEW times, my wife would be texting me, and I would not even hear it thinking it was an email (lots of fights).

I also found the OS, a little laggy after about 2 days, If I opened an app, it was there in the background and does not close. So I have to remember to go into it (LG has a button just for that)and close every app I open or there is a HIT on battery life. After about 2 days, some things just stopped working, after a reboot, all was good again. Tweaking things, like apps and disabling apps I didn't want (cant uninstall them) So hardware or software, or just Android, there is something really wrong in this aspect.

Other things are normal complaints with a carrier's version of Android...like I CAN'T uninstall VZW Navigator ? Really ?

Now Not is all bad...

Once the layout was setup and I figured out some things, Email was where I wanted, I got a ICON with a number on it showing how many new emails for all 4 accounts, and texts would show up with all my Twitter and Facebook notifications (something I expected from ANY smartphone), the 2nd page, I got rid of Amazon and put in my Calendar and it was nice to have there. Most features were there that I expecting in a smart phone and for the most part, everything I NEEDED to do, could be done fairly quickly and with very little issues.

There is a lot of customization options and as said above, sharing content aspect was really cool but, I found that it's nice to have all these options but, 4-5 of them is all I needed and I do have that with WP.

The built in apps were over all pretty good and I did not find myself disappointed at all for the most point, If you expected a morning alarm, the one built in, for the most part, they all worked pretty good and same across the board , one to come to mind is the "Play Newsstand" for "news" this app was epic, the PERFECT news reader that I never tried to customize but, the default options it was great for morning news (Is there a mirrored program like this for WP ?).

The app store, yea, no question, it BLOWS away Windows Phone on this aspect, the apps, the options, WP is a joke compared to it... WOW, I can get my bank's app (that was yanked from WP) again and DEPOSIT CHECKS using the camera again ? Oh, I can get my local TV station's app that shows weather and traffic ? Cool, and I can even get a Dish Network Sling app, so I can watch my DVR'd shows where ever I go ? Really ? The Pizza place down the road even has a Android app, WP ? LOL Oh, I have been missing so much by owing a Windows Phone device. How epic this is to have ACESS to this many apps, it's just a understatement. WP has a good selection, don't get me wrong but, when you get into the local app thing, or even specialty stuff, it cant even come close.

If Windows Phone was to go away for good, as MS dumped it and there was no choice but to grab another phone. Android would be an option, I see why people feel they need to "ROOT" their device and tweak them. Out of the box, Android would not be the PERFECT fit for me, after browsing some of the "rom sites" and seeing the features, I could see I could spend weeks getting a rom to do what I want to do and make an Android phone what I want.

Not sure I can BASH a Android device any more, It was not a bad week, I was able to do what I wanted and NEEDED to do. Now to go back to WP and besides the Apps, was there anything I will miss from Android...

Feel free to comment, I was thinking about if I can find, and do this with a iOS device too...

 

[realwarder]

Somethings sound pretty fundamental - not charging a phone overnight. Perhaps something is wrong with that phone charger and it's using the slow 500mA charge rate?

I'm hoping that we can get apps like your local Pizza app using the Android emulation soon... not that I need an app as I already order Papa Johns and Dominos from my WP, but some people want an app for everything in life.

Security is my biggest issue with Android, with a billion vulnerable phones out there and few ever updated, makes me nervous.

Now to hear how iOS compares would be interesting. That is more secure and closer to Windows. (Or perhaps Windows is closer to it.) But it has all the apps. Just quite expensive with limited choice.

 

[mike208]

Wow that lasted about 20 seconds before I disabled that. I can see the use for blind people but, for people that are not blind, its the most ANNOYING feature I have ever seen. Just touching any thing it would say what your doing (as you said), I would not even be able to use my phone in public with that feature on !!!!



Edit: Checked out agent in the store, I installed it right away(looks like it will do what I want, thanks!) at work but, maybe I will play with it tonight.

I will check it out, thanks ! Reading and replying to texts via voice is something I really could use. After having Cortana for so long, it's an EXPECTED feature. I guess sometimes the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Apps, Apps, Apps is one of the reasons I have been using the phone this long, It's really shocking how poor Windows Phone is on this aspect in a lot of areas. Even the facebook app is worlds better, the WP version just got updated, after years and I dont think it's even close to the Android or iOS version (my wife has an iPhone so I play time to time as she shows me a lot on her facebook profile) and this is just 1 example out of the 20 or so apps I installed on my LG G3.

There are + and - to each of them. Tomorrow is my 1 week. I will give a report later tonight but, I think there is more I need to try to play with.

Sorry to bump up an old thread, especially since your trial of android is over, but...
I am coming at it from the other side(android to windows phone) maybe I need to start my own thread, I hadn't considered that till I saw yours. I came to windows phone because live tiles interest me and I wanted a tighter integration with my PC/laptop. I agree windows phone may be easier to use for a new user, but both OS's require a learning curve. I quoted this post of yours specifically because I am curious about having cortana read my texts. I can certainly google(or do I have to say bing on a windows forum lol) how to turn that feature on, but for me it is not on by default and did not easily make itself known this could be done. Totally not trying to start anything, as I really like both windows and android and don't think I have a reason to "bash" either of them. Just saying that saying one is easier to use than the other when you are more familiar with one isn't really fair, and again I agreed that windows may be easier, just saying both have a steep learning curve if you really want to learn the ins and outs of them.

Widgets(and 3rd party launchers) on android for example, I know if I take the time, I can make android have most of the functionality of windows live tiles by using widgets and maybe a 3rd party launcher. But that requires a lot of knowledge of android to make it come close to what live tiles can do. That being said in a lot of ways widgets can do some things better than live tiles.

Me personally(rocking a verizon icon) I got bored with windows phone 8.1 pretty quickly, the live tiles are cool, but it just seemed like it was lacking some features, let alone apps(I knew about the apps, and can live with it for the most part). So I put 1 of the later builds of W10M(only 1 or 2 versions older than current) and that definitely made some things better, but still its missing some stuff I think a phone should have by now. I know its still a work in progress and correct me if i am wrong, but I just noticed yesterday I can't customize sounds for individual contacts. Now I do believe this was available in 8.1, so I assume its just a work in progress to get it back into 10, but seems wrong to release an OS without that feature especially when your older version had it. I am happy to see they updated the facebook app, its much better than the previous version, but I still fee like it only shows me half of what the android app does and I can't figure out why.

Back to live tiles, I use the flipboard wide tile, on android with the widget if its showing an article I like I click it and it takes me to that article. On WP it just opens flipboard and then I have to find the article. Maybe this is an issue with the flipboard app on WP, maybe its an issue with the OS. Either way I just feel like WP is missing some of the polish of android(I haven't used iOS much).

I have been on this icon for a month now I think, definitely not giving up on it. But one odd thing about being on these forums is how often I hear people say how Microsofts own apps are better on android an iPhone, it is starting to make me wonder what the point of WP is, and MS doesn't seem to be doing much to help its case. That being said I am still curious about W10M and how it works with Windows 10 on PC. I like that my cortana reminders show up on the PC and I think i read I can get and possibly respond to texts on my computer, haven't looked into that much yet. So i am still very open to the idea of WP. I do think it would be cool to see MS buy out or partner with cyanogen and bring the windows phone live tile UI to an android environment and work out the same PC integration, or rather if they can really get universal apps and more developers that would be fine too, but again it seems like they are shooting themselves int he foot already with that.

Anyway, thanks for your post, I may go ahead and make one of my own. Coming at it with a months experience already may prove helpful, but I still have a lot to learn it seems.

 

[DavidinCT]

Sorry to the above, I didn't know someone replied to it....

Anyway, I am now back on my LG G3 for over a week now. After Microsoft pretty much screwing Nokia ICON users by not offering the W10m upgrade while they gave the 930 (same phone) the upgrade on the first batch. I am beyond pissed off about it.

Wireless Charging works great now, No problem with charging the phone. My whole setup at home with QI chargers works perfect for this phone. I got everything running on it, Tap to pay is working and my local coffee shop that I visit ever morning accepts it now, so I use it a lot.

I guess if they ICON gets w10m I might go back but, I think I am sticking with this LG for a while for now.... Maybe the X3 will come to Verizon then I will be back.

anyway about it, Microsoft has been saying "Tap to Pay" is coming for over 2 years now and we still dont have it, that might be my only hold up to go back.