My windows vs Android experience

[docsp1]

MS's incompetence in the mobile space is amazing! I switched to the iPhone when Nadella was accepted as ceo, fired Elop and team, and tried to attract Android users by changing WP UI language. Today, love iPhone and will never go back to wp. Regarding Nadella, he does not know anything mobile! His head will always be in the cloud. By destroying wp, he also destroyed the trust of major Devs and WP users. Trying to get back he will climb a way steeper hill.

Nadella, he is the only revenue interested culprit.

 

[etphoto]

I kind of like reading the complaints about Android. Kind of feel good about the people that saw greener pasters and left. So now some are missing W10M. Makes me feel a little better about staying where I am until, like with WebOS, I am forced to leave.

Twitter: @PhotographyET

 

[Cynical_Assault]

I've been with WP for seven years and have loved every moment of it. In my opinion, W10M is the most crisp, quick, and slick version of Windows. It's not 100% perfect, I really wished this current version of WP was a mix of W10M and WP8.1, but it's still excellent as it is.

The app gap never bothered me. I don't need Snapchat to talk or do whatever people do with Snapchat (I assume they take pictures and send them to each other? I can do that with the texting app or just use Facebook). Speaking of Facebook, the W10M FB app has worked flawlessly for me. It was watered down and buggy with the previous OS versions, but this one is damn near perfect in my opinion. I don't use NFC or any wallet type of program to make payments, I don't necessarily trust them. I'm perfectly fine paying things the old fashioned way. I don't care if my bank doesn't offer an app for my OS, the site loads and looks great in Edge. Any other apps I need, I have. Any apps that aren't available are made by third party devs, and most work well. For instance, once Google blocked Microsoft's use of a Youtube app, I found MetroTube. It's a great third party Youtube app that lets you download videos, play audio when the screen is locked, and the UI of the app looks and feels great (aside from a few glitches I've seen in the past, but I haven't noticed them at all lately).

I've dabbled with Android and Apple in the past (my ex's S3, Mini, 4, 6, 7 and a friend's iPhone), and I hated all of them immensely. Clunky UI, important settings hidden and not readily accessible, extreme glitches and lag, rebooting, viruses, hacking, and general disorganization were what made me realize I made the best choice by sticking with WP for all these years. I had some of those problems on WP but not near the extent I had found on the others. In fact, my ex who was a diehard Galaxy fangirl once told me she was jealous of my phone's seamless functionality. The app gap was the biggest problem for her, but she liked the live tiles and thought the UI in general was superior to anything Android had to offer.

I'm using an Idol 4S that I picked up last Friday (upgraded from my beat up HTC One M8) and I'm in love with this thing. It's not quite been a week yet so I know I could be in for some disappointing behavior from it at some point, but so far it's a rock solid performer. It's clean, it looks absolutely beautiful, and it works amazingly each time I use it. I've gotten the Incipio dual hardshell case (with the rubber inner casing) on it and it looks damn sexy. It hasn't been long, but experience with it has put it as a major contender against the 1520 as my favorite phone ever.

Of course I'd be heart broken if Microsoft dropped the hatchet on WP altogether, but I wouldn't leave. I don't need to. It's not like my Idol 4s will suddenly shut down forever once support is dropped. The phone is stellar and so is the OS. It's absolutely fine the way it is. I'm hopeful that MS has something in store for us pretty soon, and my gut tells me they do. But either way, I'm fine in my own little world. Yall have fun jumping ship.

 

[Mihai N]

I was forced by the situation to give my Lumia 735 to family and ended up buying a mid-range Android. So far there are both positive and negative points.
Syncing your Outlook contacts is not working at all on Android 7 and I will be forced to save all of them manually.
For games I don't have any saves when I connect the FB account in Asphalt 8 and I miss that game.
For other apps, there are only a few I'm using that were not on Windows. Groove for example is missing and even on L735 the pass was not available here. Opera with built in ad-blocker is great, FB Messenger is not often used but it works proper compared with the slow and large Windows version, Windows Central looked better on W10M, the 3rd party Tumblr app had few features that were very useful and I miss them. Having torrent apps is a plus though using it a lot for TV series.
The keyboard prediction layout are also very annoying on Android(7 in my case) compared to MS' Word Flow because there are only 3 words on one row and no ability to slide the row left-right. Not to mention that both default and SwiftKey add another space in you sentence if you correct a word.
Also there seem to absolutely no equalizer in sound settings whatsoever, only in some apps if you're lucky.
The search bar is also annoying and always open it instead of action center.
If you have a SD card it doesn't work properly unless you set it as internal shared storage. I miss the storage settings from W10M, not this mess where you have tons of folders in other folders and you don't know where an app saved the files.

 

[FearL0rd]

I bought a cheap decide LeEco Pro 3 and the performance is great. My wife change to S7 and it has a lot of Samsung unique things.

Things I missed. Facebook contacts picture sync. Outlook contracts doest work properly. I can't save contact. I will be ending switch to Gmail because of this..

I like better Windows Mobile but I'm very happy with Android because of the Store. WM store is a joke.

 

[anon(50597)]

I came from Android to W10M, so what does that tell ya? Couldn't be happier with my choice.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4

 

[FearL0rd]

Soon you will have no updates and apps. Im pissed because I bought 950 with the dock and everything

 

[anon(50597)]

Soon you will have no updates and apps. Im pissed because I bought 950 with the dock and everything

What do you mean by soon? Certainly not the next few years. No reason to panic.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4

 

[beman39]

I hate to admit it but I am feeling the app gap a bit and I'm missing my music streaming apps like slacker radio, BUT and a big but is that android might have a gazillion apps which are mostly the same apps just regurgitated ones and (ALL) every single one is spyware! they ALL ask for permission to have access to your IDENTITY, cameras, mics, contacts, emails, SMS, photos/media files, calendar and a plethora of other privacy invasive stuff! just as an example I wanted to install windows tiles launcher app called squarehome 2 so my spydroid can at least feel like my L950 and wm10 and it wanted access to everything! EVERYTHING!!! how in da hell can you spydroid fans or users put up with this crap? are you so desperate to have apps that your willing to give up your privacy and have your lives spied on? REALLY??? not including every person on your contacts is now on a data base... sorry but I would rather be missing some Apps than give up my privacy... then lets not forget the unscrupulous amounts of ads that we are bombarded with in these said apps, sorry but I get enough of that crap when I go on the internet... so for as long as I can I'm gonna stick with my L950... till I can get me either a HP Elite X3 or the new surface phone or whatever they plan on calling it...

 

[beman39]

Soon you will have no updates and apps. Im pissed because I bought 950 with the dock and everything

dear lord! exaggerate much? trust me that won't be for awhile....

 

[Clive Rennie]

I'm using the Oneplus 3T midnight black 128 and I love the device using dark mode plus you can switch the accent color to whatever you like I'm using green right now. Arow Launcher with Microsoft apps Groove News and other ms apps but I still return to my Hp Elite X3 but I love the 3t so its the best of both worlds for me right now. Microsoft should have partnered with Oneplus instead of Samsung the phone is perfect for Windows fans in my opinion.

 

[Drael646464]

Simply put, as people transition to Android or iPhones, the app gap will become noticed more and more. This will prevent people from coming back to W10Mobile. So, MS did themselves a disservice by not even attempting to keep people invested in W10M.

Why? The UWP isn't a mobile phone platform.

 

[slivy58]

I've been running Android for some time, like 13/18 months respectively for my GS7 and LG G4. Personally it has been very stable, predictable, consistent, with no app-gap issues per se. In those time periods only one reset for each, ever, and no noticeable degradation in performance either after many months of use. Overall real happy with my experience on Droid, and no I am not insinuating they are perfect but they have worked out well for me... Was a Droid user "back when" too so we're not new to the platform.

On the WM front, have the 830, 650 and 950. Lots to like yet finding the app-gap has began to infringed on my daily needs/wants. Also finding the performance of the 950 not living up to "my" expectations and put the blame mostly on the OS for this one.The 650 ended up being my best ergonomic phone of all time (size/weight) and still is, just too bad its low specs along with the OS don't quite do it justice, at the moment it's still a capable phone though. Not much to say about our ol' 830 other than it's still handling 10 well, and camera has been it's strongest asset for me.

At the present time I'm pretty confident in saying, Android will be my go-to phone of choice in the coming future, that which I'll depend on the most to get the job done. WM, weeell, we like to revisit often, yet unless there are some drastic changes I can't see much hope this fella will be investing in another.

 

[toddpart]

Start screen: Yes, I miss square tiles on windows, but there is a decent replacement that the developer can make nearly perfect with some tweaks. My home screen is a nice vertical scroll with low energy widgets. Even the icons for some apps will flip and show the notification content, others show the count. Swipe to the right and then I have the vertical list of apps (this is what needs work, there’s no jump list). MS dropped the ball on interactive/exploding tiles IMO. Maybe this is coming at build this year. I think this would make the live tiles much more useful both on mobile and on desktop where I think they are useless currently. Power users don’t open their start window more than for

Thanks for this thread. I've recently put aside my 950 and been trying out a S8 for the last week. I've been on WinMobile since my Cingular 8525...so, a LONG time

I'm interested to hear more about the launcher and widgets you reference. I took a lot of time last weekend really de-googlefying my S8. While I'm now running as much of an MS experience on Android as I could get setup (Outlook, Cortana, Onedrive, Office, Groove, Arrow launcher, OneNote, To-Do, Skype Preview and Skype for Business, MSN News, MSN Money, MSN Sports, etc.) but....I REALLY miss Live Tiles and UI consistency. Can you share detail, maybe a screenshot, of what you've done with your UX?

 

[jlangner]

Switched from 950xl to Pixel XL...Love it. Don't get me wrong, I loved WM from HTC 8x onward. Everyone always says lack of apps is no big deal, sorry but I love all of the apps available, stability of 7.1.2 and the Pixel has one of the best cameras around. No regrets. Wife converted to Galaxy 7 Edge, loves as well.

 

[Asybuhari Hakim Mohamed Johari]

Just returned back on W10Mobile this week . Its my trusted Lumia 430 (previously Lumia 1320)


To recap I use my smartphone just for calls/text, social media interactions (Only Facebook and its Messenger, LinkedIn & Whatsapp) and general browsing. My experience ranged from Symbian S60+ (Nokia E63) to Android Froyo (Galaxy Ace) to Windows 8.0 onwards with Lumia 1320 and Lumia 430

Even after I've replaced my L1320 (2015, when it flung by my baby girl out of the window) with L430 (it was the only ones that I can afford), it was more than adequate. The fluidity/stability of Win 8.1 Mobile remains the same, whether on Snapdragon 400 (L1320) or the Snapdragon 200 (L430)

Then W10Mobile came, it nearly destroyed my faith in Microsoft. It stutters a lot, but I persevere... the UI (with its live tiles) got me hooked... It was partially saved when Anniversary Update came. Although the phone stabilize (i.e. no frequent reboot required) but the fluidity were gone.... not to mentioned that the new Facebook app requires at least 2GB of RAM to work properly

Then came 2017, where I direly needed to be in Uber's Partner program to boost my earnings, that I made the tough choice of moving to Android (Alcatel Flash Plus 2 running Marshmallow 6.0).

Although it was running fine (the 32GB internal + 3 GB RAM ensures that), it still miss something. The notifications were cluttered and I have to open app just to get a glance of information it offers... something Win Mobiles offers in a glance with its Live Tiles.

To cut the story short, The Uber Partner program was not for me + my wife's Android phone are dying... so I just flip the Flash to her and finds myself back into my trusty L430. This time, committed to the Insider Program (Slow ring), it manage to install Creator Update, and it was a God sent! It improved the stability a lot...

Sorry for the long story... but what I learn by flipping into Android is that although the app store contains gazillion apps than Windows own, all of the app that I need also available as well on W10M.... Yeah, the Facebook app still irritates me, but now I'm using Slimsocial for facebook access so I'm well off (I can live without its notifications anyway)

For me, I don't need the Continuum or Cortana (since my region is not supported anyway)... so the L430 worked well for me for now... here's hoping that at least there some sliver of hope that somehow... just somehow a sub-$250 windows phone running Win10M (or Win10onARM or what have you) with 2GB RAM will surface soon (no puns intended)

or... that I can scrounge enough to get me Lumia 950 or HP x3 (Alcatel Idol not available in my region) before my L430 melts anytime soon....

 

[docsp1]

Windows Mobile "Less is More"

 

[PerfectReign]

Noticed an odd thing on the way home today. I had my X3 running Waze and streaming an Audible book. Plugged in my S6, and the car decided to cut the Bluetooth off from my X3 and start Android Auto. Ugh.

Sent from mTalk

 

[Edward Baylon]

I really love the UI of Windows Phone, its functional and informative at the same time. I started with android on smartphones then bought a second hand windows phone and good lord I was amaze how smooth this OS is, it just works and I feel comfortable, I love how more of swiping gesture and navigation the OS has compared to click and tap of other OS. I even sales talk my family and friends. Now my brother an android user always tells me how he miss the look and feel of windows phone and its apps. We had the same gripe why we switch, apps. But if this OS will be resurrected with bountiful app support I will really jump the gun. Really hoping for its resurrection since I feel great using it. Currently looking at Sailfish OS because of the full swiping and hand gesture navigation with out clicking navigation. If ever Windows mobile will be resurrected please look how Sailfish OS do its navigation it feels good and futuristic, this is what touch screens are mad for.

 

[Urbautz]

Has anybody of you tried the "Tiles"-Launchers that are offered? Do they clean up the Android-UI-Mess at least a little bit?