I haven't used win10 m yet, but it will be my next phone. I've been an android user (still use the tablets), and then a bb10 user (that runs android apps).
So instead of directly compare, which I can only do once I have tried win10m (Something I am glad that I will have the luxury of doing when the app store is likely to grow, and the possibly game changing for windows Cortana skills api is on its way) - I'll just describe my journey of disenchantment with android.
At first like most users I imagine, I was taken in by all the options for apps in the playstore, and the selection of launchers for customizing UI. I enjoyed the ability to root android, and get under the hood a little, change settings and so on, do backups, adjust partitions - some of those techy things I like to do to tweak experience and performance on windows machines.
The first that reared its head, was those launchers everyone loves - well they are literally the first thing to crash. Yes, it may reboot itself, as a default, but those things are as buggy as file explorer in windows 98. They are also pretty samey. You don't get wild control over how you access the internal system, it merely controls how you access apps and app folders. Which makes it functionally like an app launcher in windows, despite its effect on the appearance. It got dull.
The app selection, will I was very impressed with it at first, it turned out all that software was largely of an extremely low quality. Most of it was based around advertising, like the operating system and google ecosystem itself. It made the experience of using an android phone comparable to watching free to air tv, filled with continual little disappointments and blemishes to the experience. Some small number of apps won't run on all devices - there is very little development budget so supporting a variety of hardware is just not commercially of interest. Basically, if you want an app, and it doesn't work, nobody cares.
Between games that juice for cash, and apps that pop up advertsing, and the model of data collection and advertising the whole platform of google represents, I became quickly disatistfied. The platform, also felt like...it was designed for dumb people. Like the devolution of the personal computer. And not in a natural interaction sense of conversation, or intuitive gestures or hand movements. It was simple to grasp, but also messy and not natural at the same time. The UI of windows seems more 'centralised' and well organised IMO. (Not that everything is - the 2d the folder system we use for files - it was nothing like actually using a real folder, where spacial memory and special logic apply, there is much in computers that deserves being completely re-thought out from stratch).
The games were by and large pretty aweful, apart from the odd title, and some windows ports.
Touch itself, is a fatiguing motion, squinting at a tiny screen, less than healthy for the eyes. I came to value the tablet experience, as a very casual form of computing, over highly active use of a phone all day long. The phone being something I tend to use more now for checking emails or playing music than actively using for longer periods. Check or do, then move on. It gets little action unless I am using navigation or suddenly need to research something in the browser.
It was after I moved to bb10 (still on android with some tablets), that I finally realised, even with the ability to install many dozens of apps, something I often rushed to - I only used a small handful of them, basically, ever.
The more intuitive gesture system of bb10 (which windows 10 has now, as to a more limited degree does android), the centralised hub over the hodgepodge of android notifications, the ability to real time multi-tasking (which I realise no other mobile OS has), these helped re-inforce how hodgepodge the android UI was.
While you can now filter notifications with more control, and get them on glance, it still seems less than ideal for tracking vital messages and so on - why even mix "you've got an email" with "some stupid thing has updated and who cares" in the first place? And why put it on a top swipe down that is easy to mistrigger?. It lacks the simple, easy to trigger side of screen swype elegancy that BB10 and now windows 10 has (for things like the hub, close app, or in windows the task manager), even if it does use some of these motions, they seem poorly implemented by comparison.
And having installed what seems now like WAAAY too many apps on every device I've owned, getting excited about the possibility of doing this, and doing that, only to find, actually that's like ordering a lathing kit, a birdhouse DIY kit, an ab cruncher and a digital photograph keyring from ebay, for all the actual use I get out of it. Whether its pokemon go, or some new redundant chat platform that makes icq look dated, share economies that represent a falling of quality of service and regulation as much as they do a saving in pennies, a lot of it seems like hot air to me now.
And touch tech seems so thoroughly old hat to be now, I can barely understand the excitement which some older people approach apps and so on. Even how some people get excited about phones. They ain't flying cars. It's nice. Its a new toy. The novelty will wear off, and odds are it won't change your life.
My little BB, I'm keeping. Even when apps no longer work. You know why? that tiny little keyboard has been more use to be sending vital emails and texts, than fifty apps. And that's in an age where the hardkeyboard is a "spiffy new feature" on a tablet, but "an old dried up dustball' on a phone. Honestly people a f'n bizzare.
It occurs to me even, that with the limited number of thing I do, perhaps most people really don't even need an app store. Just basic tasks - browser, email, wifi chat, banking, gps, calculator, photo editor, social apps. Sure the other's might be handy to some, perhaps even very functional, but at least somewhat overrated, for having as options.
And when I saw googles more recent moves, to increase search result advertising, push away windows customers by making no UWPs and pulling chrome apps - annoying in your face stuff like popups on google search and youtube "recommending" chrome, I could see a creep that was impossible to deny.
Like 30 second advertising breaks on free-to-air tv turning into two minutes, the advertising model of google, with a totally captive and quite dependant audience would only turn into a monster the more you fed it. A slow creep of "how the heck did we end up here", that will eventually dawn on everyone, the way it did with free to air being replaced by cable, streaming and so on.
bb10 of course was lovely. A bit simple, but for a phone that's kind of expected for whatever reasons. But a fluid and intuitive user experience. But of course, with it no longer supported, the 4.4 android runtime will soon run its clock.
And as I mentioned I use like, hang on, let me count them. 6 installed rather than native apps. One of the only because aliexpress offers shopping specials via the app (its horrible to use next to tablet or desktop, so I select on that, and then switch to the phone to use the discount. lol really, the app is AWFUL, and very few people actually buy things via phones, according to market research). Most of the apps on by phone sit their like rows of cans of preserved food in a doomsday preppers basement waiting for a day that never comes. Like a cat lady waiting for her date.
I do get a lot more use out of apps on my windows tablet, and desktop, largely because those experiences are more enjoyable. My phone as exciting as phones sometimes seem to many, as a sort of boring tool device, that occasionally lets me waste time in a generally still dull way with the odd bus stop game, or social app.
My tablet my comparison is thoroughly exciting to me - the casual magazine like experience of browsing or social networking whilst reclining in bed, or on the sofa, entertainment on screen sizes I enjoy, games that wipe the floor with freemium android offerings.
I won't discount some useful things that software model has brought about. Ubers for people who get drunk in town, but don't mind a bit of touchy feely on the way home. Strangers basements to stay in whilst travelling. Nifty little apps that change your voice into a rap, or add rabbit ears to your photo (okay no I am kidding, there are some useful functions, for people who get use out of those functions)
But it feels like a phase. A phase that degrades in quality the more you use it. Like broadcast TV. Or facebook.
So I look to someone with a preferable vision of the future than that, or the jailcell apple proposes.
Although I watch the world with its move towards , say something like smart homes. And in the same way cars supplant walking, phones supplant having a sense of direction and to some degree in person friendship (and supplant a tolerance of silence and inactivity with an eternal restlessness of the heart),
I see smart homes eventually robbing people of the sheer will and know how to turn on a light switch. I see technology designed for convenience basically making people fat, stupid and incapable, in the very long term. A dystopia brought on by creature comfort desires. And I am a big fan of technology - It's just a shame technology isn't designed for us, in terms of out psychological, biological and evolutionary needs - but rather we are expected to adapt to it (impossible as that is without survival pressures), with the honey cloying call of "do less, think less, move less, speak less, we'll handle that" ringing in the ears of chronically overworked consumers grinding in a captalistic engine that thrives more on competition that quality or efficiency of outcome.
So while I'd like to be optimistic MS has a better vision for the technological future for consumers - I am not sure that consumer driven markets are capable of making the right choices for themselves, any more than a truck sized fat person has any likelihood of turning down that next slice of pizza or pie.
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