My windows vs Android experience

[Mark Richey]

Love the Arrow Launcher. In the Beta program and so I get the latest and greatest. Funny how you settled on Textra as well. I do miss my live tiles though.

Good luck with your Android.

 

[PerfectReign]

Company usage:
PC & Windows phone - from HP! - or Mac & iPhone from Apple

Um a Mac == a PC. It just runs Unix instead of Windows.

Sent from mTalk

 

[Rhody#WP]

I had many Windows phones. I started with WP7 and upgraded to Lumia 920 and 1020. I dabbled with the OnePlus 1 and then went back to a Lumia 950. When I see other people with all the apps, especially my son, I get tempted to try Android. Now, I'm running a Samsung S7 Edge.

I want to love Microsoft products. I have a Surface Pro 3 and an Xbox One. It is nice to have everything unified. I'm not even a power user. I don't use social media. I use very few apps. I don't even care about NFC payment; a credit card is just as easy to use as a phone. I will never own a smart watch or fitness band or any other connected device. But there are some things that are very convenient to use while mobile, such as Uber and Lyft, Yelp, HappyCow and IsItVegan, mobile deposit in banking apps, etc.

Android is fine. Its aesthetics do not fit my preferences, but it works fine. My S7 Edge, however, bugs me. The WiFi hardly ever connects automatically when I travel between home and work, but it does almost always disconnect automatically. It does not have USB C, which is tolerable because of the wireless charging. It doesn't read texts through bluetooth without an app that is unreliable at best. I don't know why, but I find the UI design silly looking. The cartoonish icons and block backgrounds turn me off. I managed to use Nova launcher and Zooper Widget Pro to get a UI that looks very good, but for some reason it still bugs me.

I will probably go back and forth between my Lumia 950 and my S7 Edge, but mostly because I have an affinity to W10M.

 

[Rhody#WP]

I don't see the app gap getting solved any time soon, unless we move away from apps entirely, which has been hinted at. UWP will not solve anything. There is no reason to develop a UWP app when your service works fine in a browser. The only reason developers would start writing Windows apps is if the market share of W10M smartphones started to be competitive. The only way I see Microsoft getting an edge in the market is if they do something to disrupt the industry that would make a Microsoft mobile device a hot commodity. Maybe that's something like ditching the candy bar and going straight to wearable or a pocket device without a dedicated screen or who knows? Something! I can tell you what it won't be: it won't be voice or VR. Those are not the future. Voice has privacy concerns, and VR is too cumbersome. If it's AI, then they have some work to do. Maybe they should team up with some partners to tap into the power of the cognitive cloud.

Then again, maybe they should stay right where they are. Minimalism is trending.

 

[Nobby Stiles]

Although right now I am locked into my contract with Windows 10 on a 950xl, I am getting a bit tired of one or two major (in my view) bugs on this phone. The text scaling on MS Edge is horrendous - it is either far too big or far too small and the scaling/text options in Settings don't work for me due to other side effects. This is a basic issue and should be fixed across the board. I have an old iPhone 5s with a 4 inch screen and I have no trouble reading the text on Safari websites. Why can I not read sites on a 5.5 inch Lumia screen?

The app gap hasn't been too much of an issue for me, so is not a pull factor to go back to Android.

All I want, is a phone with a good camera, excellent battery life, that does all the basics well at a mid-range price. I thought the 950xl might do that for me, but it is failing. Next year I think I'll be picking up the BB Keyone. It seems to tick most of the boxes.

I don't think I will miss Live Tiles too much other than the look. I will hate the unholy mess on Android but I am hoping to keep it as simple as I can if I move across. iPhones don't do it for me aside from reliability as they charge too much and the battery is usually only average although the SE looks tempting.

 

[Drael646464]

I don't see the app gap getting solved any time soon, unless we move away from apps entirely, which has been hinted at. UWP will not solve anything. There is no reason to develop a UWP app when your service works fine in a browser. The only reason developers would start writing Windows apps is if the market share of W10M smartphones started to be competitive. The only way I see Microsoft getting an edge in the market is if they do something to disrupt the industry that would make a Microsoft mobile device a hot commodity. Maybe that's something like ditching the candy bar and going straight to wearable or a pocket device without a dedicated screen or who knows? Something! I can tell you what it won't be: it won't be voice or VR. Those are not the future. Voice has privacy concerns, and VR is too cumbersome. If it's AI, then they have some work to do. Maybe they should team up with some partners to tap into the power of the cognitive cloud.

Then again, maybe they should stay right where they are. Minimalism is trending.

Well the smartphone biz is definitely at saturation now in mature markets. Last quarter only growth in budget handsets globally really. Negative growth will sink in soon, and almost everyone will be looking for the next thing.

VR is growing pretty rapidly, though very early. Voice too. I reckon skipping the candybar might be sensible. Watch if its well implemented might gain some traction, but it'd have to be a lot better than the watches so far. Maybe using voice as a secondary input.

Hard agent AI is a long long way off. Although pieces of cognitive code will certainly work their way into heuristic based soft AI, until its primarily learning and as complex as we are, its not true AI (hence it will take many people working together for a long time to make). In the mean time, emulation should get better though, with bits of learning strapped on.

I don't however reckon that the lifeblood of UWP depends on mobile. If it did, there wouldn't be basically any. Its held up by tablets, notebooks etc more than phones. When windows on arm comes about, there will be good reasons to make mobile centric apps for non-smartphone devices, and that should boost the platform reliably, as no doubt the market in the east and west will be flooded with such devices after release.

 

[PerfectReign]

No more crashes and app lags while multi tasking, I mean REAL MULTI TASKING, not the fake one with Windows 10 Mobile.

Remember, Windows Mobile just sucks less than A droid or Ios.


Sent from mTalk

 

[Drael646464]

FYI, no mobile OS other than bb10 has real-time multi-tasking. Android does have an emulation via the ram management service, but it still freezes apps (and it also uses more ram and battery due to doing so)

 

[nate0]

FYI, no mobile OS other than bb10 has real-time multi-tasking. Android does have an emulation via the ram management service, but it still freezes apps (and it also uses more ram and battery due to doing so)

Multi tasking, multi threading and multi processing... I think on background task multi tasking Windows Mobile does a steller job. Push notifications for instance are at least 5 9's reliable. Updates. Not sure if background tasks count though or is this referring to UI experiences/multiwindowing? Sorry I have not read the whole three yet. But what you said is true. iOS is a killer at this and why battery life is excellent on their hw.

 

[Drael646464]

Multi tasking, multi threading and multi processing... I think on background task multi tasking Windows Mobile does a steller job. Push notifications for instance are at least 5 9's reliable. Updates. Not sure if background tasks count though or is this referring to UI experiences/multiwindowing? Sorry I have not read the whole three yet. But what you said is true. iOS is a killer at this and why battery life is excellent on their hw.

Yeah, I wasn't referring to services, like notifications. But rather "apps running at the same time, in real-time". Mobile OSes generally avoid this because its a battery hog. Android has a system where it keeps some apps in ram, still running, but sort of "decides for itself" whether to keep them there, or freeze them. However it also discourages developers from using this.

iOS and windows 10 mobile, generally just freeze, with a few specific exceptions like music playing and navigation. BB10 runs up to eight apps real-time, its the closest to the desktop experience of multi-tasking. If you run a bb app, it keeps going no matter what it is.

For most people, it wouldn't much matter generally getting real-time. The average person might want to keep their music going (works on all platforms), or perhaps stream something (works on some not on others).

But the sort of power user "crunch video here, install software here, run a youtube video, whilst skyping" doesn't generally find much use on something with a tiny screen. And they both offer benefits and advantages. iOS generally has excellent battery life, and I suspect win10m would be the same. They'd also both use less ram. But the odd user might want multiple things running real-time, for which windows 10 proper and OSX are the best, and bb10 and android have a limited capacity.

It, like most things mobile, are a series of compromises. For which compromises one wants, like the cheese block sized phablet, versus the pocket 5 incher, it depends on the user which they will find the best.

Myself, I basically very rarely want anything real-time on a phone. Very few apps are designed to run that way anyway. Battery life is my priority there, so on a phone, I prefer a system that freezes apps. On a tablet, its a different story, and PC different again.

The ideal smartphone system, at least until the battery life gets to a week or so (long way off lol!), would be one that actually lets the user decide between bb10s, androids, and windows10m/ios's system. A toggle that lets you choose how many apps to keep in real-time if any, and whether to throttle services and to what degree. Something like the UAC settings in windows (a slider), but with battery optimisation.

Although for me, I'd always turn it down to the bottom.

But if they decide to scale windows proper, via arm, onto eventually a smartphone platform, they really should do something like this. And have a setting for plugged in, versus not plugged in. This way one could have the full desktop experience, or a more battery optimised system, depending on what one wants, and whether its docked.

 

[nate0]

The ideal smartphone system, at least until the battery life gets to a week or so (long way off lol!), would be one that actually lets the user decide between bb10s, androids, and windows10m/ios's system. A toggle that lets you choose how many apps to keep in real-time if any, and whether to throttle services and to what degree. Something like the UAC settings in windows (a slider), but with battery optimisation.

Although for me, I'd always turn it down to the bottom.

Thumbs up to that!

I want to just pop a new Tesla cell in my phone sometimes

 

[PerfectReign]

The text scaling on MS Edge is horrendous - it is either far too big or far too small and the scaling/text options in Settings don't work for me due to other side effects. This is a basic issue and should be fixed across the board. .

if you can, try one of the more recent builds. Sites which looked horrid prior are now great.

Sent from mTalk

 

[EliteMikes]

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...

The problem with permissions is they aren't granular enough, but with square home2, it needs those permissions to be able to have it's widgets work.

 

[EliteMikes]

This is another win for android. MS has completely failed with media apps on the xbox one as well. I've found that just using the Chromecast controlled by the phone is much much better than the experience offered on xbox native apps. The fact that MS hasn't released something like this is mind boggling, it would be the perfect thing for project Rome and their UWP apps. Smartglass and the xbox one app (UWP, android, iOS) suck, unless you are a die hard gamer.


MS has more failures than successes if you really think about it. Windows 10 isn't the failure that 8 was, but they won't reach their goal of installs. UWP isn't taking off anytime fast, I don't have high hopes that BUILD brings great news on that front. Features that should have been around since day 1 (Onedrive placeholders, roaming profiles). Live tiles are just plain stupid on the start screen, the notification system is more annoying than anything else.

Windows 10 still beats the competition in most areas, mostly because there is no competition. Anyone that tries to tell someone that Linux is usable needs their head checked. I don't think Apple is serious about the desktop any longer. I can tell you that working in an environment where we have a mix of windows, Linux and macs that the mac experience on the active domain is a disaster.

If the unicorn that is the all in one windows mobile device ever comes to be, it will destroy the competition in the enterprise.

 

[Drael646464]

This is another win for android. MS has completely failed with media apps on the xbox one as well. I've found that just using the Chromecast controlled by the phone is much much better than the experience offered on xbox native apps. The fact that MS hasn't released something like this is mind boggling, it would be the perfect thing for project Rome and their UWP apps. Smartglass and the xbox one app (UWP, android, iOS) suck, unless you are a die hard gamer.


MS has more failures than successes if you really think about it. Windows 10 isn't the failure that 8 was, but they won't reach their goal of installs. UWP isn't taking off anytime fast, I don't have high hopes that BUILD brings great news on that front. Features that should have been around since day 1 (Onedrive placeholders, roaming profiles). Live tiles are just plain stupid on the start screen, the notification system is more annoying than anything else.

Windows 10 still beats the competition in most areas, mostly because there is no competition. Anyone that tries to tell someone that Linux is usable needs their head checked. I don't think Apple is serious about the desktop any longer. I can tell you that working in an environment where we have a mix of windows, Linux and macs that the mac experience on the active domain is a disaster.

If the unicorn that is the all in one windows mobile device ever comes to be, it will destroy the competition in the enterprise.

If you add the number of console users, to windows 10 users and then consider that all those windows 7 and 8 users when they upgrade their machines will have to go with windows 10 (new intel chips don't support 7 or 8)- of course MS will make its billion. It's already at 400,000. Windows 7 alone comprises about 500,000. It's inevitable really. If they can continue to grow tablet market share at the rate its growing or perhaps even faster, especially with arm coming, it'll happen sooner.

MS have basically built a one way street for desktop, and are working on notebook and tablet market shares. I don't personally see how it can not happen. It would require someone to create a comparably powerful software offering on desktop, laptop and tablet. Google don't have a shot really with their software funding model being based on phones. Apple seems to have got distracted by soon to dry up premium phone sales, and have done little to focus on their desktop offerings, outside of the MacBook.

I guess there's a chance someone distrupts that process, but its pretty damn well strategized commercially.

Going to be such an amazing year for MS fans. We have the invoke, windows on arm, some new mystery piece of hardware, Cortana api, and probably even more we don't know about.

 

[matt john2]

IMO loyal Windows fans/users are declining. There are a lot of people I know personally that are really pissed on what Microsoft is heading to with their current Windows 10. Some of them have already switched to Linux as their main OS, myself included.
And only using Windows for some specific task like photo editing.

I disagree on Linux being unusable, there is a steep learning curve but that's just it.
And if you're willing to do it you can even game on Linux thanks to the power of Virtualisation. - My 2 cents

 

[anon(50597)]

I think the more surface devices, laptops, etc. that get out there will only increase the number of users. The education push is brilliant as it will create users for life. MS is thinking long term.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4

 

[EliteMikes]

I disagree on Linux being unusable, there is a steep learning curve but that's just it.
And if you're willing to do it you can even game on Linux thanks to the power of Virtualisation. - My 2 cents

You described the exact problem with Linux. There is a learning curve and for the average person they aren't going to take the time to learn it. Some people aren't capable of learning it. I play with the major flavors of it at work and there is not one that I'd recommend to my parents or younger non technical friends.

 

[EliteMikes]

Going to be such an amazing year for MS fans. We have the invoke, windows on arm, some new mystery piece of hardware, Cortana api, and probably even more we don't know about.

It's going to be the same as it always is. MS announces something that sounds great then they completely drop the ball. I'm done holding onto hope that things will get better. Even the new surface laptop is a joke without at least 1 usb-c port IMO.

MS dips there toes into some technology then backs away abruptly. My only hope right now is they make windows 10 rock solid. All I want from it is a tabable windows explorer and virtual desktops that will maintain their state on reboots. That's it. Strip out notifications, strip out live tiles.

 

[Drael646464]

It's going to be the same as it always is. MS announces something that sounds great then they completely drop the ball. I'm done holding onto hope that things will get better. Even the new surface laptop is a joke without at least 1 usb-c port IMO.

MS dips there toes into some technology then backs away abruptly. My only hope right now is they make windows 10 rock solid. All I want from it is a tabable windows explorer and virtual desktops that will maintain their state on reboots. That's it. Strip out notifications, strip out live tiles.

Pretty sure tabbing in explorer is on its way. Not sure I agree with this "dips it toes and then retreats" narrative. MS seems to have fully committed to AR/MR/VR. They continue to work on Cortana. They have released numerous hybrid form factors.

As for usb-c, sure its great, but very few uses for it yet. USB 2, type a sticks, may still being used in ten years for all we seem to actually be changing. So for students I understand that choice.

I guess an OS is a very large task. They are still trying to adapt windows 10 for virtual reality, increased voice capacity, while tweaking features in the OS, even at a software level there are a lot of balls in the air. I'm sure we'll get feature updates over time, but of course some of these are future minded - MS really can't afford to sit on its laurels, it has to stay ahead of the curve to survive.

Ultimately they need to future proof their OS with voice, virtual reality, and the capacity to scale from no screen to small screen up to large screen. That's sort of a herculean task. While the desktop format will likely always exist in some form or other, and windows has a stronghold there right now, commercially speaking its not enough to rest there. A company grows, or it shrinks really.

Have you put your suggestions separately into "feedback", btw?