I'm going to make an attempt to keep this short, and an honest review of the os, not the hardware. I'm no professional at this, I can't guarantee this will flow well, but I'm going to try to be direct and honest.
I've been riding the windows mobile/phone bus for 18 years, starting with the HP Jornada, first phone was the cingular 3125, then a slurry of phones since culminating in the lumia 950. Took a lot of Microsofts kicks to my teeth, and the kick to the family jewels by killing groove forced me to jump ship. Decided to go to android, with the Samsung galaxy s8.
My first thought after a month of using this is: How in the hell did this become the most popular OS in the market?
To this day, the android problems of old still plague this device. It bogs down, requires frequent pressing of the "optimize" button to keep it going, and a seemingly weekly reboot. Frankly... It reminds me a lot of windows xp. Occasionally an app crashes, not sure for what reason, and memory management is a surprising must. That said, the multitasking is much more real than it was on windows mobile, so I guess we can chalk this up to cost/benefit analysis. For a phone, I think W10mo did it better.
Since it's as customizable as it is, I did replace touch wiz with what was formerly known as arrow, replaced the SMS app with textra, but decided to keep the default dialer and contacts list. The notification counts stopped working on all of them last week, and i have yet to resolve why. I also replace the Samsung keyboard with swype, which I was under the impression was the frame keyboard that was on W10mo, is close, but not as accurate and really miss the cursor caret. Swype on Android allows placement of arrow keys, but I keep accidentally hitting them instead of the space bar due to a poor location. Again, W10mo did it best.
Widgets are fine, but they don't theme with the phone, and having mine themed dark, the occasional widgets that have a white background (cough - outlook) make them look like crap.
All in all the while os, while functional (barely) feels chopped up. It doesn't really flow very well in my opinion. This again goes to cost/benefit since it is so modular that you can replace components ad-hoc, but even out of the box, it lacks that flow, or finesse that seemed to exist in the windows side, which frankly I hadn't given much credence to until now.
Apps! To answer my first comment.... The answer is apps. There are a ton of apps, but that said, aside from the banking ones, I've essentially got the same apps I had before. Buuuut.... To my next bullet!
Ads! .... I have bought and paid for more apps on android than I ever did on W10mo. Primarily because the adds on android have just been utterly in my face annoying... This is very prevalent in YouTube. It's like watching TV, ads show up on the middle of videos.... I've never seen this in my pc, or on W10mo.
YouTube... Only one app. While the rest of the play store is awash in apps... There's only one YouTube app, and that belongs to Google. Every video starts with an ad, and 50-60% have an ad somewhere in the middle of it. I find this extremely annoying.
Conclusion: do I regret choosing android over iOS.... No. Do I regret jumping from the W10mo ship? Partially, but I didn't jump... I was pushed by this guy named Nadella. Overall as a windows convert to android, I feel more frustrated than anything else. To see the content publishers on this site tout android as a viable alternative sickens me, is it a better alternative than iOS, in my opinion, yes, is it a viable alternative to windows mobile... I really honestly don't think it is. And my original question, about how it has become the world's largest os.... I really don't know how to answer that. I guess it's the same reason that some people can't get their heads out of the windows xp hole in the sand, they just love instability and chaos at the expense of usability. Android exists in that realm, as does iOS, they exist locked in eternal battle stuck in 2007, Mac vs pc. Using Android reminds me a lot of using xp... I don't know why, I haven't been able to put a finger on it, but it just feels like so many steps back.
All in all it goes to that saying , you don't know what you have till it's gone. Microsoft is ruining a great thing, yes it's due to the app gap, no I don't know how to fix the app gap. But there has to be a way. Maybe a native emulator is the best way... Project astoria if I recall correctly.
I'll add more as I go, if anybody has specific comparisons they want dream, let me know.
All this said, I can sum up this situation in one word. Frustrating.
I've been riding the windows mobile/phone bus for 18 years, starting with the HP Jornada, first phone was the cingular 3125, then a slurry of phones since culminating in the lumia 950. Took a lot of Microsofts kicks to my teeth, and the kick to the family jewels by killing groove forced me to jump ship. Decided to go to android, with the Samsung galaxy s8.
My first thought after a month of using this is: How in the hell did this become the most popular OS in the market?
To this day, the android problems of old still plague this device. It bogs down, requires frequent pressing of the "optimize" button to keep it going, and a seemingly weekly reboot. Frankly... It reminds me a lot of windows xp. Occasionally an app crashes, not sure for what reason, and memory management is a surprising must. That said, the multitasking is much more real than it was on windows mobile, so I guess we can chalk this up to cost/benefit analysis. For a phone, I think W10mo did it better.
Since it's as customizable as it is, I did replace touch wiz with what was formerly known as arrow, replaced the SMS app with textra, but decided to keep the default dialer and contacts list. The notification counts stopped working on all of them last week, and i have yet to resolve why. I also replace the Samsung keyboard with swype, which I was under the impression was the frame keyboard that was on W10mo, is close, but not as accurate and really miss the cursor caret. Swype on Android allows placement of arrow keys, but I keep accidentally hitting them instead of the space bar due to a poor location. Again, W10mo did it best.
Widgets are fine, but they don't theme with the phone, and having mine themed dark, the occasional widgets that have a white background (cough - outlook) make them look like crap.
All in all the while os, while functional (barely) feels chopped up. It doesn't really flow very well in my opinion. This again goes to cost/benefit since it is so modular that you can replace components ad-hoc, but even out of the box, it lacks that flow, or finesse that seemed to exist in the windows side, which frankly I hadn't given much credence to until now.
Apps! To answer my first comment.... The answer is apps. There are a ton of apps, but that said, aside from the banking ones, I've essentially got the same apps I had before. Buuuut.... To my next bullet!
Ads! .... I have bought and paid for more apps on android than I ever did on W10mo. Primarily because the adds on android have just been utterly in my face annoying... This is very prevalent in YouTube. It's like watching TV, ads show up on the middle of videos.... I've never seen this in my pc, or on W10mo.
YouTube... Only one app. While the rest of the play store is awash in apps... There's only one YouTube app, and that belongs to Google. Every video starts with an ad, and 50-60% have an ad somewhere in the middle of it. I find this extremely annoying.
Conclusion: do I regret choosing android over iOS.... No. Do I regret jumping from the W10mo ship? Partially, but I didn't jump... I was pushed by this guy named Nadella. Overall as a windows convert to android, I feel more frustrated than anything else. To see the content publishers on this site tout android as a viable alternative sickens me, is it a better alternative than iOS, in my opinion, yes, is it a viable alternative to windows mobile... I really honestly don't think it is. And my original question, about how it has become the world's largest os.... I really don't know how to answer that. I guess it's the same reason that some people can't get their heads out of the windows xp hole in the sand, they just love instability and chaos at the expense of usability. Android exists in that realm, as does iOS, they exist locked in eternal battle stuck in 2007, Mac vs pc. Using Android reminds me a lot of using xp... I don't know why, I haven't been able to put a finger on it, but it just feels like so many steps back.
All in all it goes to that saying , you don't know what you have till it's gone. Microsoft is ruining a great thing, yes it's due to the app gap, no I don't know how to fix the app gap. But there has to be a way. Maybe a native emulator is the best way... Project astoria if I recall correctly.
I'll add more as I go, if anybody has specific comparisons they want dream, let me know.
All this said, I can sum up this situation in one word. Frustrating.
Last edited:
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