Questions from an iPhone user

[tn5280]

I've been looking at the Icon and I'm really intrigued. Love the screen and different approach to the OS. Just seems more fluid compared to the stop/start approach of apps in IOS. Can anyone comment on any advantages Windows phones may have when the user also has a Windows 8 pc? Also, can you easily swap nano-sims between an iphone 5 and the Icon, avoiding a strip to the VZ store for activation? Thanks for any info. tom

 

[Funky Cricket]

On the sim question: Verizon still used CDMA for phone calls, so you still have to activate your phone to get 3G. The sim if for LTE only. The advantage of the windows 8 PC is when you are using Microsoft infrastructure and services. OneDrive, Outlook.com, xbox music, etc. Same as with Apple.

 

[assistman]

I'm two weeks away from an iphone 4s and would never go back! The only thing I really miss is the built in visual voicemail (for free). Getting away from imessage has been a real pain in the a$$ and you need to make sure people you text with often have unlimited texting. I haven't tried whatsapp or any alternatives yet...but will. I did just spend the weekend with a bunch of WP users (Microsoft employees) and Glance and Double Tap, neither of which the Icon has would be really nice. I hope Nokia comes out with an alternative for one or both.

 

[Funky Cricket]

I have double tap enabled and find I never really use it, I don't use glance either, as I don't want my phone on all night, I don't like the extra light. seems every room is light up like Christmas with little kids and night lights and chargers and electrics already. I love the live tiles, the way the metro UI works on the phone and one note/one drive integration. xbox smart glass is pretty nice too.

 

[ven07]

To be honest i would go for a phone with the Glance and no it doesn't stay on all night! you can manually set that. Mine is set to "peek" this allow me tow swipe my hand over the phone and it activates for about 30 to 40 seconds which hardly poses a problem (for me anyways). Another reason why I would switch over is because of the offline maps I can get with Here. Now we're even getting a notification center so even if you don't pin some tiles to the start screen you can still get the notifications (This is sth I have disliked thus far... You need to constantly watch the phone, but soon that will be a thing of the past). Also the ability to have all my documents (words and excel) on my phone is really great; to make it even better you can even edit your doc's. Add Cortana to the mix and you can't go wrong (however recent reports indicate that if you're not a dev this option will not be available until 2015... pfft). I realize this doesn't fully answer your question, but I decided to share my experiences anyways Hope it helps

 

[maflynn]

I've been looking at the Icon and I'm really intrigued. Love the screen and different approach to the OS.

I too am a iPhone transplant. I currently own the Icon coming from an iPhone 5.

I will say the interface is different but not in a bad way. I've gotten used to the live tiles and usage is fluid. I am have a little bit of a headache moving my music from my Mac to my Lumia but I'm not losing sleep over this at the moment. I have an iPad mini and that has my music on it, I usually have that with me as well and I use Pandora.

My suggestion before jumping ship is to check out the windows app store and see if the apps you cannot live without are available. I think the app store is growing very quickly and was surprised at the depth (given the constant comparison with iOS and android). Still there are apps on the other platforms that are not here yet.