Windows Phone 8

[mnemonikos82]

What is everyone's opinion on the most recent iteration of WP8? I'm thinking about getting the Nokia Lumia Icon (929) when it comes out next week (hopefully). I hate ios and I'm sick of the instability of Android. I don't especially care about the lack of apps on WP8. I don't use many apps now and I've already made sure the ones I care about are available on WP8. I value stability, camera, and some customization.

[feanan]

I work in ITS. I know a lot of people who have gone from android, to IOS, and ended up with windows phones. They all love them.

That being said, the only complaint I've ever heard is that the app store sucks compared to apple and google.

[r00t]

you will most assuredly be dissapointed if you transition from linux (android) to windows because of "instability"

edit: as well as customization

[Knuckle]

What is everyone's opinion on the most recent iteration of WP8? I'm thinking about getting the Nokia Lumia Icon (929) when it comes out next week (hopefully). I hate ios and I'm sick of the instability of Android. I don't especially care about the lack of apps on WP8. I don't use many apps now and I've already made sure the ones I care about are available on WP8. I value stability, camera, and some customization.

'Instability of android' as in you've only owned the shit android phones not the Samsung Galaxy S4, Note 3, HTC One, or Moto X. Or, you haven't owned one in over 2 years and your information is dated.

'Hate ios' So you don't care about apps but want stability, camera quality, and customization. Enjoy your Windows Phone experience.

In addition to their shit app store you can contend with:

overhyped shit camera.

Absolute garbage for transferring data. Microsoft Zune for music, no plug and copy/paste. And have fun with photos too.

Bugs out the ass, they try to get you excited about new 'windows 8.1' and windows 8, and windows 7 phone. Each one claiming to fix the glaring problems that made it a niche phone the generation before.

As someone who has been in the cellular business since the iPhone 3GS launched, I would recommend a high end android phone for the best overall user experience while still getting a decent screen size. That being said I don't particularly like apple, most of their stuff is overpriced, but the iPhone 5S is a solid phone and the only reason I don't use the iPhone now is I like a larger screen. The new software did shit up older hardware iphones(most notably the iPhone 4 with its single core processor) that downloaded the update, but that's an optional update and I make it a point to avoid any major iphone software update on an older model.

Yeah enjoy your windows phone, and when something fucks up on it or your trying to do something, and you go to the store and everyone looks at you like your insane when you ask for help with it, have fun. Windows Phones are right there with blackberry.

[feanan]

I almost stopped reading when you said "overhyped shit camera"

All your data transfer info is wrong/old. Phone plugs in with USB cable, drag and drop photos, music, files, etc.

You are obviously slanted anti MS. I won't bother posting any links, since everyone has their own shills, but reviews of the latest windows phone OS are overwhelmingly positive. The biggest complaint anyone has is the weak app store.

p.s. I've got a moto x, so I'm not in the MS camp. But I hate it when they get unfairly bashed.

[JackFlash]

I use a lumia 822 on tmobile. I've also used the 521. I like wp8 and don't mind the shitty app store. Far as music I load it on the SD card and play it......

WP8 has been very stable for me, almost never has glitches, never crashes on me......Battery life is sweet.

Sounds like Knuckle has never used one....

[mnemonikos82]

Who pissed in your Cheerios Knuckle? I stopped reading when I realized your response held nothing of value (sometime around word three). I'll listen to anyone that has something constructive to say, but I don't have time for people like you.

[mnemonikos82]

Thank you for all the other responses.

[Psycher]

Windows phone is awesome on my Nokia 920. The camera is better than the Iphone 5s and it especially blows the Iphone camera out of the water in low light situations. you CAN copy and paste, very easily too. I rarely ever have apps freeze up and not once has my device ever froze up causing me to restart my phone. I have pretty much all the apps I really need on my windows phone. Bank app, Mint, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, instagram, Baconit (reddit reader, way better than ones I've tried on andriod, no adds, and free).

Also, Much to my surprise, the mobile version of Internet explorer is actually an extremely responsive and an amazing browser (never thought I would admit that). The mobile IE allows me to basically do anything I would want to do that isn't available in the app market.

The home screen is very customizable. App tiles are not only a link to a program but they also tell you information about the app.. the tiles are constantly updated and you can adjust the size of the app to your preference, the bigger the tile, the more information is displayed. You can also add contacts as tiles and it will display their recent facebook status if you want.

I can't go over every reason why I love windows phone over iOS or andriod, but try it out. you won't be disappointed.

[Kazi]

The OS is amazingly fast. I hate how clunky and unstable iOS is and would switch in a heartbeat. Who needs a million apps, really? Most of them suck and the windows store is growing rapidly.

[beentheredonethat]

I got rid of my windows phone for a lot of reasons. I wouldn't recommend it, it's an unfinished product. So far iPhone is the best option out there that I'd recommend, as an engineer.

If you are going Android, avoid anything that still runs Delvik. Newer once are not bad, you just have to find one that isn't too messed up by customizations.

[mnemonikos82]

If you are going Android, avoid anything that still runs Delvik. Newer once are not bad, you just have to find one that isn't too messed up by customizations.

I'm not a programmer by any stretch. What is Delvik and which phones have it? My last android phone was a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx. My wife has a S4 that I've played with extensively.

[beentheredonethat]

You can just google Dalvik vs ART and you'll get a lot of comparisons out there.

It's available in http://www.android.com/versions/kit-kat-4-4/

So if the phone can't handle kit kat... I'd highly recommend avoiding it.

[Knuckle]

Windows phoneboys I see. Less than 2% of the phones I deal with are windows phones yet out of that sample size I see over 30% experience a issue requiring a warranty, that's counting 7, 8, and 8.1

[Knuckle]

Look I'm not actually angry, I've just seen marketing hype take it's toll. Microsoft invests more money into marketing their phones and paying for company trainings yet they all too frequently have huge glaring issues (Bluetooth handset incompatibility, screen freeze, audio cuts out in ear piece/microphone). Incredibly awkward email and facebook client. One of the least intuitive auto correct formats, and not media friendly at all. If you pay or use zune or like loading all your songs onto a memory card every time you want new music and are fine with poor technical support for a phone with a track record for software fuck ups dating back 7 years to the windows '6' phones then knock yourself out

[Knuckle]

Who pissed in your Cheerios Knuckle? I stopped reading when I realized your response held nothing of value (sometime around word three). I'll listen to anyone that has something constructive to say, but I don't have time for people like you.

No actually I put facts in, you've already proven you want the windows phone you just want reassurance, not reality. If my criticism offended you that just means you've already identified yourself with the phone as yours.

[Knuckle]

Anyone trying to say their camera blows iPhone out of the water is in lala land. I will say their 1020 model or the one with the obnoxious camera sticking out for att is probably the best camera out there, but none of their other models are even close to that quality

[GradnerLives]

Quad post = mad?

That said, I work in IT support and see pretty much the same user experience reports as knuckle I'm afraid. High end androids are definitely the way to go if you're not going iOS.

What is it that you dislike about iOS?

[JackFlash]

lol @ all the wp haters. Unfinished OS?

Give me a break....It's one of the most secure phone O/S out there.

IOS is shit IMO and I will never use an apple. ITunes is clunky and I hate it. (But that's my opinion.....Who cares.)

IT support for what corporations? So you see a lot of blackberry and IOS? Maybe even palm? Who cares what businessmen use.

[r00t]

Windows most secure OS yall

[GradnerLives]

Work predominantly with salespeople/designers/developers at a company that makes a web-based CRM. Not really "Businesspeople" persay. They choose their own devices, no managed devices or company requirements, we just set them up and help them when they have problems.

You don't really take a smaller store ecosystem as a serious concern until there's something that you want and can't have. You might not be concerned right now, but there are many things that I've found integral to the work that I do or, at the very least, huge time-savers in my day-to-day. Your needs today may not match your needs 6-months from now and we're literally talking about an exponential increase in app availability going over to android or iOS.

"Security concerns" are for blackberry luddites. Androids, iPhones and WP8 are all relatively secure if you don't click everything without reading. Not really a selling point in any of their favour.

iOS is really smooth. In my opinion, this is doubly true for people who don't install a lot of apps and basically just use the device vanilla. It's lame talking to your phone but Siri is a huge time saver and considerably more advanced than what my android offers. Contact card merging is done really nice, and calendar/note-taking/media-playing all have much more care/consideration put into their UI design. I have an android full of duplicate contact records and calendar events with no real way of reconciling them save for doing it manually. Poor native app design in an area that is used far more in my day to day than anything else on my phone. Wireless music/photo/video synching out of the box and you can turn on local storage access if you prefer to drag and drop.

Come on dawg, be real. What are you using if not iTunes? Winamp? WMP? VLC? Anything BUT iTunes is the DEFINITION of clunky.

The settings are much more understandable, there's standardization across hardware platforms so, in general, software issues are quicker to be fixed and deployed along with more frequent updates.

With android there certainly is a disparaging gap with not much of a device "Middle Class". The low end is garbage with terrible cameras, terrible custom UI tweaks, weak native apps and usually outdated OS versions with little plan to offer updates when future android releases are made available. Running said updates is a nightmare and the settings menus can deviate from the standards quite a bit which can make troubleshooting and getting support for the device that much tougher.

On the high end, androids are great. No complaints. Good hardware, good app availability, better pricing and certainly easier to troubleshoot and customize.

Just like Knuckle, I see a small number of WP8 devices due to the tiny market share, but when I see them, people are generally unhappy with them. I'd say it's about 50/50. The most common I hear are poor build quality and poor UI design in native apps. There's no arguing against apple in terms of straight build quality. Even compared to an S4 or HTC one the post 4 iphones look/feel better and they absolutely last longer.

Smaller marketshare matters. It directly affects everything from a support standpoint. Issues are less likely to get fixed since there's a smaller pool of bug reporters. Service providers are less likely to be able to help you, troubleshooting forums are less likely to have the answers you need, stores are less likely to carry accessories, and you're going to have a harder time doing anything you can't figure out for yourself.

Like knuckle, I prefer a bigger screen, and I also prefer the more open app environment since apple blocks a lot of innovation just because it overlaps with existing device functionality or doesn't conform to their rather tight imposed standards. I use a nexus 4. I don't like apple products, but iPhones are pretty undeniably the best built devices that are available right now and, as I said, using the device with no apps straight out of the box, they offer the best user experience in both my opinion and experience with customers.

TL;DR : No troll, no windows hate, no apple slant, buy an android or an iphone.

[mnemonikos82]

@GradnerLives

Thank you for that information, that will be immensely helpful.

[mnemonikos82]

No actually I put facts in, you've already proven you want the windows phone you just want reassurance, not reality. If my criticism offended you that just means you've already identified yourself with the phone as yours.

You can have the most widely adopted facts in the world, but when you present them to me in a vehemently negative filled rambling like your first post I don't care. You want people to listen to you, write it in a way like GradnerLives that is objective.

[mnemonikos82]

What is it that you dislike about iOS?

On the iphone/ipods/ipads that i have used (I had an ipod touch and have an ipad and have worked on an iphone for a job) I really hated the feel of the OS, the lack the lack of menus and the ease of changing settings. I always felt on my touch and ipad that if I wanted to do something not quite what was prescribed by the software I couldn't. Everything seems so dumbed down on IOS, so that there's no depth.

What I loved about android was that I felt I had the ability to what I wanted, how I wanted. But with my last three android phones I found that after the first year they all started to crap out and become unstable. I don't click on random things, I'm tech savy enough to know how to keep my devices safe, and I've never been an app hog. I've got my core apps that I like and I really don't mess with anything else.

The other thing about Android that is turning me off of them is that Android has umpteen million handset manufacturers and they all put their spin on the device and have to do their own updates (unless you have vanilla), so as soon as a new update comes out if you phone is over a year old it's never going to get it. I am interested in WP's consistency accross handset manufacturers.

[Knuckle]

Windows is not consistent across platforms yet, that is their goal though, wait at least 3 or 4 years unroll the new CEO gets to make a solid inhouse designed phone that can more fully streamline the whole Xbox computer phone idea.

More windows more problems, keep windows on the computer:

http://m.digitaltrends.com/mobile/windows-phone-8-problems/

[GradnerLives]

On the iphone/ipods/ipads that i have used (I had an ipod touch and have an ipad and have worked on an iphone for a job) I really hated the feel of the OS, the lack the lack of menus and the ease of changing settings. I always felt on my touch and ipad that if I wanted to do something not quite what was prescribed by the software I couldn't. Everything seems so dumbed down on IOS, so that there's no depth.

I know that feel but still have to say that, despite a lack of configurability, their native apps are designed better than the competition. It's quite restrictive but it's kind of a comfort zone thing. A lot of apps work the way they work, and expect you to work the way they work, but the way they work is not typically fundamentally bad (Save for reminders, wtf were they thinking with iOS 7 reminders...) just different.

What I loved about android was that I felt I had the ability to what I wanted, how I wanted. But with my last three android phones I found that after the first year they all started to crap out and become unstable. I don't click on random things, I'm tech savy enough to know how to keep my devices safe, and I've never been an app hog. I've got my core apps that I like and I really don't mess with anything else.

Should always get in a process of backing up data so that you can wipe and restore every so often. It'll be a necessary process when new builds of the OS become available and any OS is going to get shaky with time. With an up to date device and the ability to restore in times of instability, you really shouldn't ever have to live with that kind of stuff.

The other thing about Android that is turning me off of them is that Android has umpteen million handset manufacturers and they all put their spin on the device and have to do their own updates (unless you have vanilla), so as soon as a new update comes out if you phone is over a year old it's never going to get it. I am interested in WP's consistency accross handset manufacturers.

I agree, but that's still definitely more of a symptom on the low end of the market. I'd steer clear of Motorola, LG and HTC for the same reason, all of them tend to include quite heavy customization and bloatware. That being said, a Samsung Galaxy S or Note or a Google (LG) Nexus are really quite standard across the board and have the distribution of updates managed much better than any of the other manufacturers. The Nexus 5 is probably going to be your ideal choice in this regard as it pretty well comes vanilla and google makes sure that the Nexus devices stay current well beyond their reasonable lifespan.

I guess my point with the previous wall of text was that there are distinct advantages that come with either iOS or Android. There's a lot of things that are uniquely convenient and positive about both. There really isn't anything that I can think of that makes me think "Oh man, I wish I had a windows phone so I could _______". There isn't really ever anything that a customer has shown me that I've found intuitive or better in any way. They suffer from their fair share of negatives as you see with iPhones and Androids, but don't really have any counterbalance to those problems like iOS and Android offer.

iOS 7 has added a lot of android functionality they were missing like notifications and multi-tasking (I think you can long-press for context menus in a lot of places you couldn't before as well, but not too sure, don't own one) and google has caught up quite a bit in terms of UI design and app availability in the last year or two. Microsoft is scraping by with essentially the bare minimum offerings you get from either of the other manufacturers at the same cost with little hope of real tangible advantages coming about unless you're looking out 2-3 years (and you absolutely don't want to own any device that long these days).

Can you even Candy Crush on a windows phone?

[mnemonikos82]

I think if Candy Crush was missing that would be a positive. I hate that game lol.

[Kazi]

There have been a lot of times I wished I had a win phone camera. No app can beat that low light utility.