iOS to Android and back again

[malberttoo]

I used an iPhone starting with the 3G. It was a revelation. Before that I had a Titan 6800 that ran Windows Mobile . It was my first smart phone, and just about the worst experience ever. We are an Exchange email shop, and about every 6-8 weeks, my Titan would simply stop receiving email. I'd have to delete the whole Exchange account from the phone and set it back up again. Rinse and repeat in another 6 weeks. IE on that phone was horrible. Etc.

I was never an Apple fanboy, so I don't know what made me interested in the iPhone, but on a lark I picked one up. They had just started licensing Microsoft's ActiveSync, and wow Exchange email worked so great on that phone. The email experience alone sold me on it. The rest of my shop (50 workstations, 3 physical servers, about 15 virtual servers and a few virtual workstations) is all Windows. So again I am no fanboy of any company in particular.

I happily upgraded through 3GS, 4, and 4S. Around the 4S time though I started getting annoyed with friends that had Androids (which I knew nothing about) and these beautiful large screens. Then the iPhone 5 came out and really ticked me off, being nothing more than a stretched 4S. Finally I ditched the iPhone and went to an HTC One M7.

That was equally as good an experience as the iPhone, and I spent 2 years on it until just now getting an iPhone 6.

Once I got on the 6, I realized how much I really missed iMessage. Also, I discovered that I missed the way the iPhone lets you select text, by giving you a magnifying glass under your finger. Text selection on the One was not nearly as easy and frequently annoyed me. I had a great experience on the One, but right this moment there's nothing that stands out to me that I particularly miss.

So having been on both systems now, I can honestly say I think they are 50/50. Each does specific things very well, and they both lack in certain areas.

TL;DR-
I would like to hear from other users who have jumped from one platform to another, and what you particularly liked and disliked about the various platforms. Also I'd like to hear from Windows Phone users what you feel are its strengths, because I would like to try that phone next.

Keep your responses calm. I value your opinions, but if you turn your post into I rant, I will delete it. Let's try to have a good discourse here.

 

[Moonsurface]

I just jumped from Android to Windows phone 8.1. I just got a little less trusting of Google and also a bit itchy feet, plus seeing the interface on the windows phones intrigued me. I liked the mix of live tiles with updated content, customisability but also the way it all still looked integrated like part of the same system which android often doesnt' and the homescreens end up looking a mess of different styled widgets etc.

I bought a cheap windows phone to try it and did so for 3 weeks before getting my Lumia 930.

There are some things which are certainly less developed than on android and for sure the app store is not a patch on Android and the Facebook app (even the beta) is annoying in what it lacks compared to the android version.

Having said that I like the way the phone works, and I'm willing to give windows phone some time to catch up.

 

[malberttoo]

I just jumped from Android to Windows phone 8.1. I just got a little less trusting of Google and also a bit itchy feet, plus seeing the interface on the windows phones intrigued me. I liked the mix of live tiles with updated content, customisability but also the way it all still looked integrated like part of the same system which android often doesnt' and the homescreens end up looking a mess of different styled widgets etc.

I bought a cheap windows phone to try it and did so for 3 weeks before getting my Lumia 930.

There are some things which are certainly less developed than on android and for sure the app store is not a patch on Android and the Facebook app (even the beta) is annoying in what it lacks compared to the android version.

Having said that I like the way the phone works, and I'm willing to give windows phone some time to catch up.

For sure the Windows app store is lacking. But coming from the Android, what features do you like about the Windows phone?

 

[Moonsurface]

For sure the Windows app store is lacking. But coming from the Android, what features do you like about the Windows phone?

I like the slickness and look of the user interface and the live tiles. I like the way it uses less resources in the background than android does, plus you can tell it which apps are allowed to run in the background, I don't remember that being an option on android - other than killing tasks by using a task killer. I like that it's different...LOL!

Nokia hardware is really good, the 930 would bend my body rather than bend itself it's a robust piece of kit and not unlike the surface in it's industrial styled design, and yet despite being rather heavy and with it's 5" screen fairly large, I don't find it hard to hold at all, in fact if feels better than my nexus 4 did for some reason, perhaps the Nexus was wider and not as tall. I prefer phones to have a little weight, I found my Samsung galaxy S2 (that I had befor ethe Nexus) too light and I dropped it way to easily. Samsung phones now feel in general too light to me and too easy to fly out of the hand.

The camera on the Nokia is very good too and I like the Nokia apps, the camera app actually allows the saving of a digital negative (RAW) file along with a jpeg and also full manual control over all the settings - great for photographers

 

[Moonsurface]

Oh and I loved how easy it was to get the 930 up and running after the 635... it just copied everything over as it was backed up in the cloud, all the settings, everything. I only had to re-authenticate the passwords on my email. I don't remember android doing that either - not the whole thing. It did save some things but this was just so much easier, it installed all my apps as well. I would expect iOS does something similar, but never had an iphone and never particularly wanted to get locked into that system personally.

 

[malberttoo]

Well you've given me the encouragement I needed to go get a Windows Phone. I have wanted to try one out for a while but really knew nothing about it and it didn't seem too exciting.

I'll test one out for the company for a little while. I have a buddy who is the head of his IT department as well, that has also been wanting to try one.

 

[Moonsurface]

Yeah, best to experiment. There definitely are sone gaps where it needs to catch up but the recent addition of Cortana onto my 930 has definitely filled some of the holes I felt compared to Android for me. I'm not sure what other windows phones it's available on yet though.