My observations were w.r.t using it for 2 years until around 2015 start. I wanted to highlight the issues/good things about Windows phone OS.
If we compare the state now, I agree that Android/iOS are lot better, esp for apps.
Apps has to increase, if at all possible. Which isn't happening as well. I'm getting used to Windows laptop (mostly with Chrome browser), Android mobile and Android tablet so far. Chromebook is trying to snap the former place for casual browsing.
Hi Kopi Bro & GadVeen
Glad to see you around in the windows thread once a while. Things are sadly very quiet here nowadays and with the BB and nokia subthreads closing down, i cannot help think that windows phone thread will be next
For me personally, the biggest attraction of the windows phone is really the live tiles, i know its sugjective and many of my tech friends from this forum find it extremely messy but i feel it offers the best customization and flexibility to display real time info at a glance without interaction with icons. This i feel is the most efficient and productive way of using your phone with all the info and functions you want at your fingertips without any scrolling. After i have used windows phone, i find the hamburger layouts for android and apple so dated and user unfriendly. Widgets are a compromised solution on those platforms but they cannot truely compare with live tiles.
As for having all apps on the next page. I also feel its the most elegant solution as you only have one page to find all your apps instead of countless scolling and scanning on iOS and Android. With the apps page in wp, you can easily find by alphabetical order or you can just click the # and immeditaly go the alphabet for that app. If you measure in terms of time spent finding an app and swiping through screens. this is a very elegant and easy system
keyboard with word flow, i agree it isnt as good as the android implementations for swiping. For typing , i think it has improved significantly though slightly behing iOS keyboard imo, but it has improved alot
Xbox, i dont play games on any platform so nadda for me
Camera wise, i thnk now with the improvements to windows camera for the 950 and finally with panorama, we truelly have flagship class camera. I have tested the current windows camera with the new panorama mode and functions vs the ip7+ and sony xperia perf and i would say in bright light. Performance is similar to ip7+ and better than the sony but in low light is truely where the lumia shines. I have compared a couple of photos and the lumia is able to clearly better images and better colour accuracy compared to the ip7+. Note both are running in auto mode with HDR on and flash off. Compared to the G5 and S7, the lumia images are less dynamic but colour accuracy is much better. I disadvantage of the lumia is the lack of full manual mode settings.
performance wise, yes the resuming issue is still there but wit the latest production and technical preview builds, this has been reduced significantly. I have given up using fast ring as those are really very very buggy builds and you shouldnt use those on a primary device in any circumstances but the stable builds are actually quite good now.
Apps wise is total piece of **** which i agree. they have a facebook app by facebook now but its quite buggy though alot of functions are now available and it takes forever to start
. I do agree that no matter how good the platform is, if the app ecosystem does hit the minium in terms of certain critical apps, its as good as dead. Btw, whatsapp now has the ability to back up to onedrive also . yayyyy
Cortana wise, not available in singapore but imo, i find it stupiak to talk to a phone so i wont use it or any other voice assistants for the matter
i tink tech savy pple will only choose either the fringe systems like sailfish or android. apple is as locked down and as infleixble as changi prison so i think it wont be the first choice for tweaking (you cannot even arrange icons to your preference
)
In all fairness, windows phone is easy to pick up if you are new to smartphones. i managed to get my mum to use my old HTC 8x and she found it easier to use than iphone
. i came from android originally and i embarked on a voyage to try out other OS like wP and BB and discovered that IMO, the hamburger layout and interface of apple and android are actually the most user unfriendly around IMO
However to conclude imo, windows phone actually had a lot of potential but i think we all can see nutella and microsoft are cutting losses and abandoning windows phone for the consumer market. Even for us fanboys, the writing is clearly on the wall unless you are an enterprise user . the 950 series the last consumer phone for windows and i am sad to see the mobile market is now only a 2 horse race between iOS and android
thank you for reading my wall of text