Why I switched from Android to Windows Phone

Yes, I did it. And it seems to be a
pretty popular thing nowadays,
switching OSes. You've seen
these posts pop up everywhere.
'Why I got an iPhone' or 'Why I switched from Android to an
iPhone'. I guess we see it as groundbreaking when a person
decides that Android or iOS just
isn't right for them. 'You don't
like Android? But you can
customize it so much!' I hear that
a lot when I complain that I've grown tired of the OS. The truth
is, I needed to try something
new, so I got a Windows Phone 7
device. What made me make the
switch after using Android for a
year? Well, let me explain myself before you go and slaughter me
in the comments. (As a note, I
reserve the right to be biased in
this article. After all, this was a
choice I made based on my
personal preferences.) Put simply, I just got tired of the
Android UI. I've used stock
Android, Sense, Blur, TouchWiz
and several other random UI's
and launchers in between. (I do
cell phone reviews, after all.) With Android, you can go from
simple to colorful to crazy and
animated. The problem is, it all
looks the same. At the end of
the day, it's a grid of icons with
a few widgets thrown in for good measure. I understand that with Android,
the customization options are
endless. I realized, though, that
the only reason I spend hours
customizing the look of my
device and trying out different launchers is because I don't like
the way it looks. It's a simple
concept, I know, but I missed the
point for a while. If I don't like
the way Android looks, why am I
still using it? Some people point out the
widget options. That's great, it
really is. And I'm sure that it's a
useful feature for a lot of
people, but not for me. I used a
clock widget, a weather widget, and a Slacker Radio widget that I
didn't actually use, I simply used
it as a shortcut to open the app.
The idea always captivated me,
but when I really thought about
it, I realized that I just don't use them very much. It seemed like no matter what I
did to customize my device, it
still looked ugly, cluttered, and
like a beta OS. Yes, beta. Windows Phone on the other hand is simple, elegant, and
minimalistic - my three favorite
design qualities. I know the tile
thing is incredibly simple. I love
that. And they're live tiles. So
you know that whole thing with widgets? Windows Phone has its
own version. I have live tiles for
Twitter, e-mail, messaging, a
direct contact, and my calendar.
Not only that, but it's clean,
neat, and organized; not a jumbled mess of widgets
designed by different people in
different sizes and colors. Also, I love the Metro font. I
always have. Honestly, the font
alone is probably 40% of why I
bought the phone. That sounds
ridiculous, but I'm a designer at
heart. My first job was as a graphics designer and as
unreasonable as it sounds, the
font is deeply important to me.
That's one reason I could never
get a Nokia device. The font is
terrible. Not only is the Metro font beautiful, but the
transitions are as well. Again,
remember I'm a designer at
heart so transitions are a big
deal for me. The whole swooping
thing that happens with every page is amazingand smooth. Android has transitions, I know.
But you don't know when
they're going to happen or how
it will look. (Part of the reason
performance is so great with
Windows Phone is because it doesn't yet have multi-tasking.
We'll see if the upcoming Mango
update affects the
performance.) Uniformity is a big feature in
Windows Phone. The UI carries all
the way into the apps. Not just
the Microsoft apps, but every
app designed for Windows Phone
follows the Metro UI. This didn't actually play a part in making
the switch, but it's definitely an
aspect of the OS that I like. The
uniformity of Windows Phone
even affects the hardware.
Because of Microsoft's stringent requirements, I can be sure that
there are no underperforming
Windows Phone devices out
there. True, some have a few
extra features, but at least
none of them ship with a 600 MHz processor and a 3-megapixel
camera. There's also a few things about
Windows Phone that are not as
bad as Android loyalists say. For
example, notifications. All core
apps have push notifications and
the notification system is similar to the one for Android. Along
with the notification bar at the
top of the screen, each live tile
will also notify me of alerts. Now,
this system is not quite as
refined as the one on Android. The notification bar doesn't
actually pull down so the
notification goes away after a
few seconds. However, it remains
on the live tile if you have one
for that app pinned to your Start screen. Also, not all third-
party apps have push
notifications. I went through
three Twitter apps before I
found one that did. That being
said, I can live with the current system, trust that it will get
better, and appreciate that it's
not as bad as I thought it would
be. The Marketplace selection is not
that bad either. Granted, I never
really used that many apps. That
was one reason why Android lost
its hold on me. I realize that the
Android Market has literally hundreds of thousands more
apps that the Windows Marketplace, but I'm not a big app person. Every app that I
used on Android is available on
Windows Phone. The exact same
app too, not a second-rate
replacement made by some
lesser-known developer. So, the Marketplace is smaller than the
Android Market, yes, but it's not
as bad as they say. Lastly, the keyboard is
impressive. I am extremely picky
when it comes to keyboards so
when I decided to make the
switch, the keyboard played a
big role. So far, it's actually pretty good. I've used better,
but I've used worse. The
autocorrect function isn't the
best, but I'm satisfied with it. And
that's saying something. In several ways, at least in my
opinion, Windows Phone is better
than Android. In some ways, it's
just as good. In a few ways,
Android is better. I do miss multi-
tasking, but that's no big problem because it's coming to Windows Phone this fall. All in all, I'm happy with my Windows
Phone device. I have 14 days to
decide if I want to keep it or not
so you may come back in a few
weeks and see an article entitled
"Why I switched back to Android". Honestly, I really hope I like
Windows Phone because I just
don't want to go back to
Android and my only other
option is BlackBerry at the
moment. (The carrier I chose does not yet have the iPhone or
a webOS device.) We'll see.

Http://phonedog.com/2011/07/26/why-i-switched-from-android-to-windows-phone/