Stand clear! Will HTC's One act as a defibrillator for Windows Phone? HTC gave Microsoft a huge PR coup yesterday during the New York unveiling of the most stylish Windows Phone ever made. Redmond could certainly use some good news right now. Windows Phone shipments fell 9.4 per cent in Q2, as Microsoft's languid timetable, along with a less-than-clockwork rollout of Windows Phone 8.1, finally …
...and I'll say it again. I actually like WinPho. I have used it since v7 on the Lumia 800 and now have 8.1 dev preview update 1 ona 930.
Fast, smooth, not a resource hog and there are most of the big name apps are now present and correct and the day to day functionality is there as well. A special mention must be made about Cortana. I had a diary note in for a meeting and she (unprompted) popped up advising me based on the current traffic etc I should really be getting my skates on within the next ten minutes and would I like directions as she had them all ready. She is very very slick.
Where the app situation falls down now is not the big names but the 'hobby' apps. I do both astronomy and birding and the app choice for both is very limited compared to the big 2.
That said some of those in the hobby arena are really quite excellent (and I think it is fair to note that an awful lot of the apps on iOS and Android are pretty dreadful too).
Further the tightening integration between phone and PC just makes the overall package more attractive.
If you don't like it then fine but it does not mean someone else is an idiot for having a preference for it just as I do not think those that prefer Android are idiots (Jobsian fanbois on the otherhand - clearly a couple of bites short of a full fruit ;) )
I agree, I have an android tablet but my phone is a Lumia 925 and I love it. It's slim, light, does everything I need and I really don't care about the supposed "missing" apps. Granted some of the apps are poor (linkedin for example) but IMO the El Reg app is better than the Android one.
And the ultimate pro for me, Microsoft have binned Zune which was the biggest customer gripe that I saw about WP7. I don't care how pretty their hardware is or how many fanbois there are, I will not use Apple products because I will not use iTunes.
You have also summed up the big problem with things like Cortana; you are impressed by it doing things that Apple and Android have had for years.
I have a Nokia 520, and it does what I want for the right price, but don't have Cortana yet. Even when it comes, still going to just another catch up feature, but probably not quite as slick as the integration with Google on my Nexus 7 tablet. I don't use Siri, but it is a couple of years ahead of Cortana in development.
Thing is that the 520 is nice little low end phone; if they kept building up that modest success with small regular improvements, then maybe my next phone would be the next model up. Instead the newer devices in the range (like the 530), seem worse if anything, and the app situation is not improving; one app I used on WP8, is now defunct and no alternative is available.
I think phones like the HTC one, seem like afterthoughts - stick a model out there, same hardware but with WP and few Microsoft people might buy one, but given the same hardware for the same price could be running Android with more developed features and far more apps, I can't see any appeal (and that is from somebody with a WP8 phone)
One could imagine a world where different people had different beliefs about which OS was best, yet still held respect for others who believed in another OS, be the platform a mobile phone, a desktop or even a server.
Once people came to respect others preferences it might come to pass that there was peace across the universe, extending even as far as the darkest corners of planet Earth where it had been foretold that man shall usurp his foes at any cost.
In the meantime (I can't wait for hell to freeze over), wouldn't it be nice (?) if in the mobile world one could buy a device that came with a preinstalled OS (optionally) but one could choose another OS (iOS, android, windows, ...) without voiding the warranty.
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