I’ve decided that I’ve seen enough and I am finally ready. Windows Phone camp is my next destination!
You might be thinking why am I moving to an OS with low app count, dwindling market share and which lacks basic features as compared with Android 2.3.6. Its all agreeable but the good thing for me is that I don’t care. Downloading apps is not my hobby anyway.
The single biggest reason why I am migrating is because of the boredom my current OS is giving me. Android Gingerbread is just plain boring and I’m too afraid to upgrade to Jelly Bean as I may end up with an even more laggy device.
Windows Phone is both lively and smooth. Performance in both high-end and low-end phones is smoother than any Android flagship. The top-of-the-class.
2 years back when Nokia announced its intentions to make Windows Phone devices primarily instead of the obvious competitor Android, a lot of us were looking at the Finnish company with disbelief, myself included. 2 years later, its obvious that the decision was by far the best one. Nokia can now make exclusive phones and price them accordingly at will.
This transition will not be without its drawbacks though. Windows Phone still lacks a Notification Centre (although live tiles somewhat make up for it), ununified volume controls and customizations besides the all so important apps. But at least I’ll be able to breathe without crashing my phone.
Crashing might not sound like a big deal to Gingerbread users, our phones crash a lot. Sometimes my phone restarts randomly without warning. At other occasions, it won’t install a 33MB app because of ‘low storage’, even when I’ve got 1.27GBs of internal, and 2.2GBs of external, untouched storage left. What a misery. Performance-wise, there is a wide gulf between mid-range and upper-end phones in Android. At least the much hated phone among Pakistanis, i.e. the iPhone has got way better records to boast. Every time I’ve used it, I am taken aback by how smooth it is. Windows Phone is very similar in this aspect too.
After two years of being costly and quite restricted, Microsoft’s phones have fallen in price too. Lumia 620 and HTC 8S are best performing mid-range phones available right now and the Lumia 520 will sit even one step below.
In the Windows Phone party too, my next phone will undoubtedly be a Lumia. The exclusive Nokia apps and technologies make the Lumia phones the top WP choice. There are other compelling options too but none are quite nearly as compelling (or energetic) as the Lumias.
So there you have it. Everything can be summed up in three words: Performance, Live Tiles and Difference. The deep social integration, cloud services (which are a must for me) and Office Suite are huge pluses too.
I am still among the minorities now. Its now up to Microsoft to convince the top app developers to cross borders. Until then, I don’t think most people will feel like jumping the ship.
Having owned 3 Nokia phones before (which were also the first three phones that I ever owned, like most Pakistanis), I can’t wait to go back to Nokia again.
Apple had taken quite a stringent stand on the quality of its products, thereby refusing to lower the price of its iPhones is now forced to bend its knees against the overwhelming demands of the populous but underdeveloped country markets. Apple is now launching a cheap iPhone 5 to satisfy the needs of such markets.
