Well, when I initially set out to do this, I thought I could barely make it 30 days. To my surprise, I went two full months! A big part of that was the hardware I was using. The HTC 8X is a beautiful phone and, without its beautiful screen and outstanding sound quality, I, honestly, would have put the phone down or given it away (my daughter thought it was beautiful and wanted it to replace her iPhone 4S). The reason I say this about the hardware is that it was a big incentive to stay on Windows Phone 8 (WP8) even though I was having a less than stellar time to start out, and I wanted this test to be about WP8 and be phone independent. I have played with the Nokia Lumia 920 and, despite front facing photos, these phones do not look alike at all. The Nokia is large, heavy, and not attractive at all. On the flip side, I got lots of compliments about the HTC. I even had people come across the dining room of a coffee shop to investigate. Your mileage may vary depending on which phone you use. I would plug the HTC over the Nokia any day due to the look and feel and the Beats headphone amp. Seriously, if you use your phone to listen to music, this phone sounds so much better than any other portable device I've used, that I replaced my iPod with it.
One big piece of news is that Microsoft has announced that all WP8 phones will receive operating system updates and the rumor is that there will be a new one released around Christmas 2013. They appear to have learned their lesson from WP7 and are attempting to make the platform have some life instead of being disposable.
Back to the real point of my experiment: can an Android user make the switch? We'll get to that at the end.
One big point of using Android, in the USA anyway, is free texting via Google Voice. Fortunately, I was able to do this using Metro Talk. It was hard at first as it lacked voice input... A crucial feature for the occasional reply while driving. About 14 days in, they updated it and it worked pretty well. I was surprised at its accuracy until I got in my car. My personal tests show that it doesn't screen background noise nearly a well as Android does. Minus one for WP8. It is important to note that traditional texting supported voice input from the outset of WP8.
What about apps? At first, this department was really lacking. I have been amazed at the speed of development. The only apps I couldn't replace were the more obscure ones where I couldn't access an existing Android account (like Studyblue). All of my maps were there: Spotify, Yelp, Open Table, Starbucks. there are a lot of apps that don't exist on Windows Phone, but for just about each 1 of those, there's a Windows Phone equivalent. This can be completely acceptable to many people, especially first time smartphone users or those that didn't invest heavily in their app ecosystem (you know what I'm talking about...people that use, say, 3 apps, versus people that have invested hours and hours putting things into an app that they can't access from a different platform, not to mention people that have spent $100 on apps and want to keep them!). I, personally, have invested too much in a couple of apps that I couldn't move from, most notably, Studyblue, which is a study flashcard app, that I simply needed to pass tests!
Web Browsing is a good experience on mobile Internet Explorer (IE). The browser works great. It's fast, and handled most sites better than Android's Chrome browser. A big disadvantage is that, on Android, I have 4 browsers in case one doesn't play well with specific websites. There's no option to switch on WP8 if you come across something that doesn't play well with IE.
Something taken for granted by all smartphone users is the method of input. Apple has famously had a keyboard that users like. I personally don't get it. It's fairly rudimentary. Android is famous for the ability to switch keyboards with several on the market and a quick and easy switch between them. Something else neat about Android is the "Swype" style keyboard. The WP8 keyboard is surprisingly good. I seemed to have fewer mistyped letters and the word prediction is pretty reliable. Additionally, if you don't see your word predicted up top, you can swipe the predictions to the left and it brings up more predictions, something that came in handy with a lot of long words. Unfortunately, there is no "Swype" style input. Instead, I found myself using text input a lot to send many message (as long as I wasn't in a noisy place!)
The app tray was very nice because, while all of the apps were in a single file, alphabetical list, they were quick to access because you can touch the header letter (such as "A" for the apps starting with "A") to jump to that section. This great feature also works in contacts/people to quickly get to the person you want.
One of the best features of WP8 is the People hub. Going into that app gives you a slick layout that shows all of your contacts' latest social posts as well as their social photos and contact information, all in one continuous feed. Combining these all into one space is the best thing about the operating system. This works the same way with the "Me" hub. It compiles all of your social interactions from all of your feeds into one slick page. The only drawback to this is that it removes the ability for you to "Like" the comments from individuals on a post (while you can still like a post).
The one last section I want to touch on that was a big difference in the way WP8 shares files. WP8 does not integrate with apps the way Android does (neither does iOS...Apple). With Android, I can tap any file and share with just about any app on my phone, so I can post a photo on service, and I can upload files straight to Dropbox, Box, Skydrive, etc. With WP8, I can only upload to Skydrive, or to specific apps that work with WP8 (Facebook, Mail, it's pretty limited). There was no way to load from the gallery to Dropbox or other services, although there are workarounds from within some apps to upload from within the app. Something else very frustrating is that there is no way to see a file size, so sending a small video is a trial and failure type approach. It will let you share any size file with e-mail, but it's hard to tell if your short video is going to be 2MB or 10MB. There is literally no preview.
The camera started out really weak (why does Microsoft do this? They have consistently...all the way back to Windows 1.0...released software that wasn't finished and then patched it later down the line). It was frustrating as the camera sensor is the same as in my One S, which is marvelous, but I was unable to get some of the same great photos due to WP8's camera app. This has finally changed as several camera apps and "lenses" have come out since the October launch of this operating system. Now, apps like CameraPro (and others) have added all of the features I had on my Android phone and I could finally take better photos. Interestingly, the video camera seems to do a better job than video on my Android devices. "Lenses" are like mini plug-ins that go into the WP8 camera that let you do things like: take a panorama pic, take a time-lapse pic, and, Blink, a new lense that lets you pic the right moment in time out of a series of fast exposures.
Turn by turn navigation was something lacking, but Microsoft forced Nokia to open this up, so Nokia drive (which works as well, and with a few more bells and whistles than Google) can be installed on any WP8 phone.
Finally, WP8 has a multitasking window, accessed by long pressing the back arrow key. It brings up cards, much like a webOS or Android phone. Unfortunately, it only lets you jump into the other apps. There is no way to close them from this screen. You have to manually enter each app and hit the back key repeatedly to kill other apps. This is a simple and terrible design flaw that can (and hopefully will be) fixed with a simple little "X" button to kill the app.
Overall, I could live within the WP8 universe if I didn't already have so much invested in the Android apps that are not existing in a WP8 format. I have a few friends now that are converts after checking out my phone and haven't looked back, really loving their HTC 8X. I know several people who have their Nokia's but they just look so cheap and ugly in comparison, and I haven't seen as much difference in the photos as they claim that the Nokia has. The bottom line is, if you are not heavily invested elsewhere, give WP8 a try. It's the new, hip operating system that is growing faster than any of the others, has a fresh feel, and has a few excellent, innovative features built in.
Come back soon as I will have walk through videos showing you how to use many of the features of this innovative operating system.
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