Hello, Android. It's been a long time.
Well, I think I'm finally throwing in the towel on the Windows Mobile platform. Don't get me wrong; I love the Microsoft stack, from top to bottom. You might even call me an evangelist. I use Outlook.com for email calendar and contacts, I use OneDrive and Visual Studio and Office365 and Xbox Live and Azure for webhosting. I've loved the ride and the cripsness of Windows 10 Mobile, but it's simply lost too many apps, and there doesn't appear to be a viable next-gen option on the horizon anyway.
So, in the spirit of a smooth transition, I though I would ask for help migrating to an Android phone. In particular, I'd like to keep as many Microsoft services as I can, and I would like to move as much data as I can. I would absolutely love it if you friendly folks could provide some advice on the following topics and questions:
Well, I think I'm finally throwing in the towel on the Windows Mobile platform. Don't get me wrong; I love the Microsoft stack, from top to bottom. You might even call me an evangelist. I use Outlook.com for email calendar and contacts, I use OneDrive and Visual Studio and Office365 and Xbox Live and Azure for webhosting. I've loved the ride and the cripsness of Windows 10 Mobile, but it's simply lost too many apps, and there doesn't appear to be a viable next-gen option on the horizon anyway.
So, in the spirit of a smooth transition, I though I would ask for help migrating to an Android phone. In particular, I'd like to keep as many Microsoft services as I can, and I would like to move as much data as I can. I would absolutely love it if you friendly folks could provide some advice on the following topics and questions:
- Out of the box, will android phones successfully sync with Outlook.com email, calendar and contacts? They use Exchange for the underlying protocol, so I would assume so... but would love confirmation. Ideally, I'd prefer to just sign into my Microsoft account and avoid adding a Google account altogether, but I realize I need to at least access app purchases.
- I adore Cortana on Windows Mobile; how is the experience using Cortana on Android, these days? Is it a full replacement for Google Now/Assistant?
- Is it possible to transfer over my text message history from Windows Mobile to Android?
- How tightly do Microsoft apps integrate in the Android platform, such as OneDrive (for picture uploads and document retrieval) and Office?
- What is the de-facto app for reading Feedly feeds?
- What is the best app for adding, managing and listening to 'offline' audiobooks?
- For anyone else who has made the migration recently; what 'gotchas' should I be aware of? What is still lacking, and what will be improved?
- It's been a while since I used an Android system; do app settings sync to the cloud like WM10, or not?