New to Android from Windows Phone--Do I have to switch to google services?

[bradleyj]

Hello,

I am a long time Windows phone user and I just bought a Moto e4. My problem is that I use my Microsoft account for mail, contacts, Cortana, calendar, and cloud (onedrive). I have been trying very hard to make those service work on this Android phone but here are the problems I see so far:

• No ability to set default calendar, so Google Assist etc try to add events to gmail calendar
• Cortana on Android doesn't work like it does on Windows Phone (she doesn't interact with voice to create events, texts etc.)

Basically, I am wondering if any folks here have successfully figured out how to use Microsoft Account services instead of Google/Gmail services. Otherwise, I am wondering if I have to give up and switch everything over to Google (contacts, calendar, mail etc).

Thanks for any advice for a Microsoft user who is new to Android.

 

[11B1P]

I had a Google account from years back, so when I came over here from WP it wasn't that big of a deal. I have a live.com email address on my phone that syncs just fine and all the Windows office apps, not that I use them. I can't say if you'll like gmail and google contacts better, you'll need to use them a bit and decide for yourself. And I think you'll like the calendar just fine. I have OneDrive but I prefer Google Drive and you can forget about Cortana working like it does on WP. You'll need to get used to "OK Google".

They way I looked at it was the way I looked at WP. If I'm going to be in the android ecosphere, might as well use as much of it as I can. The native apps work so much better together.

 

[chanchan05]

Outlook and Google can sync to each other over the web. My Google Contacts and Calendar syncs to Outlook.com so that isn't a problem.

You can also download the Outlook app for Android and let that handle contacts and calendar sync as well as emails.

Then you'd just need the Google Account for Play Store and Device Manager.