Windows Phone user switched to Android... deciding whether to stay

[Yogi76]

Please see the following screenshots for the emoji settings.

Thanks for the tip. The path that you posted didn't actually take me to the correct place, but it pointed me in the correct direction. I ended up finding the setting under "Typing & Autocorrect" rather than under "Keys" in the SwiftKey settings.

 

[diaperback]

I was playing with my wife's L640 and I was talking to her about how I might actually prefer her $70 phone to my $700 (at the time) Note 4.

 

[hpilot]

This reminds me of the guy who just broke up with his girlfriend and is now dating other people. All he can talk about on dates is his old girlfriend, and mentally he is always comparing everyone to her. Secretly he still likes her, so he is never happy with anyone new. If you want to be in the Android world you have to let go, and be in the Android world. If that doesn't make you happy, go back to Windows. Nothing in life is perfect - least of all cell phones. As others have said, the only reason to use a Nexus is if you go all-in with Google, and you like that. It's the same reason I would never buy an iPhone - I hate the Apple Nazi - type control and money - hungry ecosystem lock-ins and prices. Your phone might be defective, because I have not had any of the problems you claim. I tried the AC website on Chrome to see if it lags as you said. It works fine for me. The only problem is all the ads that pop up all the time. BTW, I n ever use my phone to browse the web - I just don't get that. Everything I do has an app. I only have to charge my phone about twenty minutes every twenty-four hours. Of course, your mileage may vary.

If you are not ready to make a clean break, I think you should go back to Windows Phone. - Good luck!

 

[diaperback]

This reminds me of the guy who just broke up with his girlfriend and is now dating other people. All he can talk about on dates is his old girlfriend, and mentally he is always comparing everyone to her. Secretly he still likes her, so he is never happy with anyone new. If you want to be in the Android world you have to let go, and be in the Android world. If that doesn't make you happy, go back to Windows.

Good analogy, though now i can't help but imagine if relationships had 2 year contracts and software updates. OYYYY!

 

[planoman]

I had a lumia 925 for about a year. I used it mainly on weekends for the camera before android especially nexus camera were, well nexus cameras.

Had no issues with the phone and liked it and the tiles etc.

My issue was with apps. When I traveled I did not have southwest airlines, marriott etc. Once Chase pulled their support of the platform I had to move on. Now I use android and iOS. I full expected WP to hit 10% market share but the apps or lack thereof has killed it. I am certain blackberry will surpass them since they are making android phones now.

Posted via my S6 Active!

 

[diaperback]

All that being said, I know that the "next big thing" in apps or the next piece of hardware that I buy will need an app only available for Android or iOS, which is why I decided to give Android a try again. But I have until November 21 to return the phone and, as of right now, I'm leaning that way. I just find myself missing the advantages of Windows Phone way more than I like the added apps of Android. Anyone care to tell me what I'm missing?

If you can live with apps that are less functional if they're even present, then I suggest you stick with WP. Otherwise, I don't see an upside to switching.
Speaking from my personal experience, based on what I do with my phone, I feel like I made the wrong choice back in May. Not a bad choice, but the wrong choice for me. I'm constantly trying to like my Note 4 and find myself trying to turn it into a WP. (Widgets are not live tiles, though they may seem like it.) The only positives over WP for me are that the stylus is fantastic and ESPN Fantasy Football app blows the WP app out of the water. Pretty dang exciting.

 

[anon(596177)]

I think I saw you have one more day to decide, so assuming you havent bolted yet I'll add some of my 2 cents being a die hard, all-in android and google guy. I put my answers in with your questions.

So I'm a longtime Windows Phone user. The last time that I used an Android phone full time was the original Galaxy S (the Vibrant on T-Mobile). Since then, I've used a string of Windows Phone devices with the most recent being an unlocked Lumia 930 on T-Mobile. I was planning on getting a Lumia 950 or 950 XL as a replacement, but seeing the writing on the wall for the future of Windows phones I decided to give Android another try. I went ahead and bought a Nexus 6P and have been using it the past 10 days. Here are my notes:

1. Why can't I sync Facebook contacts to my phone or at least the Facebook profile pictures to my existing contacts? From what I've been able to find online, it's due to a change in the Facebook API, but it still works fine on my Lumia 930.
Google and facebook had a falling out a few years ago after android 4.0 released. Facebook changed their API and refused to allow google to use it in AOSP (vanilla android) so any phone running Vanilla android (Nexus phones and Google play edition phones) come without the ability to sync facebook contacts. There is a work around for this if you root your phone, but if you don't you can install sync.me (https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...?id=com.syncme.syncmeapp&hl=en&token=OyDldrqR) which will go through the contacts you have on your phone and the contacts you have in facebook and sync facebook profile photos over to your phone contacts if you have matches. This is the closest you can get to facebook contact syncing right now if you aren't rooted on a nexus.

2. Bluetooth music controls are frustrating and inconsistent. Listening to podcasts using the Pocketcasts app while using the Waze app, the skip back or skip forward controls work fine, but the play/pause control doesn't. However, using the same app while using Google Maps allows all the controls to work fine.
Cant really comment on this. I do not use waze but otherwise I have found bluetooth music controls to work just fine with any bluetooth device I've used.

3. I disabled Google Now in place of the Cortana app and changed the default search engine in Chrome to be Bing. However, there appears to be no way to change the search provider for the box at the top of the recent apps switcher.
Nope, no way to do this. Google now works very well though, and I see in another post you were giving it a shot. It does suck that windows 10 platform features and google features cant talk with each other, but thus is the nature of working with multiple platforms sadly.

4. Enabling "Hey, Cortana" breaks the speech-to-text feature of the Android keyboard. I chalked this up to the Cortana app being in beta and since I seldom use voice searches I simply disabled "Hey, Cortana."
Likely the reason.

5. The Android speech-to-text functionality is light years ahead of the same feature in Windows Phone. However, the shape writing feature and ability to edit text after typing on the Microsoft keyboard is much, much better than on the Android keyboard.

6. I miss being able to type a word and have a bunch of corresponding emoji appear in the autocorrect space.
Addressed with swiftkey

7. Swiping either way on an email from my Exchange accounts in the Gmail app does a "delete." I would prefer one direction to delete and the other direction to mark with a follow-up flag.
Try the app "Nine" (https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...s?id=com.ninefolders.hd3&hl=en&token=M31j417-) Arguably the best outlook app on the play store. Swipe right on an email for options to move to another folder, delete, and archive, swipe left to find by sender, follow up, and mark as read or unread. LOTS of other features on this app. It is 9.99 with a free two week trial but its the best money you can spend in the play store if you are looking for a quality exchange app.

8. The Outlook app doesn't have the ability to sync contacts to the phone. Having the accounts syncing in both the Outlook app and the built-in Gmail/Contacts/Calendar is a waste of bandwidth and, more importantly, battery.
See "Nine" again from above. Options to sync contacts with the google contacts app are there.

9. I love having a dedicated button for the recent task switcher.
One of my favorite and most widely used buttons. google did the three button on the bottom approach right.

10. I like having integrated access to Google Voice as my voicemail provider.
Verizon, so I dont use unless im missing something, which is possible

11. I miss wireless charging way more than I though I would.
Personal preference, but i do prefer being able to pick up my phone and use it while its charging, and going from 15% to 45% in 15 mins is pretty awesome too.

12. The phone seems slow and choppy at times for a device with such high-end specs, especially in Chrome.
When Lollipop was introduced, Chrome was given an option to move all chrome tabs to the "recents" screen instead of opening a separate tab in the chrome app. a LOT of people initially noticed this caused some serious lag with their phone and chrome. There is an option to disable this feature in chrome. Tap the settings dots, go to "settings", tap "merge tabs and apps" and turn it OFF. You will have to manage tabs from within chrome instead of your recent apps screen, but it may solve some lag issues for you.

13. The battery life is terrible.
Battery life while the screen is off is phenomenal. It does seem to be a juice sucker when actively using the phone with the screen on though, which sadly has been a trait with pretty much every nexus phone. It has not (for me at least) been bad enough to be concerning, as with the same usage as my old phone I've still seen better battery life.

As far as the big reason that everyone gives for why Windows phones are dead and to move to Android, namely apps, I really haven't found that to be that big of a pull. The apps I use most are the phone, messaging, mail, calendar, web browser, camera, photo viewer, Pocketcasts, Audible, Groove music, Feedly reader, Weather Channel, MyRadar, MSN News, CNN, ESPN, Fitbit, Facebook, Twitter, TSheets, and Uber. The only one of those that would be lost by moving back to Windows Phone will be TSheets and I would simply need to go back to using the mobile web version. Admittedly, that would be a loss as the app experience for TSheets is better, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I guess since I don't play games or watch video on my phone, use Snapchat, or care about banking on my phone, I simply don't currently care that much about the apps that are typically cited as "missing" on Windows Phone.

There's really no getting around the fact that the windows store app store is severely lacking. It's great that the apps you consider necessary are all available, but you also haven't really experienced the google or iOS app stores either, at least that's what I'm gathering. Some apps that I would consider to be essential would be: Tapatalk, Mint Bills and Finance, Citi and Chase Mobile Apps, Many of the google apps (again, im rooted into google quite a bit), strava app, garmin connect app (as i use a garmin cycling computer and fitness tracker), Splashtop remote desktop, wifi analyzer, billguard, paypal. From what I understand, most of these apps arent available on windows phone, which is really one of the only reasons I have not been able to try and pull the trigger on a windows phone yet. I love the windows phone interface, but I cant even entertain the idea of switching to it for any amount of time with the app store in the condition it is in. Definitely give the Android store a chance. You may find some new necessities that you didnt know you needed, or wanted

All that being said, I know that the "next big thing" in apps or the next piece of hardware that I buy will need an app only available for Android or iOS, which is why I decided to give Android a try again. But I have until November 21 to return the phone and, as of right now, I'm leaning that way. I just find myself missing the advantages of Windows Phone way more than I like the added apps of Android. Anyone care to tell me what I'm missing?

 

[anon(596177)]

So I'm a longtime Windows Phone user. The last time that I used an Android phone full time was the original Galaxy S (the Vibrant on T-Mobile). Since then, I've used a string of Windows Phone devices with the most recent being an unlocked Lumia 930 on T-Mobile. I was planning on getting a Lumia 950 or 950 XL as a replacement, but seeing the writing on the wall for the future of Windows phones I decided to give Android another try. I went ahead and bought a Nexus 6P and have been using it the past 10 days. Here are my notes:

1. Why can't I sync Facebook contacts to my phone or at least the Facebook profile pictures to my existing contacts? From what I've been able to find online, it's due to a change in the Facebook API, but it still works fine on my Lumia 930.
2. Bluetooth music controls are frustrating and inconsistent. Listening to podcasts using the Pocketcasts app while using the Waze app, the skip back or skip forward controls work fine, but the play/pause control doesn't. However, using the same app while using Google Maps allows all the controls to work fine.
3. I disabled Google Now in place of the Cortana app and changed the default search engine in Chrome to be Bing. However, there appears to be no way to change the search provider for the box at the top of the recent apps switcher.
4. Enabling "Hey, Cortana" breaks the speech-to-text feature of the Android keyboard. I chalked this up to the Cortana app being in beta and since I seldom use voice searches I simply disabled "Hey, Cortana."
5. The Android speech-to-text functionality is light years ahead of the same feature in Windows Phone. However, the shape writing feature and ability to edit text after typing on the Microsoft keyboard is much, much better than on the Android keyboard.
6. I miss being able to type a word and have a bunch of corresponding emoji appear in the autocorrect space.
7. Swiping either way on an email from my Exchange accounts in the Gmail app does a "delete." I would prefer one direction to delete and the other direction to mark with a follow-up flag.
8. The Outlook app doesn't have the ability to sync contacts to the phone. Having the accounts syncing in both the Outlook app and the built-in Gmail/Contacts/Calendar is a waste of bandwidth and, more importantly, battery.
9. I love having a dedicated button for the recent task switcher.
10. I like having integrated access to Google Voice as my voicemail provider.
11. I miss wireless charging way more than I though I would.
12. The phone seems slow and choppy at times for a device with such high-end specs, especially in Chrome.
13. The battery life is terrible.

As far as the big reason that everyone gives for why Windows phones are dead and to move to Android, namely apps, I really haven't found that to be that big of a pull. The apps I use most are the phone, messaging, mail, calendar, web browser, camera, photo viewer, Pocketcasts, Audible, Groove music, Feedly reader, Weather Channel, MyRadar, MSN News, CNN, ESPN, Fitbit, Facebook, Twitter, TSheets, and Uber. The only one of those that would be lost by moving back to Windows Phone will be TSheets and I would simply need to go back to using the mobile web version. Admittedly, that would be a loss as the app experience for TSheets is better, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I guess since I don't play games or watch video on my phone, use Snapchat, or care about banking on my phone, I simply don't currently care that much about the apps that are typically cited as "missing" on Windows Phone.

All that being said, I know that the "next big thing" in apps or the next piece of hardware that I buy will need an app only available for Android or iOS, which is why I decided to give Android a try again. But I have until November 21 to return the phone and, as of right now, I'm leaning that way. I just find myself missing the advantages of Windows Phone way more than I like the added apps of Android. Anyone care to tell me what I'm missing?

Quoting you so you can see there are replies on your thread, look above

 

[jam4775]

10. I like having integrated access to Google Voice as my voicemail provider.
Verizon, so I dont use unless im missing something, which is possible

On Verizon you can forward your unanswered calls to Google Voice number for VVM instead of having them go to Verizon voicemail service. Check out this thread: http://http://forums.androidcentral...-visual-voice-mail-nexus-app-not-working.html

 

[Lepa79]

It's a Google phone, use Google services, there is no reason to be using Bing and Cortana when you have Google search and OK Google. The Microsoft services can't possibly be as well integrated as the Google services on a Nexus phone. If you really are that wedded to Microsoft then you should stick to Microsoft phones. It's more likely that Microsoft will pull support for Cortana on Android before they kill WIndows phones. I can't imagine why anyone would want to use Cortana on an Android phone when they have OK Google, eventually Microsoft will look at the numbers and decide it's not worth the expense.

Can not agree more. Not sure why people torture themselves this way. Just stick to Windows phone. No need to switch to android if you want android to work like a Windows phone does

 

[getbretweir]

If I switched to iPhone and expected to use it the same way as my Nexus, I'd inevitably be disappointed. Same thing with somebody moving from Windows to Google. As others have mentioned, unless you embrace the change and learn to adapt, you'll never experience it's true potential. From what you're describing, I'd just stick with your Windows Phone as it seems to have and do most things you prefer.

Also, I use Chrome and have experienced no lag at all, it runs flawlessly. And I'm a moderate user and get 4-4.5 hours SOT and get home from work with at least 30-40% every day. A quick charge if needed after work before the gym before streaming music for an hour and I haven't thought about my battery all day since I got my phone a few weeks ago. Battery life obviously varies greatly so I'll leave that to you, but Chrome lagging is concerning. When I say 0 lag, I mean this thing flies, I can count on one hand the times it's slightly hesitated while scrolling .... Oh and the AC app is light years ahead of the website IMO.

Good luck!

 

[capncoad]

Since people have already given you detailed responses, I do want to add that it's totally OK if this phone doesn't work out for you. You are understandably more entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem, and the best phones for that is typically Windows Phone. I do think that over time, the Nexus 6P will win you over. If you take the time to wrestle off some old chains and embrace some things, the Android brand is still a good long term proposition.

Some of your criticisms sort of remind me of how iPhone users talk switching over. You might be happier with an iPhone which also capable of lot of Microsoft services.

 

[Yogi76]

This reminds me of the guy who just broke up with his girlfriend and is now dating other people. All he can talk about on dates is his old girlfriend, and mentally he is always comparing everyone to her. Secretly he still likes her, so he is never happy with anyone new. If you want to be in the Android world you have to let go, and be in the Android world. If that doesn't make you happy, go back to Windows. Nothing in life is perfect - least of all cell phones. As others have said, the only reason to use a Nexus is if you go all-in with Google, and you like that. It's the same reason I would never buy an iPhone - I hate the Apple Nazi - type control and money - hungry ecosystem lock-ins and prices. Your phone might be defective, because I have not had any of the problems you claim. I tried the AC website on Chrome to see if it lags as you said. It works fine for me. The only problem is all the ads that pop up all the time. BTW, I n ever use my phone to browse the web - I just don't get that. Everything I do has an app. I only have to charge my phone about twenty minutes every twenty-four hours. Of course, your mileage may vary.

If you are not ready to make a clean break, I think you should go back to Windows Phone. - Good luck!

I like your analogy, although it's more like the old girlfriend had died an untimely death rather than just a break-up. I guess I'm in mourning for a platform that I feel was superior but am still trying to move on.

I do find it humorous that people claim to love Android because it is so open and customizable, but when there are any issues with the third party apps or options everyone immediately says that you should just switch everything to Google so it will work correctly.

 

[Yogi76]

Google and facebook had a falling out a few years ago after android 4.0 released. Facebook changed their API and refused to allow google to use it in AOSP (vanilla android) so any phone running Vanilla android (Nexus phones and Google play edition phones) come without the ability to sync facebook contacts. There is a work around for this if you root your phone, but if you don't you can install sync.me (https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...?id=com.syncme.syncmeapp&hl=en&token=GSdvYbL8) which will go through the contacts you have on your phone and the contacts you have in facebook and sync facebook profile photos over to your phone contacts if you have matches. This is the closest you can get to facebook contact syncing right now if you aren't rooted on a nexus.

Thanks for the suggestion. I installed Sync.me and it was able to sync Facebook images down to my contacts. I noticed that it even pulled profile pictures for contacts I have in my phone that are not friends on Facebook, which is nice. I also noticed that it didn't just put the profile pictures on my phone, but it actually updated the contact's photo in my Exchange account so they show up in Outlook on my computer, as well. Again, nice. I disabled the callerid functions of Sync.me because I use Truecaller on both Android and Windows Phone, but the contacts sync feature worked great.

Cant really comment on this. I do not use waze but otherwise I have found bluetooth music controls to work just fine with any bluetooth device I've used.

It hasn't just been in Waze. I've also noticed issues when I switch from listening in Audible to listening in Pocketcasts, and pressing the play/pause control on my Bluetooth device will pause Pocketcasts but then resume Audible. I'm thinking it's because of the more robust background task functionality of Android. I've figured out workarounds, such as not using Waze and making sure to fully close Audible when switching to another audio app, but it is still a bit annoying.

Nope, no way to do this. Google now works very well though, and I see in another post you were giving it a shot. It does suck that windows 10 platform features and google features cant talk with each other, but thus is the nature of working with multiple platforms sadly.

Google Now is working fine, but I do indeed miss having Cortana having all of my information so that the feature worked to its full potential in Windows 10.

Try the app "Nine" (https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...s?id=com.ninefolders.hd3&hl=en&token=CqKexFL1) Arguably the best outlook app on the play store. Swipe right on an email for options to move to another folder, delete, and archive, swipe left to find by sender, follow up, and mark as read or unread. LOTS of other features on this app. It is 9.99 with a free two week trial but its the best money you can spend in the play store if you are looking for a quality exchange app.

Thanks again for the suggestion. I haven't had a chance to download and setup the app yet, but I intend to.

Verizon, so I dont use unless im missing something, which is possible

I use Google Voice purely as a replacement for my carrier's voicemail. It gives me virtually unlimited voicemail storage, speech-to-text voicemail recognition, and web access with text search for my voicemails. Since there is no working Google Voice app for Windows Phone anymore (there used to be but it was cutoff from working when Google blocked external app access to GV a while back), I had to just get my Google Voice voicemails via email on Windows Phone. It actually worked fine since I still got my transcription and received a link to listen to the voicemail as an .mp3 file. However, having a real Google Voice app which even replaces the visual voicemail section of the Android dialer is nicer.

Personal preference, but i do prefer being able to pick up my phone and use it while its charging, and going from 15% to 45% in 15 mins is pretty awesome too.

I'm not saying wireless charging instead of quick charging, but in addition to. I have a Qi enabled mount for my car and having the phone just charge every time I set it down in that when I got in the car was nice. I drive a lot for work and would just get a little boost without having to think about plugging the phone in.

When Lollipop was introduced, Chrome was given an option to move all chrome tabs to the "recents" screen instead of opening a separate tab in the chrome app. a LOT of people initially noticed this caused some serious lag with their phone and chrome. There is an option to disable this feature in chrome. Tap the settings dots, go to "settings", tap "merge tabs and apps" and turn it OFF. You will have to manage tabs from within chrome instead of your recent apps screen, but it may solve some lag issues for you.

I changed the setting right after reading your message and that was indeed the culprit. Chrome ran way, way better after the change. Plus, I prefer that method of handling tab management, anyway. In fact, after making the change, there appeared to be open tabs that weren't showing in the recent apps task switcher that were never closed. I do still seem to get slowdown in apps that launch websites within their own apps, such as Feedly, but I've set them to open links in the system browser and that resolves that issue (Except for Cortana, which doesn't seem to have that option. Hopefully they add it).

Battery life while the screen is off is phenomenal. It does seem to be a juice sucker when actively using the phone with the screen on though, which sadly has been a trait with pretty much every nexus phone. It has not (for me at least) been bad enough to be concerning, as with the same usage as my old phone I've still seen better battery life.

Yes, battery usage while the phone is asleep is phenomenal. I forgot to put it on the charger the other night and I woke up and found the battery had hardly drained at all. However, I'm still a bit frustrated by how quickly the battery drains when the phone is in use. It was really bad at first since the phone was new and I was playing on it more than I probably normally would. The last couple of days have been markedly better and I think it would be workable, but the battery life is still a concern.

There's really no getting around the fact that the windows store app store is severely lacking. It's great that the apps you consider necessary are all available, but you also haven't really experienced the google or iOS app stores either, at least that's what I'm gathering. Some apps that I would consider to be essential would be: Tapatalk, Mint Bills and Finance, Citi and Chase Mobile Apps, Many of the google apps (again, im rooted into google quite a bit), strava app, garmin connect app (as i use a garmin cycling computer and fitness tracker), Splashtop remote desktop, wifi analyzer, billguard, paypal. From what I understand, most of these apps arent available on windows phone, which is really one of the only reasons I have not been able to try and pull the trigger on a windows phone yet. I love the windows phone interface, but I cant even entertain the idea of switching to it for any amount of time with the app store in the condition it is in. Definitely give the Android store a chance. You may find some new necessities that you didnt know you needed, or wanted

In all honesty, the only reason I even considered switching back to Android is because of the apps. If Windows Phone wasn't basically dead, I would have stayed as I was perfectly happy with it.

 

[jam4775]

I like your analogy, although it's more like the old girlfriend had died an untimely death rather than just a break-up. I guess I'm in mourning for a platform that I feel was superior but am still trying to move on.

I do find it humorous that people claim to love Android because it is so open and customizable, but when there are any issues with the third party apps or options everyone immediately says that you should just switch everything to Google so it will work correctly.

Android OS itself is very open and customizable but it's the hardware manufacturers and the way they implement their services which restrict how open the OS is. Since this is a Nexus device it's going to be heavily revolved around Google services. In the past there have actually been android devices with bing as the default search engine.

Let's look at this the other way around, let's say you've been using android and Google services for the last 4 years or better and you decided to move to a Windows Phone now. Would you be able to switch all the of the bing search services over to Google, and all of the other Microsoft services over to over to Google Play? I'm pretty sure this would be difficult or even impossible to do on the Windows Phone... so expecting to be able to do the same thing on a Nexus device is unrealistic.

I do understand your frustration tho, I work in IT and we only use Windows PCs and tablets. This year I really wanted to move to Windows Phone 10 on the 950 to have more uniformity between all my device but I could not bring myself to do it because of app availability. For now I'll just stick to Nexus and Chrome on my windows devices.

 

[Yogi76]

So this was my last day to either return the Nexus 6P or keep it. I've decided to keep it. I'm still not 100% sold on Android, but the recent news that Windows Phone has dropped to below 2% market share made me realize that there simply was no other choice. As few of apps as I feel like I need, there are some that are necessary and I just don't see them being updated going forward. It really is sad that such a good platform as Window Phone is, it didn't reach the users. They were simply too late entering the market. Android rushed to market to become the "iPhone alternative" way back when and Windows Phone simply took too long to enter the market. If they were to ever figure out a way to get the developers back, I'd happily switch back... but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[anon(596177)]

So this was my last day to either return the Nexus 6P or keep it. I've decided to keep it. I'm still not 100% sold on Android, but the recent news that Windows Phone has dropped to below 2% market share made me realize that there simply was no other choice. As few of apps as I feel like I need, there are some that are necessary and I just don't see them being updated going forward. It really is sad that such a good platform as Window Phone is, it didn't reach the users. They were simply too late entering the market. Android rushed to market to become the "iPhone alternative" way back when and Windows Phone simply took too long to enter the market. If they were to ever figure out a way to get the developers back, I'd happily switch back... but I'm not holding my breath.

Glad to hear you chose to keep it, hopefully that decision works out well for you.

I hope M$ gets their stuff together with Windows phone too, it would be great to see the platforms app store blow up. I'll bet the market share would increase substantially if the app store was even close to where Android and ios stores are.

 

[Laura Knotek]

I just tried this app. Microsoft's AppComparison helps you see which of your apps are available on Windows Phone http://www.androidcentral.com/microsoft-launches-android-app-compare-apps-windows-phone-versions

Honestly, I don't understand Microsoft's logic here. If anything, that app will just convince Android users to stay with Android.

I only found matches for 68 out of 240 apps.

I also got a really dumb suggestion. It gave me Timmy Me as an alternative to Starbucks. We don't even have Tim Horton's here, and one cannot use a Tim Horton's app at a Starbucks store.

 

[Yogi76]

I only found matches for 68 out of 240 apps.

I've got to ask... of those 240 apps, how many do you actually use?

 

[Laura Knotek]

I've got to ask... of those 240 apps, how many do you actually use?

I use all of them at least once a month.