At 15 May 2013 18:31:18 +0000 badgolferman wrote:
> My wife wants me to order this phone for her tomorrow from VZW when
> it's available. Give me some good reasons why she would regret it.
Let me go all nutty on you, and give you a few reasons she might actually
*like* it, rather than regret it.
For starters, the camera is probably the best camera offered on a mobile
phone right now, and includes an optical (mechanical) stabilzer for fewer
blurry shots, even in low light.
Windows Phone (*not* Windows Mobile, Mr. Mezei- WinMo is the old MS PDA
and phone OS MS launched in 2000. and retired in 2010) is the best mobile
OS nobody is using. ;) It lacks the expansive app ecosystem of iOS or
Android, due to the catch-22 it's in (along with Blackberry: no one
writes apps for it because it's not selling/it's not selling because
there aren't any apps) but, on the plus side, the system was designed
around not needing apps for "everyday" tasks- for example, price
checking/UPC scanning is built right into the OS; there's an "eye" icon
in the integrated search function that automatically runs a price check
if you take a picture of a UPC barcode, or returns QR code results. Take
a pic of a DVD or book cover and it returns prices and reviews, etc. Tap
the music note icon, and a Shazam-like music ID search is performed.
Facebook, Twitter,and LinkedIn are deeply integrated- the built-in
contacts app (called "People") has a running feed of your aggregated
social networking accounts (Facebook, Twitter, etc., and selecting an
individual contact will show their communication history with you- calls,
emails, texts, and social networking postings at a glance. It's pretty
slick.
The UI is also very fluid- you swipe left and right through various
screens usually rather than open menus or select icons. (For example,
swiping left or right through your email account will take you from inbox
to unread to starred/flagged, etc., through your media player you swipe
from albums to artists to songs to playlists, etc.), and the Live tiles
on the start screen convey data a glance- number of unread emails, next
appointment, current temp and weather, etc.- like Android widgets but
more compact and less battery draining, or like iOS badges but with more
info displayed.
WP has a lot to offer, but if your wife wants to chat around the water
cooler at work about the latest apps, it won't be for her. By the time a
popular app or game finally comes to Windows Phone, iOS and Android users
have moved on to a newer fad. In my experience, most "important" apps
(or a functional equivalent/rip-off) are available for WP, but it
certainly laxcks the depth or breadth of the other platforms. Nokia does
throw in a great free navigation system (Drive) that works worldwide and
lets you download the maps to the device ahead of time so it works
without any data connectivity, and a pretty cool augmented reality app
called City Lens that overlays location-based data in real time over the
camera, so if you walk down the street, the local bars, stores and and
restaurants' names and user ratings get superimposed over the camera
display "Terminator style" on the screen, and let you tap for more info.
I normally switch between a Windows Phone and an Android phone depending
on my mood and what I need to get done. Android certainly has more apps,
and overall has more features and functions, but Windows Phone is so much
more elegant and simpler to use. I'd say 90% of what I use a smartphone
for is more pleasant and easier to do on WP than Android, but the other
10% is just impossible due to the iOS-like locking down of the OS (you
can't install replacement keyboards like Swype on WP or iOS, or access
the device's filesystem with a File Manager, for example.)
If she wants one because she saw it in a commercial, I'd suggest you go
to the local Verizon store and try it out first. Windows Phone is a sort
of love it or hate it thing, in my experience.