Saturday, May 20, 2017

A tale of three phones

I gave up on the windows phone.  I’ve been faithful to it since the beginning, but my lumia icon was getting long in the tooth, and there didn’t seem to be any new phones on the horizon.  I think the windows phone has the superior operating system, the live tiles UI and the deep linking of app pinning was great. The seamless integration with the windows desktop (outlook, cortana, groove, calendar) made things easy. But the lack of apps and the lack of new hardware and software upgrades finally led me to throw in the towel.

I first experimented with an iPhone 7.  The iOS felt antiquated in comparison, but it had all the apps.  Those apps (outlook, cortana, groove, etc.) were usable, but afterthoughts on iOS.  I found the email, calendaring (keeping work separate from personal) frustrating.  It also lacked what seems like the most basic of features, one that the windows phone has always had. The ability to read and voice respond to text messages over bluetooth, a la cortana.  After a few days of frustration I returned the iPhone.

I settled on the Galaxy S8.  It has all the hardware quality of the iPhone, all of the apps, and more importantly the core apps have deeper integration with android. Not just a standalone afterthought, cortana can replace the default digital assistant.  Outlook and Groove are first class apps. LastPass actually integrates with OS. There are launchers the mimic some of the Live Tile/Metro UI of the windows phone.  In a lot of ways I get the best of both, the ubiquity of the android platform ecosystem with the convenience of the windows phone. It does take a lot of work to figure out how to get everything configured properly. But I think its the phone for windows phone holdouts.  As an added bonus my wireless charger (DT-900) from the lumia icon successfully charges the S8.