Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
Some people are smart and take the thing back before getting stuck with it, while others try to hang in there hoping the sow's ear will emerge as a silk purse down the road:

Five reasons I am done with Windows Phone after 3.5 years.

Don't get "swindowed" by Microsoft.
I read that article when looking for stories on Windows Phone 8.1 a while back. I also read a story written by an iPhone user explaining why he liked WP8.1 so much and was considering using a WP device as his primary. Seems to me that we only see links from you that support a particular position.

I’m tired of Live Tiles: Completely subjective. I can understand people not liking them but I do and I've seen plenty of people write that the UI is WP's strong suit.

I’m tired of the loading dots: I haven't really used iOS or Android so I don't know how performance compares. I have seen the dots he describes at times but I've rarely found it to be an issue. If performance is better on other platforms then I can certainly understand that using them and then going to a platform that performs worse would be an issue. It would be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison because what's often important is perceived performance rather than actual performance.

Notifications are nearly useless: That's been addressed in WP 8.1 with Action Center.

Lack of Google services support: It's not Microsoft's fault at all. Windows Phone would support Google services and it's 100% Google that they aren't. The reason doesn't really matter to users when choosing a phone of course, but it's not a reason to criticise Microsoft. This reminds me of when Apple advertise the fact that you can run Windows on a Mac as a reason to buy a Mac, like it's something great that they did for users. The only reason that you can run Windows on a Mac and not OS X on a PC is because Microsoft will let you do either while Apple won't let you run OS X on anything but their won hardware.

Voice control blows: That's been addressed with in WP 8.1 with Cortana. It is still in beta and officially only available in the US but that's set to change with the official release. Theoretically, Cortana will combine the best of Siri and Google Now and potentially be better than both. The experience may vary by region though, because it's not known how long it will take to provide reliable speech recognition for all areas and the availability of good localised data may vary. I've been using Cortana with the Developer Preview in Australia and have had a pretty good experience. An always-listening mode, which Siri doesn't have either, is said to be in the works too and likely to arrive in an Update to WP 8.1.

Again, I'm not a Microsoft or Windows Phone fanboy. I'm not saying that I hate iOS or Android. I'm just presenting an argument that Windows Phone is not the crap that some would have you believe. There are genuine reasons to choose something else but, especially with WP 8.1, there are plenty of good, legitimate reasons to choose Windows Phone too.