The Underrated (IMHO) Windows Phone!

Well, my name is Ken. I don't blog often anymore, but finally decided to do so to voice my personal opinions of one of my biggest decision in my life: to switch from Windows Phone to iOS platform.

My experience of Windows Phone started ever since the debut of Windows Phone 7. I used a Nokia Lumia 800, cyan in color (that was the hot at that time!). Then, a black Lumia 920 on Windows Phone 8. Oh my, the transition from 7 to 8 was quite a difficult decision again when WP7 was announced to no longer in the line of support, and that means all new apps would be gradually going WP8's new code base.

Okay, I must admit here that WP7 was good in terms of UX and common tasks, but many platform limitation do exist. The ones I remember much were the lack of USSD support where users cannot enter, for instance *100# to access mobile carrier's menu; and another terrible frustration was the short of background data streaming; That said, messaging apps such as WhatsApp cannot receive any new incoming notification when the app is not running in the background stack. (WhatAapp uses the Audio streaming API to keep an active connection for notification, but that is not even a good approach, when play a song or video would use the Audio API, and there goes your WhatsApp notification).

Finally on WP8. It is faster, now supports USSD and opens up many many more APIs for developers. In short, WP8 to me was splendid, simple and efficient (even as of the time this is written).

Back to the topic. Yes, I am now using an iPhone 6, on iOS 8.1.2. Since WP was so dear to me, why do I switch if you may ask. There are a number of reasons to be honest. Firstly, environmental pressure; I am current an iOS app developer, and you would expect people around me are all using an iPhone. Secondly, let me be very honest again, the "resuming" issue all Windows Phone users (even the most high-end Lumia 930 and 1520) face is the terrible annoyance to me. For instance, many times when I was in a hurry to reply a WhatsApp message, I see "resuming" screen....waited for some seconds....and WhatsApp crashed! In fact, this is not the issue of WhatsApp, but all apps on WP. Microsoft really needs to figure out a solution in Windows 10.

Today being the end of my first month with iOS, I discovered that there is actually no much differences, except the presence of all official apps, apps start completely way faster than WP apps, TouchID is my favourite and...(let me add on when I discovered more later).

So, my point of writing this post is to detail the iOS biggest annoyances to me.

1. Physical button
On Lumia, home button is touch-based. The relatively loud clicking sound on iPhone is a total turn off to me. *tukk*

2. System settings
This point is highly debatable. I myself is a very common user. I use my phone to get job done. To me, I am the kind that prefers less options to choose from. Why must user take care of so many settings for such simple device? Windows Phone has much lesser settings, or only important settings I must say; iOS has more, and a clutter setting list. Can't settings of third party apps be placed in another screen, rather than altogether in Settings main list.

3. Keyboard
In WP8, we have Word Flow keyboard. Yes, I do aware that Android and iOS have had SwiftKey, Swype and more other alternatives way before WP's. However, believe me again that NONE can ever defeat WP's Word Flow. It is so accurate that it's like your personal assistant that could read your mind of what exact word you wanted to type. No precise key location to swipe to, but you will get your word. Using Swype on my iPhone now is a difficult time when comes to accuracy.

4. Siri, Cortana
I use them both for calling somebody. Cortana recognizes each of my word, but Siri replied my with "Call who?" almost every single time. For example, I said "Call dad"; and Siri recognized as "Call that". Though, the result from turning off Siri and uses the default voice recognition service for calling is surprising, where it calls the right person.

5. User experience (UX)
I may be new to iOS and adore WP's modern design deep down my heart, but apps on iOS are cluttered. There is simply no uniform place to place the setting button. One app could place it on top of screen, another is down under the tab bar. What I mean is that all users have to look for one exact action button, which is a different location in all apps. On WP, you could easily guess that it would be placed on the three dots down below, across all apps; no mess, no finding. (this is especially important to the less knowledgeable users)

So here there are. Please note that I ain't complaining or whatsoever, but I do really wish that improvements are to be done to make iOS a better experience. Isn't that all we always wanted?

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