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Comment by hitr | Hacker News Reader

Very well said on the Windows phone.I have used three windows phones before switching to Android and I think the UI for simpler things like dialer ,messages or emails was better on windows phone.Especially email was so good ,it used to work a charm even on 2G.I have used built in clients and other options on Android and nothing beats the basic email client on windows phone.May be it was not feature rich for gmail but usability was better .Many of my colleagues is of the same opinion who switched from windows phone to Android.All Microsoft had to do was fix the developer ecosystem but looks like the platform is abandoned. An alternative other than Android or iOS would have been better

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I got a Lumia to get into the whole WinRT model when it got introduced and also because C++ is a first class language on WP.

The whole WinRT/.NET model of WP, and the respective tooling is miles ahead of what Google has managed to pull out of Android.

Even the upcoming Android N with Android Studio takes lots of more resources than VS, doesn't provide a proper experience for NDK users and there isn't a Support Library release that isn't followed up by a quick fix release.

I really don't understand where the skilled developers that master the Google interview process end up working, surely not on Android.

However the WP in small form factors is dead, with the latest promise drop of the 512 MB WP 8.1 devices not getting the WP 10 upgrade they lost the last faithful ones that still believed.

Where it might thrive is as tablet OS, but lets see.

All they (the sales & marketing again) had to do was give devs time before opening their mouths and giving the impression that they are no longer pushing it, just as Sinofsky did with .Net and WPF.

Windows phone apps were the most profitable to write unless you had a blockbuster as your app was actually likely to be found in the app store but why bother when they kill it with what can only be called anti-marketing

Here's another user who considered some MS phone at least the two last times I switched but ended up on Xperia and later S7 because water resistance. (This felt important because of field work and kids at home.)

But those are just apps, not the OS and there are any number of replacement dialler, messaging and email apps for Android - are you suggesting that NONE of them are as good as the Windows Phone default apps?

I have tried at least 3 most popular dialer in play store and none of that was as good or simple as windows phone's.I did find T9 search good but searching through the recent call list or finding a linked contact was felt better on windows phone.My biggest gripe is about the email clients.I am still looking for one which is very simple to use and has a simple UI.I find even Microsoft outlook offering is bloated or not simple as windows phone's.

WP does integration rather nicely, especially of multiple email and social media accounts. People prefer WP because they aren't interchangeable parts but a coherent whole.

And you don't have to spend ages trying apps and giving random developers access to your phone in order to achieve this. And app-less WP is much nicer to use than an stock Android, which in turn is much nicer than all the vendor or carrier mutilated Androids.

>replacement dialler, messaging and email apps for Android

It's a smartphone; communication is its entire raison d'être. Those things ought to be awesome right out of the box and, on Android, they're definitely not.

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