Why I Will Never Buy Another Windows Phone

Two years ago I purchased a Windows Phone 7 mobile.

I was all excited because the main development language was C#, currently my favourite development language, and Charles Petzold was writing a book on how to program it, the same author that I learnt most of my early Windows programming from.

And then I learnt that if I wanted to write a program to run on my one phone, I had to pay Microsoft an anual fee for the privelege. Now I can write Android programs for free. If I was going to have to pay to have my phone unlocked, I might as well write for Apple and dust off that Objective C book.

Windows Phone 7 sales apparently were less than expected. I think they were after a 5% market share and I think they might have scaped in 3.5% but where I am, having a Windows phone is even rarer than that. Of course only Microsoft have the real figures but they only publicly talk about their over exagerated "License Sales" quantities.

Well Microsoft, here is the "secret" on how to sell a whole lot more real units. You have to be the earliest, the cheapest or the best. If you can do at least one of those your in with a chance. Windows Phone 7 did none of those.

Apple had already got there with the earliest. I really like the apple hardware and interface but I despise their locked down nature.

It just so happened that my wife purchased an Android phone at the same time which had a significantly cheaper price tag. During the last two years I've been able to compare many of the features:

File Connectability: My wife plugs her Android phone onto the computer and she can copy files directly to it. Alternatively she could copy files over our wifi. My Windows Phone 7 can only copy files via Zune (I hate iTunes but Zune is even worse than that) and then only that narrow set of files that Zune permits me (pretty well just Audio, Video and Photos). In fact if you want to copy a podcast or audiobook and have the phone remember where you are up to, you need to copy the file to the Zune podcast directory, and then change the genre to podcast. Also it lists and plays podcasts from newest to oldest but that order is problematic for audio books.

Extra Storage: My wife just plugs a micro SD into her Android phone as needed. Microsoft for some reason decided this was not allowed for Phone 7.

Email Connectivity: Windows Mobile 6.5 would work directly with the email client. This feature is not available in Windows Phone 7. Getting rid of features is not a way to keep existing clients.

Internet Sharing: My wife can use her phone to connect a laptop to the internet. My phone 7 couldn't for about a year until the 7.5 update from both Microsoft and then my hardware provider.

Cut and Paste: My wife's Android phone had this from the start. I had to wait till Microsoft decided that I was deserving enough for an update, and even then it doesn't work properly.

Custom Ring Tones: My wife can assign any MP3 file to play for each specific number in her address book. Again this feature had to wait till the Windows Phone 7 update, and then the file could not be more than 40 seconds long, had to be copied to a specific Zune directory and again had to have the genere changed to something rediculous.

Desktop and Theme: My wife can organise her desktop pretty well any way she wants, and has a variety of themes available. My Windows Phone 7 has these rediculously larged fixed sized icons, some of which animate for no apparent reason offering other than to distract you with noise (I'm talking about you "People" icon) and have this rediculous colour scheme. You can choose one colour from a very limited list. On the main screen you get white text on top of this colour, but in lower screens (specific individual address, you get really small text in this colour on top of a black background. So you have to choose a colour that contrasts with both white and black.

Application Availability:And here is the crux. For a phone to compete with Apple and Android it really needs to have as good a range of applications as they already have. But application developers will target those platforms with the market share first, and then only start to think about the other platforms. With the poor market share and end of life looming you might understand why your still waiting for Bad Piggies on Windows Phone 7.

SharePoint Integration: My Windows Phone 7 has a significant amount of SharePoint integration built in to it from the start but I've never used it and never wanted it. This sort of functionality should have been stuck in a free app that could be downloaded if needed and not taken up space, screen and time.

Music Player: My wife has and Android music player that allows her to create and organise playlists, sort her music in any order she wants and search by name. It is very easy to use and navigate. On Windows Phone 7 I have "Zune!" which just seems to fail on every one of these features.

Bluetooth Keyboard: My wife can use a bluetooth keyboard with her Android phone. While my Windows Phone 7 has bluetooth, they decided for some reason that an extenral keyboard was an uncessary feature and doesn't support it, which is why my wife has my bluetooth keyboard.

I could go on my point here should be clear. Windows Phone 7 was too little too late and too expensive.

Now with Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 tablets starting to enter a very similar competitive market space, I see nothing to suggest Microsoft has learnt from it's mistakes.