Windows Phone 7 Devices?

[ropp29]

From my understanding, Windows Phone 7 apps have to go thru a quality control phase where the Android ones do not, and frankly, how many versions of the same app exist on the android marketplace and of those, how many are actually used or are total craptastical messes?

My wife has a lower end Android device from USCC and i have toyed with the marketplace and tried a few apps and such. Just seems like anyone can put a poor quality app out there and there are tons of apps that do the same damn thing. I would prefer 3 really good choices over 35 junkers and 1 good one.

HowardForums users are generally the elite, the 1% of users and as such, Rooting or Unlocking devices is something i don't see as a huge factor in the marketability of the devices themselves. I think Microsoft went the way of Apple in a sense in that they removed a lot of choice from the users and gave the device a set list of features and abilities in order to improve stability and make sure what was in there, worked flawlessly. Now whether or not that was the right approach or not, remains to be seen, but how many years has Apple flourished with that same method of thinking?

I know my wife is still confused with a lot of the features and is currently unwilling to think about adding more apps due to memory issues and not being able to move some off to the sd card. I understand this is a function of the device and apps, not the OS, but it shows the lack of standard or quality control on the android side vs the windows side. Microsoft mandates a base hardware standard as well as putting apps thru a standards test. Im sure not everything is perfect in the Windows Phone world, I'm not arrogant enough to state that at all. Im just saying there are a bit more controls for stability and quality on the Windows side and while the Android side seems to be the wild west right now.

Dont flame please, just an opinion and love these discussions.

I agree that the average person doesn't need much control over the device, and that Windows Phone is *very* stable. I just personally like to be able to squeeze every bit of functionality out of a device, and for me the extra control, extra apps, and real multitasking are worth the bugginess of Android. But I definitely concede that Android is probably inferior to iOS or Windows Phone for people who have pretty basic needs and don't feel like spending a lot of time screwing with their phone.

P.S. You mentioned your wife's phone has memory issues. That truly destroys the Android experience in my opinion. I used to have a Desire, and it had horrid internal storage capacity, and even with everything on the SD card that could be moved, it still couldn't hold very many apps at all. Although I loved it when I first got it (dominated old-school Windows Mobile's clunky UI), I eventually got really tired of it since I couldn't experiment at all with new apps. It was all I could do just to fit the critical apps that I really wanted on it. The Hero S has been an entirely different experience. It definitely doesn't have a huge internal storage capacity, but it's more than enough for what I need and it will be a long, long time before I run out of storage space for apps. So, on a low end phone I can definitely imagine that your wife would get frustrated. I don't know what phone it is, but if it's one of USCC's cheaper offerings it probably runs pretty slow too depending on the processor in it. That's another good thing about Windows Phone, at this point the minimum specs are good enough for every phone to give the user a good experience. That may not be the case after the next update though - it looks like Microsoft is wanting to expand into the low-end smartphone market.

[PcGeek04]

Hers is the WildfireS, and as stated, I know its a limitation of the device, not the OS in terms of how many apps can be run. But she is exactly like you said, putting most of her effort into making the apps she has work correctly and is unable and even unwilling to try anything new in fear of having all the memory errors return.

[Craig H]

The more I read, the more I'm willing to wait to the end of 2012, when WP "Apollo" is due out. This is supposedly the more upscale/high performance set of WP phones coming out. That, coupled with the similarly-timed Windows 8 release, there should be a good opportunity to truly tie the PC and phone experience together.
Having said that, Google has most of this year to beat them to the punch. The shift of Chrome browser to Android is definitely a step in the right direction.