Windows Phone 8 vs. iPhone vs. Android

When you compare the Apple iPhone and the Android phones out there, you get a lot of interesting comparisons and in many cases, high quality products.  The iPhone set the stage for a real world, workable, touch screen smart phone.  Android raised the bar higher by opening itself up to allow any manufacturer to customize and expand upon its new OS. 

The Apple ecosystem has long been a successful implementation of a closed solution.  Apple tightly controls the user experience and what apps are available.  They rescued the music industry from themselves and in the process defined how people will get and use media, both music and video.

Android took a very different approach.  Rather than keeping their entire ecosystem locked down, Google opened everything up and gave it away for free.  Phone manufacturers, wireless providers and even Amazon, went out and expanded upon the Android OS.  This was needed because for many years Android wasn’t a fully featured OS. 

Through all this innovation, new technology and ground breaking solutions/apps, their efforts aren’t new.  Nothing Apple or Google (and its partners) do is novel.  In fact, if you look at the OS’s themselves, their UI’s are stale, they use dated icons that have been around since 2000 and even the phone designs really aren’t any different than each other.  They do get thinner and add smooth finishes, but in the end there’s no real innovation past the touch screen.

See this picture of the first iPhone and the iPhone 5.  The iPhone got a little bigger, thinner, cooler metal covering, but the OS, the look, it’s all the same.  Android isn’t any different.  I was stunned to see how plain Jelly Bean was when I first saw it.  Take away widgets and you’ve got nothing new, nothing novel. 

All of this isn’t for nothing.  I’ve been exposed to Windows Phone 8.  We finally have an OS that novel, it’s new.  The icons aren’t old and dated.  Their alive, changing, morphing and giving the end user information at a glance.  The OS is blazing fast.  Android runs on Java.  Java is a synonym for molasses.  iOS is fast, but not as fast as Windows 8 Phone.  When manufacturers come out with quad-core processors, Windows will smoke any Android running the same hardware.

We live in a world with color, lots of them, millions of them.  Why does iPhone and Android phones come in shades of gray?  Look at the Nokia and HTC phones.  Their awesome.  They feel great, look even better.  Their profile matches the OS perfectly. 

These phones boast all of the latest technologies like NFC, wireless charging, HD screens, incredible battery life, state of the cameras that take awesome low pictures and so much more.  Android and iPhone boast many of these same features, but only the Windows Phones has everything.

While Microsoft’s market share is minimal, wait a couple years when everyone’s 2 year contracts start to expire.  You’ll see more and more of these devices in people’s hands and in the real world.  Android and the iPhone aren’t going anywhere, but this is no longer a 2 horse race.