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One drive doesn't sync files the way dropbox or gdrive do and it's super annoying. Cortana is no better than Siri or Now in that it basically just sets a timer or dials a contact and everything else in my experience is chock full of irrelevant links and spamming listings. The one thing I actually appreciate with Windows 10 in particular is that the Weather Live tile is good and doesn't have Accuweather or the Weather Channel banner ads in it. I am glad they went with just giving you with weather. My LG tablet's weather app is a banner ad crapfest and my iPhone's weather app is pretty much useless by comparison. Why can't everyone just show me whether it's going to rain in the next 15 minutes without subjecting me to ludicrous ads. Seriously. Thank you Windows for that at least.

The HTC Sense weather app manages to do that, despite using Accuweather as the data source. There's just a little "Accuweather - more details online" bar at the bottom of the screen, but I've never felt the need to actually follow it.

What do you mean it doesn't sync the files the way they do? Can you explain?

If I take a picture on my phone, it syncs to my laptop and desktop. If I put something on my computer in my OneDrive folder photo folder, it shows up in the photos on my phone.

Well the main problem I had with One Drive, which is why I started using Google Drive and Dropbox exclusively was this issue: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/sugges...

You share a folder, update a file and then the other person does not get the update to that file, so then they are sitting there on the phone with you saying "no I don't see the updated file" and you have to have them login to the web version and basically download the file to their one drive. That happened to me several times and I just gave up on One Drive. I don't know if they fixed that. Yes, it syncs things for YOUR folders but it will not sync things to shared folders.

- maps are offline by default. Saves on data and helps out a lot when going through poor signal areas, which I do a lot.

Note that Here maps with offline maps is also available on iOS and Android:

https://pages.here.com/app/

- solved by any launcher

- cannot comment

- gmaps handles this automatically

- cannot comment

- baked into android since L

- gdrive

Nearly usability and UI struggles are easily solved with a custom launcher.

- solved by any launcher - solved by any launcher

Then you have never used Windows Phone. None of the Android launchers provides the equivalent of WP tiles with the same amount of integration. There is no API that launchers could use to pull out the same amount/types of information.

- gmaps handles this automatically

Nonsense. It does some prefetching, but if you are in another country (no data) and you go slightly off-route, there is no maps coverage anymore. Luckily, new versions of Google maps allow you to download offline maps ahead of time as well.

For me the reason to switch if I was still on WP is that the app state is so deplorable that even Microsoft's apps on iOS and Android are miles ahead of WP's counter parts.

You should probably look at OSM (eg. OSMAnd, but there are others). I just download the whole country map before I visit somewhere.

I use OSM on my Garmin GPS for hiking/cycling, especially when Garmin's maps for a particular country are overly expensive.

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl

HERE maps for android is pretty nice - ar least for traveling in europe there is a very good ui for downloading regional maps and it performs offline routing pretty well.

"There is no API that launchers could use to pull out the same amount/types of information."

What's missing in Android compared to WP in this regard? I have widgets on my Android homescreen that has buttons to activate app functionality (e.g. Audible's 'play' button) and that dynamically update their content. Is there some richer interactor or viewing scheme wp supports?

Interestingly enough, Microsoft actually has an Android Launcher called Arrow. It's not an attempt of bringing the WP experience to Android though.

That said, it's a great launcher and I use it on my Note 4. I still don't fully understand the strategy behind why Microsoft released it though.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

Which I didn't deny, prefacing my comment by saying that some of the items I was about to list could be done in Android, but aren't that way out of the box.

Customizability is great, and I think a phone OS should be highly customizable. But I also want it delivered to me in a state where I have to do as little customization as possible. I don't want to fool with it more than I have to.

Can you comment further on google maps doing that automatically? I have not seen it to be the case that I can turn off data, input a destination, and get turn-by-turn directions the whole way.

I am fully aware of Google Drive, but the reason I started using OneDrive is because it is already installed on all my Windows computers; all I had to do was sign in. The same is not true of Google Drive. I take a picture with my WP and by the time I walk over to the computer it's already there, and I didn't have to do anything to set it up.

Also, regarding permissions, no, it was "added" early on, but you couldn't use it without downloading other apps and then without rooting your phone. I think it's supposed to be in Marshmellow for-real-this-time, but I haven't seen it yet.