Windows Phone is not that bad.
Google has done a good job trying to starve WP users of their services, but I think we can all survive without Hangouts (Telegram, etc) and Google Voice (who cares anymore) at this point.
Google has done a good job trying to starve WP users of their services, but I think we can all survive without Hangouts (Telegram, etc) and Google Voice (who cares anymore) at this point.
But the app situation is abominable, and getting worse. The Xbox program seems to have been all but abandoned. Microsoft seems to have largely given up even monitoring the app store; half the top/new games on the lists for the last several months have been blatantly pirated material, either blatant copies of whatever iOS/Android fad is running at the moment, or actual emulator ROMs of old console games running in a buggy, half-broken wrapper. They don't even have an actual category for reporting copyright infringement on the report form.
They've also made some missteps on a fair few occasions regarding their own apps, especially with the move to 8.1; replacing or breaking the existing functionality like the Xbox Games portal and the Music app.
On the technical side, there's also some issues regarding app support and limitations on both hardware and software. Manufacturers have to agree to very strict tech specifications in order to license WP, so very few other than Nokia have ever bothered to take them up on it. WP apps are heavily sandboxed and limited in a way reminiscent of pre-multitasking iOS, and the official line from MS seems to be that the only acceptable way to build WP apps is in C# with .NET on Visual Studio. Period. Very grudgingly, HTML5 apps are supported. Other options are possible, but largely only through workarounds, which often are grossly undocumented or hacky. Even MS' own other languages, like VB.net and F# are not officially supported, save as libraries in the latter case. (though again in the latter case, MS seems to not believe anyone should want to build full apps in pure F# at all.)
The OS and the interface themselves are great, and some of those limitations are no doubt part of why by forcing a more predictable environment. But a lot of it just seems to be MS repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot, and I dread to think how much worse it would get if MS had any actual leverage on the market.
This uninviting attitude of theirs was one of the reasons why I ultimately became an Android dev (once I decided to move into mobile apps), even though I had C# / WPF background so picking up Windows Phone would be the most natural next step... And Java admittedly sucks in compare to C#
Unless you are developing for iOS you can't have all of the devices your users might have, being able to solve issues remotely is huge. Especially when you are dealing with hardware issues on all of the Windows hardware out there.
And one thing huge (IMO): the performance/price is pretty amazing with the low/mid level entry Lumia.
(I have the Lumia 735, iPhone 5 before).
I don't think Google has done anymore than MS to cripple WP. With WP, you can use Bing maps, Outlook, skype, cortana and all of the other MS apps that MS fanbois love. Only thing is, the implementation of their own services isn't as good as Google's services. A friend of mine is a MS fanboi, and he was shocked at how bad WP was.
Apple can get away with this, but Windows Phone certainly can't.