Torn between phones. - Page 2

Personal preference over any advice you get.

I like android for having different roms and customization. Heavily depends on what you want to do with your phone.
I still use HD2 because of huge amount of roms. I can get, win6.5, 7, 7.5, 7.8, any android. Probably will get win8, haven't looked into it. And on top of that I can run ubuntu from sdcard when I'm really bored, don't like mobile games
Launchers and tons of themes to change appearance.

I really dislike win7 and 8 for its UI, win 6.5 with HTC sense was neat.
Lack of folders on home screen is a huge con for me.

I'll chime in on the Android "tinkering" as well..

It is fun when you first get into rooting and loading custom ROM's but they can be very troublesome. One will have a kernel that causes this problem and that problem so you have to flash a different kernel, another ROM is packaged with a radio/modem that hardly works in your area so you have to flash a new one to get good service, etc etc. It was rare in the past 2 1/2 years that I found a completely functional and smooth ROM immediately upon installation on my Galaxy S. It also became stressful because sometimes your phone would get soft bricked and you had to start fresh and then reinstall bootloaders and blah blah blah. I found a ROM I liked back in the spring and stuck with it until I just got my Lumia 920 because it becomes more annoying than anything (IMO) worrying about what might break next on your next ROM installation. It does tend to start slowing after a period of time which drives the need to reflash or reset the phone so hopefully I don't see that sort of degradation with WP8. In the end I decided I wanted a phone that I didn't NEED to mess with because it would be updated quickly and not forgotten like most Android phones (had I not flashed my Galaxy S to version 4.0 of Android I would still be stuck on 2.3 due to lack of updates).

That rant went on longer than expected but oh well. To sum it up..Android phones are forgotten by the OEM and carriers because there are so many of them so it sort of forces you into the custom ROM scene if you want the latest and greatest which is often problematic and time consuming due to restoring your apps and such and tweaking the bugs out. Windows Phone in general seems to be very smooth and overall a great UI and people still seem to be enjoying it several months after the WP7 release so hopefully it doesn't get boring.
Edited by razorguy - 11/12/12 at 2:57pm

You know you can just do a nandroid backup when it's fresh and revert to it after backing up all user data with Titanium backup, right?

It takes less than 5 minutes to "refresh" your phone if you feel it is getting slow. This slowdown happens to ios too, not too sure about WP8.

I'm personally gonna get the Nexus 4, with its spec and the fact that the 16GB one is £279 unlocked its an insane deal. However if you want to go the Win8 route my friend has been more than happy with his Lumia. I prefer android atm due to it having a larger app selection than Win8 currently, I believe that Win8 store will catch up eventually though.

Yes. Batch restores saved me a lot of time after a fresh install. I am just tired of the need to do it at all and then the "addiction" if you will, of constantly wanting to try different ROM's and they are all different and have different problems. Just got sick of it after the 100th time..

Yeah I guess that's a good point. It can feel like a chore after a while. I really like the Lumia 920. You simply can't get a more responsive screen and user interface. I'm still torn between the two but I might grab the N4 for now. I can't stand not having swype, felt like a handicap typing on my 4s lol

I wish I could get Lumia 920 screen and nexus 4 internals (+LTE) with WP8 and swype =D

[edit] Just spoke to Microsoft support. Looks like I would be SOL if I wanted to buy the 920 anyway. Unless you're on the carriers they cherry picked, you have to unlock the phone. Apparently they consider unlocking the phone as voiding the warranty. I'm not paying $500 for a phone with no warranty.
Edited by Scorpion667 - 11/12/12 at 9:23pm

Its too late for my poor old Galaxy S! lol

Question - if I root the phone, does it mean unlocked or do I have to call AT&T to get unlock code or something?

Swype! The ONLY thing I miss from my Galaxy S! The WP8 keyboard is very nice but it's no Swype..I need to look into alternatives and see if there are any available.

Sucks about the warranty thing. The exclusive rights to AT&T for the 920 (in the US anyway) are only supposed to last six months so maybe more carriers will pick it up in the spring but by then it will be too late for it to be successful I'd say.