4 ms·

It took android a couple of years after it was launched to actually take off...

SwellJoe 14y ago
That's inaccurate. HTC had a record-setting quarter with the introduction of the G1 at the end of 2008, and the Dream was also a bestselling device. By the second year Android was outselling iPhone (which had been the fastest selling phone in history up to that point). Android was, by all reasonable measures, an explosive and rapid success. One could argue it took a few months to "take off", but its sales numbers have vastly outpaced Windows Phone, even from the very first months. By the time we were 21 months into the story it was obvious to anybody paying attention that Android was going to be Apple's primary competition in the smart phone market. Windows Phone is a flop. It may be good (I wouldn't know). But it is demonstrably not popular.
- majormajor 14y ago
  It's fantastic. Either it'll eventually take off, or else either Apple or Google will copy all the good ideas and I'll switch back. Either way works for me, frankly. (Well, no, that's not entirely true. I'd prefer it take off next year and Nokia survives intact, because nobody else is making hardware that isn't hopelessly bland looking.)
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    What's fantastic about it? I have a new Lumia (I make apps) and it's really not very great. The hardware is nice, but the software... It looks nice at first but it happens to annoy me no end compared to iOS / Android after a while. I still cannot put my finger on it what that is. It's also massively instable for me; someone here told me that must be hardware issues so I had it replaced; same issues. 3 out of 5 times when someone calls me and I decline the phone simply reboots. Two different phones, latest OS version. Metro is very inefficient with screen space (I'm a coder, so 'normal' folk might not care about that) and it feels very awkward and instable; I see the Vodafone logo far too often (which happens after a reboot, if you have Vodafone). Anyway; what do you find fantastic about it?
    - gjulianm 14y ago
      Funny thing. The only time my Lumia crashed it was because I really messed up with the app I was developing. About space inefficience, with Metro I can see at a glance the most important things. You know, less information density -> more focus. For me, the best features are fluidness (I still see last generation Android phones which are laggy), the live tiles are great to have all the information at a glance, and I really love the Metro design. Also, the deep integration with Twitter and Facebook makes it a really good system.
      - tluyben2 14y ago
        Yes, I have heard that (stability), but when I invite people over to demonstrate said stability I am able to crash the thing every single time. There are apps in the Windows Market which just crash the entire phone when you start them. That shouldn't even be possible? But yeah this is all blahblah and bullshit unless I can show it; I just have a feeling people are not using there phone. When I have a smartphone I LIVE that thing; I use it for work fulltime instead of a laptop; my android or iphone 4 crashed 0 times (at least I cannot remember it as it has been at least 4-5 years since it happened) doing that while the lumia simply crashes 4-5 times per day. And like I said; we develop apps; we have a lot of Windows, Android and iOS devices in the office; the WP ones are by far (with such an annoying stretch and no-one using them that most clients tell us to forget about devving for them) the most instable to work with and develop on.
    - majormajor 14y ago
      Comparing my Lumia 900 to my old Evo (HTC): I greatly prefer the look of the tiles to the widgets/apps mismatch on the home page. And the ability to be able to pin so many different things to the home page from inside of apps, instead of going to a separate "add widgets" section, is very useful... I don't have to think about "oh I should see if this app has a widget I can pin." I've found the Skydrive Office integration to work much better than the Google Docs app Google provided for Android. Faster loading, better controls, and the ability to pin stuff to the start page with ease. OneNote is also the best note management app on a phone I've ever used. I really like how they did the "people hub" thing of centralizing all the info/connections you have about someone in one place. (Though it's annoying that the messaging app doesn't support FB "messages", just FB "chat", so I also have the FB app installed in case someone sends me one of those.) The overal design language is great. (For a good example of a third party app getting it, compare the Android Weatherbug app's UI with the WP7 version.) I really prefer the use of vertical scrolling on the home page to swiping left/right to get to other home pages—I always forgot about stuff that wasn't on the home page with Android, and find a quick flick to scroll down my whole home page a much better way of seeing everything I want in front of me. And in my case, it's been far more stable than my Evo ever was. My biggest complaint is that the gmail client isn't as good.
  - dscrd 14y ago
    >because nobody else is making hardware that isn't hopelessly bland looking I think the Sony Ericsson lineup from 2011 was quite pretty and managed to differentiate themselves quite well from the bland Android crowd. Even the hit Samsung phones are quite ugly in my opinion. It's all subjective, though, but I still like my phones small.

That's inaccurate. HTC had a record-setting quarter with the introduction of the G1 at the end of 2008, and the Dream was also a bestselling device. By the second year Android was outselling iPhone (which had been the fastest selling phone in history up to that point). Android was, by all reasonable measures, an explosive and rapid success. One could argue it took a few months to "take off", but its sales numbers have vastly outpaced Windows Phone, even from the very first months. By the time we were 21 months into the story it was obvious to anybody paying attention that Android was going to be Apple's primary competition in the smart phone market. Windows Phone is a flop. It may be good (I wouldn't know). But it is demonstrably not popular.

majormajor 14y ago
It's fantastic. Either it'll eventually take off, or else either Apple or Google will copy all the good ideas and I'll switch back. Either way works for me, frankly. (Well, no, that's not entirely true. I'd prefer it take off next year and Nokia survives intact, because nobody else is making hardware that isn't hopelessly bland looking.)
- tluyben2 14y ago
  What's fantastic about it? I have a new Lumia (I make apps) and it's really not very great. The hardware is nice, but the software... It looks nice at first but it happens to annoy me no end compared to iOS / Android after a while. I still cannot put my finger on it what that is. It's also massively instable for me; someone here told me that must be hardware issues so I had it replaced; same issues. 3 out of 5 times when someone calls me and I decline the phone simply reboots. Two different phones, latest OS version. Metro is very inefficient with screen space (I'm a coder, so 'normal' folk might not care about that) and it feels very awkward and instable; I see the Vodafone logo far too often (which happens after a reboot, if you have Vodafone). Anyway; what do you find fantastic about it?
  - gjulianm 14y ago
    Funny thing. The only time my Lumia crashed it was because I really messed up with the app I was developing. About space inefficience, with Metro I can see at a glance the most important things. You know, less information density -> more focus. For me, the best features are fluidness (I still see last generation Android phones which are laggy), the live tiles are great to have all the information at a glance, and I really love the Metro design. Also, the deep integration with Twitter and Facebook makes it a really good system.
    - tluyben2 14y ago
      Yes, I have heard that (stability), but when I invite people over to demonstrate said stability I am able to crash the thing every single time. There are apps in the Windows Market which just crash the entire phone when you start them. That shouldn't even be possible? But yeah this is all blahblah and bullshit unless I can show it; I just have a feeling people are not using there phone. When I have a smartphone I LIVE that thing; I use it for work fulltime instead of a laptop; my android or iphone 4 crashed 0 times (at least I cannot remember it as it has been at least 4-5 years since it happened) doing that while the lumia simply crashes 4-5 times per day. And like I said; we develop apps; we have a lot of Windows, Android and iOS devices in the office; the WP ones are by far (with such an annoying stretch and no-one using them that most clients tell us to forget about devving for them) the most instable to work with and develop on.
  - majormajor 14y ago
    Comparing my Lumia 900 to my old Evo (HTC): I greatly prefer the look of the tiles to the widgets/apps mismatch on the home page. And the ability to be able to pin so many different things to the home page from inside of apps, instead of going to a separate "add widgets" section, is very useful... I don't have to think about "oh I should see if this app has a widget I can pin." I've found the Skydrive Office integration to work much better than the Google Docs app Google provided for Android. Faster loading, better controls, and the ability to pin stuff to the start page with ease. OneNote is also the best note management app on a phone I've ever used. I really like how they did the "people hub" thing of centralizing all the info/connections you have about someone in one place. (Though it's annoying that the messaging app doesn't support FB "messages", just FB "chat", so I also have the FB app installed in case someone sends me one of those.) The overal design language is great. (For a good example of a third party app getting it, compare the Android Weatherbug app's UI with the WP7 version.) I really prefer the use of vertical scrolling on the home page to swiping left/right to get to other home pages—I always forgot about stuff that wasn't on the home page with Android, and find a quick flick to scroll down my whole home page a much better way of seeing everything I want in front of me. And in my case, it's been far more stable than my Evo ever was. My biggest complaint is that the gmail client isn't as good.
- dscrd 14y ago
  >because nobody else is making hardware that isn't hopelessly bland looking I think the Sony Ericsson lineup from 2011 was quite pretty and managed to differentiate themselves quite well from the bland Android crowd. Even the hit Samsung phones are quite ugly in my opinion. It's all subjective, though, but I still like my phones small.