Paging Jessica Alba...
I think maybe all the change we’re preparing for at this point with the house, plus preparation for a full-time decked-out home office, has made me question my existing sensibilities and “established norms” from a tech perspective.
I wonder sometimes why I’m not using Windows Phone 8. Okay, there, I said it.
Android phone hardware is either in a renaissance of ascendance or a rut of stasis depending on how you look at it. I feel the Google experience is significantly enhanced on my Nexus 7 versus my Galaxy S, especially now that I am a - deep breath - Google Play Music All Access subscriber.
I found that after I went to CyanogenMod 10 on my Galaxy S that I wasn’t installing apps anymore. Apps are on the tablet except for a few critical mobile workhorses: Pocket, Kindle, Fidelity (for depositing checks), Google Maps (although I’m not hugely loyal). Pocket doesn’t have a WP8 client, but you can read using your browser. That would sting a bit, but having Kindle support is really nice, and Fidelity supports WP8 just fine.
I can feel my eyes get starry just thinking about wireless charging on my nightstand, and I really think the Metro thing might work for a mobile device. Plus, it has that kid mode thing Jessica Alba talks about, which could potentially be a lot better toddler lock than what you can do on the Android side of things.
I want to say that Google Now is just as amazing as the tech writers think it is, but it’s really not for me. If I took an airplane flight every week or wanted to track a billion packages it would be good, but most of the time it just quotes me the wrong “time to drive home” 30 minutes after I arrive at the office in the morning. It’s again far better on the tablet and great for travel, but on the cell phone it just feels like it’s playing catch-up.
I think, now that my apps are generally segregated to the tablet, I am much more a hardware buyer than an ecosystem buyer for phones, and I really can’t argue with the Lumia’s hardware. If I build a Windows 8 desktop in the relatively near future and get that syncing properly with the phone, that’s kind of nice compared to SD card hell on Android.
I think I need to go to a store and just mess around with the phone for a while, to get out of the echo chamber of the tech media and really see how it feels.