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is of the Epic I switched uh trial with
Windows Phone 8 so I'm going to start
with telling you guys the conclusion the conclusion is I am not going to be
switching to Windows Phone 8 um I feel like there's some things that are better
about it versus iOS but there are some things that were serious problems for me
that would make it so that I would actually uh you see I'm holding an 8s
now because I spent the last week of my I switched using the 8S rather than the
8X the reason for that being that especially when I'm typing so um on the
8X I have small hands and I've had people say oh get a note too because
you'll get no I'm not going to get used to it I'm not going to get used to my
hands are actually just small and can't reach so so I wanted to switch to a
phone that I can actually type on handed with like I could on my iPhone 4 and I
found that pretty much fixed every complaint I had about the keyboard and
the keyboard now that I've spent some time with it on a phone that I can
actually use I like a lot better than iOS and it's for a couple simple things
number one is the inclusion of smilees here that makes a big difference and
then there's uh there's your most recently used ones and you can it'll
just default to that every time once you select that so so you can just navigate
to all the ones that you actually like and the inclusion of period and comma
here because I do actually still care about punctuation even though I'm mostly
texting so totally got used to that liked that about it but I have a whole
other list of stuff that's bothering me so I've been using Row for tweets uh
which is uh apparently yeah there it is
looks a little something like that and I was having some weird issues with it
like in the timeline I'd click something here but it would actually open up the
one under it or two under it there'd be like these weird offsets on the touch
interface and it was driving me crazy to the point where I was ready to just get
off Windows Phone 8 entirely because the stock Twitter app is was horrible and
then Rowe was having all these issues but Twitter has updated their native app
um and it is actually pretty awesome now like they've actually put some time and
attention to it into it to the same sort
of standard as on the other platforms so it's uh yeah really really liking the
Twitter experience although this sort of um epitomizes some of or not epitomizes
I don't know whatever it illustrates some of the issues I've had with Windows
Phone 8 in general so a lot of the apps tend to be not that well labeled if
you're not already a Twitter user so you you haven't used Twitter on a mobile
platform before and you go you open up the Twitter app on Windows Phone what is
everything okay home I get what's that
what's that what's that what's the difference between this and home I don't
know so you have to actually just like dink around with in order to figure out
what anything is and I mean if you're experienced Twitter user sure but as someone coming into it like this just
isn't it's just not labeled well you know like there's these things down here
you got some like settings and stuff and yeah anyway so we're done with that um
yeah so way better uh overall um I prefer swipes to clicks so
I prefer SC so uh one of the complaints I had early on was that I whoops okay
well let's go back to hold on uh you
know what let's go to a song list that'll do as if you guys can't just
freeze the frame and read that stuff anyway so let's go to a oh right I don't
have the music loaded onto the 8S okay fine we will go to we'll go to a contact
list right okay so the way that you navigate um from letter to letter is
instead of scrolling down the side like you do on Android and iOS you click here
and then click the letter of let me just
make sure there's nothing sh here yeah
sure whatever so you and then you click the letter and it takes it jumps to the
right spot um I actually find this not
as easy to work with for a couple of reasons number one is that I find like I
said I find touches less intuitive than just scrolling down the right hand side
because that's where my thumb is anyway I'm right-handed for a left-handed
person maybe that's not as good the other thing is that now that I'm here I
kind of have to hunt and Peck because it's going to be a long time before I
memorize this grid and if I'm looking for e that's actually not conveniently
within my reach whereas this entire right side is within my reach so I find
that faster and more intuitive and that goes for scrolling long lists whether
it's uh contacts whether it's installed
applications or whether it's uh things like music I just I find this not as
good and then you see when you don't have something for every letter like
some of them are just kind of grayed out and it just it makes it more visually
confusing I find to actually navigate it uh generally speaking far more crashes
and hangs than iOS um in my month of using it and I think that's one of the
reasons why it's important to use the platform for a month before drawing any
conclusions I mean I did the the in progress updates where you know some of
them you know I'd say things that were just totally wrong and I'd say things
that that were right but sort of more by chance than from experience with it
whereas now I actually feel like I know how to use the platform and any
complaints I have are based on we know this is what it's actually like to use
it for a long period of time um one thing I noticed about the 8 8s versus
the 8X was that the spacebar is the thing that seems to get uh shorter you
got a little tiny space bar in there so I know I said that I do like things like
the smiley face but I mean come on language why does that need to be there so space bar would be something that I
would have liked to see extended because I find myself often hitting these
instead um on the condensed keyboard on the 8S so the 8X had a slightly bigger
one just because of the W the the bigger screen um I prefer folders and desktops
for navigation uh versus this tile interface because tile is interesting
and I mean okay so you press the Windows button to go up to the top and you know
you can prioritize things based on size but what I discovered is even on the 8X
which has a bigger screen I am never going to want to make an
icon like here uh let's find one that
goes full size like photos goes full size I
think I'm never going to want to make an icon like or not an icon whatever a tile
this big because it takes up so much space that it's just ridiculous like
maybe if it was something that I absolutely needed to have sort of in my
way all the time then fine but as it is
if you're even using so if you're using those you'd get like three per scroll on
your screen if you're using the medium-sized ones you're only going to
get about eight per scroll on your screen and if you're using the small
ones even then you're only getting about
what whatever it is like 32 per screen so you're actually
scrolling to find applications whereas when you compare that to a folder based
structure like on the iPhone 4 where you can go folder folder folder folder
folder folder folder folder and put like nine things in each one it's less
hunting for things because you categorize them you go okay I want my
utilities one click two clicks and I'm
in whereas if I have to go scroll scroll scroll to find something something I
mean even okay so on iOS I might scroll from desktop to desktop I keep
everything on my first and second page so I might have to go scroll click click
so I find that that a little bit easier and okay so the the argument after that
is oh well you can just swipe to the right and see all your apps that way
scrolling slow and then I still have to go click click potentially scroll click
to actually get into something and the interface for anything should always be
as few clicks as possible and I find that this tile interface doesn't really
achieve that for me dedicated camera button Awesome every phone should have
one um I'd love it if it was a little bit more stiff cuz I found myself
accidentally hitting it but when you want it just being ready to go sort of
hold down a button and you're ready to take pictures is is actually just kind
of freaking amazing uh one of the other problems for me and it I mean mobile
platforms it's all about apps Cloud media is not nearly uh or a cloud player
or whatever they call this thing is not nearly as polished as air video on iOS I
found that extremely frustrating because I do like to watch videos on my phone
that I stream from my home server so um yeah Skype integration also wasn't as uh
as smooth as it is with iOS so I mean
check out the Skype app hopefully I'm doing something wrong here and someone
can post a comment on the video uh oh whatever I'm not signed in well okay the
point is uh no it's okay I couldn't find a setting within Skype to make it so
that it stayed signed in all the time and would push me chat notifications it
just worked on iOS it's like Yay Apple it just works um but no but seriously it
just worked and then this one it's like I got Skype calls but not um written
message notifications I mean that's very frustrating to me because i' find them
like hours later uh so yeah it just okay
so what I'm trying to say is maybe there's a way to make it work maybe you can force it to somehow but what I said
was Skype integration is not as smooth as iOS because you have to fuss with it
so that's very confusing and the inability to turn off auto rotate
honestly is just a deal breaker for me like I can't function without being able
to turn off auto rotate even on iOS I find it incredibly frustrating that on
the phone you can only lock in portrait you can't lock in landscape but not
being able to lock at all being forced to have auto rotate on no matter what is
just asinine um and and there's a huge
thread on Microsoft's forums asking for it I've had people tell me no you must
be wrong there must be a way to do it no there actually isn't a way to do it even
though it must be the simplest possible thing um to to integrate so it just
it'll always auto rotate so what that means is if you actually want to view
something in portrait mode and you're laying in bed you want to read something
oh oh it moves around oh well actually hold on no I don't want to so you have
to kind of hold it like this and then scroll through it's just ridiculous um
one thing that was way better than iOS is integrating multiple accounts so
going okay yeah I want like Hotmail calendar and a Gmail calendar and I want
some other random thing and I want my Facebook and my LinkedIn contacts and I
want my Gmail contacts the way that it integrates things within the People app
here as well as your contacts as well as your calendar is just awesome way better
than iOS where there's certain things that are just randomly weirdly locked
down like iOS will grab your Google calendar but not your Google Contacts
and you have to kind of fight with it whereas this one you just kind of go sign sign in sign in sign in sign in
done and I mean even things like um like
multiple entries where you have someone on Facebook and Linkedin and you had
them in your phone already it'll even merge them and then there's tools to to
merge them differently or unmerge them or play around with them however you need to absolutely awesome that's
probably one of the high points of Windows Phone 8 for me uh Nokia's Drive
app was another one I don't think know if it's called noia Drive anymore it
seems to be called here drive now I don't know why they would have changed the number oh yeah this is going to show
where I I am right now but that's okay um is awesome when it finds your
destination I found it was a little bit less uh reliable than Google Apps for me
or Google Maps rather for me here in uh in Vancouver Canada so there you go it
might be perfect where you live but I I found it a little bit less consistent um
Internet Explorer is awesome compared to Safari um going back to Internet
Explorer one of the things I complained about last time was needing to go in here for tabs apparently this refresh
button can be changed to a tab button but that still means I have to go two
places for refresh and I found that frustrating as well um so it's again
it's just that more clicks thing and last but not least see that see the time
there okay so if I'm actually like I I
understand you want to use as much space as possible for um just sort of actually
viewing your content but I think that uh because so many people are moving away
from wearing watches and moving towards using their phones as their only real
time piece I found that not having quick easy access to that information um so
especially battery life there's a battery life app I don't know if I've
actually moved it onto the desktop of the uh of the 8S no it looks like I
haven't but having things like battery life by percentage and time and cell
reception always at the top I think is worth it because it's just ridiculous
when you're when you're watching a video for example actually I don't know if uh
I don't know if this one's going to work right now okay well let's not worry too much
about like that here let's go to met Tu metr tu's awesome I really like this uh
really like this YouTube app so let's find something and we're watching some
video so I'm used to in iOS just
pressing on something and having the time show up for me and I I I like that
so I missed that always knowing the time
um I think that's pretty much it so at the end of the day I won't be switching
but what I will be doing is I will be doing an Android ey switched with the
allnew HTC1 phone so this is pretty much
as highend as it gets for an Android phone so I'm going to give it a shot and
slicks got a little smirk on his face going on over there because I said I
wouldn't do it but I'll be going back to my iPhone 4 in the meantime oh honestly
having a newer phone really made me see how slow the iPhone 4 is now cuz I'd
gotten used to it I used it for like two years so that that part's going to be
hard to go back to I kind of wish I had a more upto-date phone but uh so I'm
going to go back to the iPhone 4 till I can get my hands on an HTC one but this
has been fun and guys leave a comment if you've hung in this long leave a comment
under the video because I will be giving away an HTC 8s I was going to give away
the 8X but it turns out someone needed it so I'll be giving away an HTC 8s to
one of the people who comments under the video give me like a couple weeks and
then I'll contact you and you'll be getting a free phone yay and as always
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