Windows phones any good?

[onapthanh]

I also thought that wifi tethering would be the easy part, and USB tethering to an Ubuntu computer would be the hard part! Pretty sure Windows phones do have turn-by-turn, due to Nokia Maps and probably Bing Maps or something like that

[fkkroundabout]

windows phone OS is OK, but quite restricted and uncustomizable - so as to avoid bugs and errors - and some basic features are not quite there yet. android is definitely more developed.

the big up side is you can often obtain better hardware for your money, with a windows phone - faster processors etc - because they are selling them off at low prices to gain market share. see www.versus.com to compare phone hardware

[jeehyun]

yeah...but android is tooooo ugly. Even galaxy touchwiz can not cover the ugliness. Windows phone is quite pretty. It's not bad for normal consumers who want mail, camera, and facebook.

[at_first_light]

I've recently gotten a Windows 8 Phone (Nokia Lumia 520) for use as a portable player since the mp3 player market is very limited these days. There aren't very many good free apps, a Microsoft account is required to install apps, and some apps I want require Windows 8.1 which isn't available yet to install as an update (and may or may not be made available depending on the phone, I believe for mine it will be). I don't mind the whole tiles start screen thing as much on the phone (kinda like it), but it drives me crazy on my desktop.

I've never used android, but compared iOS on my ipod touch Windows 8 Phone looses because it doesn't come out of box with a decent music application, or video application just their silly Xbox music/video stuff.

[3rdalbum]

yeah...but android is tooooo ugly. Even galaxy touchwiz can not cover the ugliness. Windows phone is quite pretty. It's not bad for normal consumers who want mail, camera, and facebook.

Sorry, can't agree. The big solid colours and non-rounded flat rectangles on Windows Phone make it extremely ugly to me - and probably to most consumers. Some animations are reasonably nice and sometimes the typography-focused design is attractive, but in general I find the icons to be horrible and the flat colours make me want to look away.

Stock Android is not perfectly beautiful, but the most ugly parts of Holo are the parts that mimic Windows Phone's solid colours and flat rectangles.