Switching to Windows Phone Created: Sun 21 Dec 2014 · Updated: Wed 07 Oct 2020

A couple of months ago, while trundling along the Circle line at snails pace, it dawned on me that I rarely use more than around 5 apps on my iPhone. At the time, I was checking my emails in Mail and had just finished reading the latest blog posts on Flipboard. A couple of phone calls, a text and quick snap with Autostitch brings us to 5. Given the massive bias towards wall-of-apps style phone usage, I decided to try something a little different.

So I bought a Windows Phone, specifically a Nokia Lumia 1020. The original plan was to give it a trial, and return it when I inevitably hated it and returned to the iOS/app-crazy bubble.

But the opposite has happened; I must be in a small minority of people who actually like not having the latest apps to play around with. I am no longer distracted by my phone, but use it only to communicate or read. It’s the simplicity of it that I love - I have my laptop for tinkering. This is further exaggerated by the stunning Windows Phone interface, which is definitely the most usable “phone” OS I’ve seen yet.

As with all things, Windows Phone is not perfect - Internet Explorer (true to it’s desktop counterpart) cannot render fonts smoothly. Ironically, despite my general dislike of extra apps, I miss Citymapper a lot. There’s also some issues with live tiles not updating, but I came from iOS 8 & it’s beta so I’m now well used to a buggy phone ;).

The phone itself looks amazing, is built like a brick (as much as a smartphone can be anyway) and there’s that 41 MP camera. It’s also over a year old and a little slow at times - but the camera more than makes up for it as opposed to say, a much faster Lumia 930. More details available in the notes I made during the trial period.

All in all, I can’t see myself ever returning to iOS.