Journeying across (mobile) borders

This post was originally published January 19, 2015 on and has been lightly edited before reposting

 

My first mobile phone was the humble Nokia 3530, running the company's proprietary OS. It served me well through a couple years of under-grad school…endlessly texting and playing Nibbles. After its buttons became unresponsive, I switched over to a Sony-Ericsson K508i. It ran Sonys' Symbian UIQ OS and it was beautiful! It featured a lot of slick animations, never felt sluggish, supported theming and it ran apps courtesy Java ME (albeit rudimentary apps). After about two years with the Sony, I switched to a true Symbian based Nokia 6600 for a short while. Unfortunately it was stolen before I got a chance to get to know it better. So back I went to my trusty K508i.

After under-grad, I upgraded to a Nokia N81 - my first high-end phone, running the latest version of Symbian OS. While the OS wouldn’t win any prizes for its looks, it was feature packed. The phone itself had a high resolution(240x320) colour display, oodles of space(8GB) and came preloaded with great games (a fishing expedition game comes to mind, although its name escapes me). It was the first phone I owned which had a decent camera which gave usable photos. Around mid-2009 the iPhone 3GS had just been announced and smartphones were the in thing. With the 3GS taking its time to reach Indian shores(and being way out of my reach budgetwise) I bought a ASUS P565 to get a taste of Windows Mobile 6.1. It served me well. WinMo was terrible in usability but sated the geek in me. It offered loads of customizability and the Windows TaskManager gave unlimited power over processes - it was literally like running a desktop in the palm of my hand.

Soon enough (while still lusting after the iPhone), the Android bug bit me and I acquired a shiny new Samsung Galaxy S. The phone came loaded with Eclair (version 2.1). Soon after I bought it, Google released Froyo(version 2.2). This new version gave a much needed performance boost to Android that offered respite from the jitters and lags aplenty in the UI. Samsung however took its sweet time to deliver the update. The same story repeated itself when Gingerbread (version 2.3) was launched. This time, instead of waiting for the official update, I dived into the somewhat murky waters of custom ROMs. It was like opening Pandoras Box - I sacrificed stability, some features and a great camera app for speed. All in all, as I look back, the original Galaxy S was the real deal - high-end hardware, unbrickable and great support on XDA. It gave me countless hours of playing around with different ROMs. It was a phone for a geek.

When Apple launched the iPhone 4S I had already been using an iPod Touch for a while and enjoyed the fluidity of iOS, so it was an easy decision to switch to it. Luckily it was available in India very soon after the global launch. Unlike Android, iOS expects you to adapt to it by imposing restrictions - it does few things but does them exceptionally well. Besides, iOS 4 was more polished and refined in looks, and UI consistency was leads and bounds better than Gingerbread. And at this point I was tired of trawling through XDA forums trying to look for workarounds to get basic functionality working on different ROMs. Further, the iOS app ecosystem was (and still is) better in many ways than the Android ecosystem - its not just the number of apps (the Play store now leads) but the quality and polish of apps that differentiate it. I took to iOS like a fish to water.

While Apple and Google were waging their war, Microsoft was undergoing a radical transition. When the iPhone launched in mid-2007, it had been caught on the wrong foot with Windows Mobile 6. Microsoft attempted a comeback with Windows Mobile 6.1 and then again with Windows Mobile 6.5 before finally starting afresh. It introduced Windows Phone 7 in October 2010. By then, Apple had enjoyed a little over 3 years of headstart and Google a bit over 2 years.

Watching from sidelines, I had been impressed by Windows Phone. It was a fresh take on mobile UIs, with flat textures and purposefully avoiding skeuomorphism. The core OS was fluid, never stuttered and was far more cohesive than Android - in short, very iOS like. Windows Phones Live Tiles were a stroke of genius for glanceable updates - more information dense than Androids widgets and in a different league from iOS’ notification badges. It featured hubs and panoramas, neither of which had equivalents in either iOS or Android. Windows Phone 8 followed in the footsteps of its predecessor but was built on newer foundations and promised more, much more. So when the Nokia Lumia 920 launched in India, I queued up to get one. Like I noted elsewhere (long since archived), it was a thing of beauty but there were some quirks in the OS that needed to be worked out. And then there was the terrible app ecosystem which always meant I ended up waiting for an app to come out which had been on iOS or Android for ages. Sometimes I’d wait for ages and have a 3rd party unsanctioned app come out instead.

Looking back at my experience between Windows Mobile 6.1, Android (Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, KitKat, Lolipop), iOS (5,6) and Windows Phone (8, 8.1) the Lumia with Windows Phone 8 brought most fun and joy. Killer hardware with a killer OS.

For a technology enthusiast like me, all three big players in the rise of personal technology have great OSes now, nee platforms. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

iOS has the best apps and the best hardware(in finish and polish). If you have a Mac, then the iPhone is a no-brainer. Now, iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite have an unmatched level of integration with each other. One of its biggest cons is that it is not very customizable and honestly, quite drab looking. The ‘radical’ new UI of iOS 7 wasn’t really new - it was a layer of paint over the pre-existing UI conventions.

Android is the most flexible mobile OS around. If you are using Googles' services - Gmail, Calendar, Maps - then Android has the best apps for them all. Android also has the best notifications amongst the three - not just in actionability, but also in reliability. Google Play Store now has an app for everything (though in my opinion the quality of apps is still a notch below those on iOS). On the negative front, Android has a lot to work on - fragmentation, UI inconsistencies, delayed updates and more. However high end your phone, Android will make your phone sluggish within a year.

Windows Phone is the probably the most stable of the lot, in almost 2 years of using my Lumia I can hardly recall having to restart my phone. Third-party apps are a different matter though. Also, to my eyes, it has the best UI of the lot - colourful live tiles, beautiful animations peppered throughout the OS, great typography, a fluid UI - everything just works. Windows Phones' biggest drawbacks are the app ecosystem and delayed updates. While the former can be attributed to a smaller marketshare (which in turn discourages potential developers, a vicious cycle if there ever was one), the latter is truly inexplicable. Even in countries like India where there are no carrier contracts or the like, not having timely updates from Microsoft (and now Nokia for firmware) is inexcusable.

Smartphones are such a huge market that all players want to lock in customers into their platform. For the three - Apple, Google & Microsoft - I’m the worst kind of customer, continually hopping about, not committing to a platform. But over time, I’ve found it become increasingly difficult to keep switching between platforms.

It all started with the Galaxy S. I bought some apps on the then Android Market, so there was the obvious inclination to stay on Android to avoid ponying up by changing platforms. Google hadn’t yet brought about a tight level of integration between its services, so it wasn’t too bad when I switched.

On the iPhone, it got worse. I stayed with Gmail as my primary email but started to use my Apple ID for calendar, messaging and iCloud. I especially relied on iCloud to sync my reminders and notes between the iPhone and my Macbook. A much better app ecosystem meant I spent more money buying quality apps - Tweetbot & Omnifocus, I’m looking at you. Some apps, like Omnifocus for instance, have only a Mac counterpart, the PC and Android are ignored. Steeped into the Apple ecosystem, I was already finding it difficult to manage some of my data across my iPhone, Macbook and PC.

When I jumped platforms again to the Lumia 920, I had to make a clean break from Apple. For every awesome app I depended upon in iOS, I had to sift through dozens of apps on the Windows Phone Store to often find a mediocre replacement. Gmail (to an extent), Hangouts and iMessage took a back seat. I started to use Outlook.com, Skype and integrated Facebook chat.

During my travails through Apple and Microsoft, Google had leapfrogged ahead in terms of integration - Google Now is a brilliant service which pulls information from Gmail, Google Search and Calendar to present you with updates and the right information when you need it. So when I recently came back to team Android (with the Moto X), there was yet another significant migration to undertake. There I was, back to Gmail and Google Calendar.

I’m sure my journey through different mobile platforms isn’t likely to end soon, so it makes sense for me to look increasingly for services which are as cross-platform as possible. The irony is that Microsoft, which has the smallest market share of the lot, is the one which is most platform agnostic with its services. If you are entrenched into, say Microsoft Office, you get a better experience using it on iOS and Android. Similarly, Outlook.com apps for iOS and for Android are just as good as their Windows Phone counterpart. Microsoft, which arguably has the most to lose with a platform-agnostic strategy, is the best at it. I dont expect either Apple or Google to get better at this, but I hope third-party developers see this as an opening and release apps which are on an equal footing across all platforms.

In any case, my journey continues...