Earlier in the year I wrote about my thoughts on choosing a new mobile phone.
I went with Windows Phone and tried to be (reasonably) impartial about why I’d discounted the others.
I promised a follow up post explaining how I was getting on. That post never turned up as my writing mojo vanished (which I explained in a blog post – the irony)
By the time I’d gotten back into the mood for writing again the Mango update was imminent so I thought I’d wait for that. There were so many features I was interested in that I couldn’t have written a post without using a variant of this phrase a million times.
“This will be fixed/better/improved/available when Mango arrives”
Waiting seemed to make sense.
However, there was a massive delay in getting Mango out to Samsung Omnia 7 devices on T-Mobile in the UK which wound me up in a big way and I lost my enthusiasm for writing about it. On top of that Richard Tubb wrote a great series of posts about his experiences trying out all the major platforms.(read them…now!) which I was glued too so any thoughts I had for writing about it at the time disappeared. 
This morning I spotted that Richard was about to order an Android device which reminded me to make a start on this post.
So now that I’ve rambled on for 200 odd words I’d better get to my point
I’m of the opinion there isn’t much to gain in arguing the difference between any of the major phone platforms anymore. They all do some really good, unique features and equally they all have faults or things that could be improved on.
I honestly think that each platform has a “style” (for want of a better word) that will fit certain types of people depending on their own personality, habits and way of getting stuff done.
For some people that will mean an iPhone, for others that’ll be Blackberry or Android or Windows Phone.
In case you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably spotted that people get very defensive and passionate about their choice of mobile phone and it’s become the kind of techno-religious debate we see all the time
Windows vs Linux vs Mac / Xbox vs PlayStation / Internet Explorer vs FireFox vs Chrome / etc, etc, etc
In these types of debate ultimately no-one is “right” and all it really boils down to is personal preference based on what works best for the individual.
Now when someone asks me what phone they should go for I’ll happy explain what I personally like about the phone I have chosen but will also suggest that where possible they should take a look at lots of different devices, speak to people who have similar interests or work in the same kind of way before diving in. Those mobile contracts are long and expensive to get out of!
They all make calls, do email, send text messages, get on the Internet, update social media and run apps which is what we’d now call “core functionality”. They all do it slightly differently and have their own little niggles. But they all do it.
Find which one irritates you the least and go with that one. 
For the record I’m really enjoying my Windows Phone. I’m not going to say anything other than that in this post though!
As always your own thoughts, opinions and comments are more than welcome
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Andy – firstly, thanks for the kind words about my blog posts. They were a lot of fun, and as I’ve already shared with you – I got a *lot* of feedback from iPhone users telling me I was wrong to favour Android, and Windows Phone users telling me I was wrong to favour iOS. 🙂
Really, all the major Smartphone handsets allow you to do pretty much everything you want to do nowadays. For me that’s Calls, SMS, E-Mail, Social networking, the odd Photograph and Sat-Nav.
What differentiates the major Smartphone brands (for me) is the state of the respective App markets. iOS and Android are head and shoulders above other platforms here, yet Windows Phone did most of the things I wanted it to do – albeit with less immediately recognisable apps than iOS or Android.
The one thing I do take from my experiment is that 24 months is *too long* to be locked into a single handset on contract. The market changes too quickly, and for Power Users – you’re left really stretching the device that months earlier was overkill for your needs.
I’ve decided to go contract free and SIM free and buy handsets as needed so I can enjoy the latest developments on the market.