Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by our trusted partner Intel for a limited time only with the purchase of any unlocked core i5 or Core i7 Intel CPU get a free Intel beany with a chance to win an Intel snow board valid for Canadian and US customers only some restrictions apply for complete details visit intel gaming promo calm welcome to day whatever this is of the epic I switched trial with Windows Phone 8 so I'm gonna start with telling you guys the conclusion the conclusion is I am NOT going to be switching to Windows Phone 8 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 you see I'm holding an 8 s now because I spent the last week of my I switched using the 8 s rather than the 8 X the reason for that being that especially when I'm typing so on the 8x I have small hands and I've had people say oh get a note too because you'll get you know I'm not going to get used to it I'm not gonna 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 one-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 Smiley's here that makes a big difference and then there's a 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 rally for tweets which is apparently out there it is well it 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 active was horror and then rally was having all these issues but Twitter has updated their native app 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 platform so it's yeah really really liking the Twitter experience although this sort of epitomizes some of our not epitomizes I don't know whatever it Ellis traits some of the issues I've had with Windows Phone 8 in general is 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 8 well what is everything ok 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 it in order to figure out what anything is and I mean if you're experienced Twitter users 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 anyway so we're done with that yeah so way better overall I prefer swipes to clicks so I prefer scroll so one of the complaints I had early on was that I whips okay well let's go back to hold on 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 8's okay fine we will go to we'll go to a contact list right okay so the way that you navigate from letter to letters instead of scrolling down the side like you do on Android and iOS you click here and then click the letter of I'm just make sure there's nothing so you and then you click the letter and it takes it jumps to the right spot 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 Peck because it's gonna be a long time before I memorize this grid and if I'm looking for eat 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 contacts whether it's installed applications or whether it's 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 generally speaking far more crashes and hangs than iOS 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 we're 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'll know this is what it's actually like to use it for a long period of time one thing I noticed about the h8s versus the 8x was that the spacebar is the thing that seems to get shorter it got a little tiny spacebar 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 spacebar wouldn't be something that I would have liked to see extended because I find myself often hitting these instead on the condensed keyboard on the 8's so the 8x had a slightly bigger one just because of the white the the bigger screen I prefer folders and desktops for navigation 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 let's find one that goes full-size like photos goes full-size I think I'm never gonna 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 than 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 gonna get about eight per scroll on your screen and if you're using small ones even then you're only getting about what if 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 9 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 I mean even okay so on iOS I might scroll from desktop to Jessica 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 anoxia 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 buttons awesome every phone should have one I'd love it if it was a little bit more stiff because 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 one of the other problems for me and it I mean mobile platforms is all about apps cloud media is not nearly 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 yeah Skype integration also wasn't as 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 whatever I'm not signed in well okay the point is no it's ok I couldn't find a setting within sky 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 yeah Apple just works but no but seriously it just worked and then this one it's like I got Skype calls but not written message notifications I mean that's very frustrating to me because I find them like hours later 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 and then there's a huge thread on Microsoft 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 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 it so you have to kind of hold it like this and then scroll through it's just ridiculous 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 in sign in sign in sign in sign and done and I mean even things like like multiple entries when you have someone on Facebook and linked and you had them in your phone already it'll even merge them and then there's tools too 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 Nokia's Drive app was another one I don't think know if it's called Nokia drive anymore soon as we called here drive now I don't know why they would have changed the number oh yeah this is gonna show right where I am right now but that's okay is awesome when it finds your destination I found it was a little bit less reliable than Google Apps for me our Google Maps rather for me here in in Vancouver Canada so there you go it might be perfect where you live but I found it a little bit less consistent internet explorer is awesome compared to Safari 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 to places for refresh and I found that frustrating as well 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 understand you want to use as much space as possible for just sort of actually viewing your content but I think that 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 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 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 I don't know if this one's gonna work right now okay well let's not worry too much about like that here let's go to a metro to metro tubes awesome I really like this 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 like that so I missed that and always knowing the time 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 I switched with the all-new HTC One phone so this is pretty much as high-end as it gets for an Android phone so I'm gonna give it a shot and Slick's got a little smirk on his face going on over there cuz I said I wouldn't do it but I'll be going back to my iPhone 4 in the meantime all honestly having a newer phone really made me see how slow the iPhone 4 is now cuz I've gotten used to it I used it for like two years so that that part's gonna be hard to go back to I kind of wish I had a more up-to-date phone but so I'm gonna 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 don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from our unboxings reviews and other computer videos