Gadgetory

Microsoft's mobile operating system is more mature than ever and Apple's got a new look but how do they compare I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is I Oh s7 versus Windows Phone 8 in general Android and iOS are considered the two most competitive smartphone operating systems after all a third platform Windows Phone has only recently proven itself a viable contender slowly gaining traction worldwide it's easy to forget how dominant Android truly is but we'll put it this way as of q2 2013 Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone are much closer in global market share than Android and iOS our Android has captured nearly 80 percent of the global smartphone market share iOS holds 13.2% and Windows Phone holds 3.7 156 point 2 million units shipped separated Android and iOS for the quarter only twenty two point five million units separated iOS from Windows Phone let that marinate for a minute and while you do we're going to put these two platforms head-to-head unlike yesterday's comparison between iOS 7 and Android 4.3 Windows Phone 8 and iOS 7 have very little in common both interfaces utilize beautiful typography and minimalist design in very different ways the iOS 7 interface is extremely colorful and bright fresh and vibrant we suppose it uses a whitewash design pastels and neons this promotes a very youthful feeling platform it's composed of layers and dimensions twist the phone in your hand and a parallax effect creates the illusion that your home screen icons are floating above your wallpaper the notification shade is like a slightly transparent glass pane you pull down over your home screen and this dimensional appearance can be viewed throughout the system the home screen although it looks quite different is the same home screen from before on 4-inch models the icons are laid out in a 5 by 4 grid creating space for 20 slots which can be filled with either icons or folders the bottom dock is static and is composed of four slots folders are paginated without a hard limit additionally you can change the wallpaper and that's virtually the extent of the iOS homescreen it's concise and well functional the Windows Phone home screen allows for slightly more custom as they although the homescreen is also a grid instead of horizontal pages of icons it uses a vertical scrolling grid of various tile sizes small medium and large depending on the size of the tiles they display varying amounts of live updated information battery status info the unread email count in your inbox etc the major difference between these two is that not every application has to be displayed on the home screen in Windows Phone pull the home screen to the left and an alphabetical list of all apps installed is shown which can be quickly navigated by the letter dividers both offer the same short-lived excitement not long after the initial setup process the appeal and the mystique of the home screens wear off so if you're after extreme customization neither of these platforms will appeal to you but that's not to say they're terribly boring or inefficient they look great each in its own way and they get the job done exceptionally well our least favorite part of both operating systems at least visually and conceptually are their respective settings apps both are garbled messes and are in need of some organizing settings for individual apps can still be found in the stock Settings app on iOS and Windows Phone setting app has no rhyme or rhythm to its order or disorder the two platforms are on a fairly level playing field in terms of functionality while incoming notifications are handled almost identically with a temporary banner at the top of the display iOS has unified area for notifications called Notification Center which is accessed by pulling down from the top of the display when this phone does not dragging down from the top of the display only reveals the status bar signal ringer status battery etc the only indicator of missed notifications are the live tiles on Windows Phone which work and there are small previews at the bottom of the lock screen but this could certainly be better Windows Phone also has no native way to quickly toggle settings iOS didn't either until last week now it has control center which is accessed by pulling the shade up from the bottom of the display you can toggle Wi-Fi Bluetooth do not disturb torch airplane mode music controls adjust the brightness and much more but less we forget iOS has its own hurdles Apple doesn't allow third-party sharing natively developers must code support for individual services in their apps else they're left with only a few presets sharing Chen's email SMS Facebook Twitter etc in that regard Windows Phone is much more like Android to share a picture to the unofficial Instagram client six tag simply locate the image in the Photos app at the share charm and select six tag on iOS you must leave the gallery open Instagram tap compose tap the Gallery icon then find the image within your albums it's several more steps and when you complicate the process like copying and pasting back and forth between apps this can be a problem on that note multitasking is roughly the same on both the task switching menus look a lot alike but iOS has an advantage in closing apps simply flip the card view upward to dismiss Windows Phone simply doesn't have this feature period Windows Phone looks and feels much more rudimentary part of which can be blamed on how utterly minimal UI is but when you consider that iOS is over 7 years old and Windows Phone is not yet 3 the fact that these two are comparable in many ways particularly in utility and functionality it is quite impressive on Microsoft's part i OS does have one major leg up on Windows Phone ecosystem its App Store is filled with over 950 thousand applications and games its digital content library is expansive and filled with the highest quality content available on iTunes and iCloud help keep the phone seamlessly synced with other AI devices or your Mac Microsoft has started building out its ecosystem but SkyDrive Office Live and the Windows Phone store still need plenty of work it has tons of potential however with the Xbox brand on its side room for game development is endless the shared interface across all Microsoft products is great for user friendliness and it's AB catalog Windows Phone store has experienced fairly substantial growth in its first few years achieving 170,000 apps in August while that may sound like a ton of apps to choose from a fair helping of those are second rate knockoffs or third-party clients for unsupported services we have a ton of hope for the store but in its current state which is improving don't get us wrong it can't quite compete with the likes of iOS and the utterly massive App Store it too has its own share of terrible apps though but the sheer number of incredible applications and services available i OS many of which start on iOS before branching out to other platforms far outweighs the bad the big feature of iOS is Siri in iOS 7 it too got a facelift and some new features to boot not only can you ask it questions about the weather movie times actors and practically anything else you can toggle hardware and connectivity through voice commands unfortunately Windows Phone doesn't have a virtual assistant the dedicated search button brings up the Bing search from anywhere within the OS and you can use that to voice search but the experience just doesn't compare it's no different than simply typing to search it doesn't speak answers to you it doesn't intelligently aggregate information and it doesn't try to be human fortunately Windows Phone 8.1 will reportedly bring Cortana Microsoft's own entry into the digital assistant realm both Windows Phone 8 and iOS 7 offer the most impressive speed and polish in use that said opening applications does generally seem to take a little longer on Windows Phone but it's difficult to do a direct comparison it's easiest to put it this way both platforms perform well and rarely have any hiccups stutters lag etc but Windows Phone has to resume applications even after short pauses its miniscule but worth noting if you open virtually any app bump the power button hit it again and unlock the application will take a second or two to resume on iOS this is not an issue fortunately it's only a second or two these days the resume times used to be upwards of 10 seconds so what can we learn from all of this one Windows Phone is finally blossoming into a viable operating system it's got more polish than many give it credit for but it still has plenty of room to grow and although iOS is older more mature and has more to offer with its ecosystem such as nearly full support for Google's ecosystem while Windows Phone has virtually no official Google support for anything it too could stand some improvements both look great perform well and are reliable so we're asking you of these two which would you choose Windows Phone 8 or iOS 7 for us honestly it's a tough call we rely heavily on Google services so if they had to choose just one we'd almost have to go with iOS but that's not to say Windows Phone isn't great it uses a refreshing take on mobile UI uses beautiful typography and it's growing more impressive with each and every update that's going to do it for this video if you enjoyed it be sure to let us know by clicking the thumbs up button below and subscribe to see more videos for myself I'm a Michael and the rest of the team be sure to follow us in all the usual places Twitter Google+ and Facebook and pocket now I'm Taylor Martin and you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next week