Android vs. Windows Phone

Now that I’ve had my (Chinese government-sponsored) Huawei P20 Pro phone for a few months, I’ve used it enough to judge it - well, its operating system - against that of my previous Windows Phones.

• Aesthetically, there's simply no competition; Android remains an ugly rip-off of Apple's iOS with a minimal attempt to do any more than just show apps; and, like iOS, it doesn't allow anything other than egalitarian, all-apps-are-equal mediocrity in which every app is allocated the same screen space, and the only way to delineate their importance is organising them onto different home page screens
• Windows Phone, by contrast, allowed app tiles to be a range of sizes, including with enough screen real estate to permit them communicate more completely with the user, it let the user tessellate them neatly into groups (e-mail, social media, phone functions), and allowed the user to keep all of their regularly-used apps on a single, elegant scrolling screen 
• Functionally, there's really nothing like the live tiles of Windows, you just get a coloured dot that indicates that there's something up with a particular app; as well as being less noticeable, the meaning of the dot colour is opaque much of the time; and sometimes a dot appears that just won’t go away; the notification pull-down does serve some of this functionality, but it’s just not as convenient as having a tile tell you directly what’s going on 
• While app overload is an issue with Android and iOS, there is, on my phone anyway, an attempt to stow away less-used apps via “Drawers”, but they're completely inelegant compared to Windows’ solution of having a full list of all apps (organised alphabetically, and with a neat way of skipping quickly) accessible to the right of the start menu; similarly to Windows, Android allows apps to alternatively be put in groups that occupy a single app spot on the home screen 
• Windows’ customisable start menu itself is something I really do miss; I'd got a nice set of differently sized tiles, arranged in a convenient order, and with a nice rhino-based wallpaper; Android - away from Windows launchers, which I've yet to try - looks positively amateurish by contrast; it's an interface designed by a committee, and so has achieved the lowest common denominator in appearance - actually, as it just ripped off iOS to get here, it's even lower than that 
• Doubtless in part because no one was writing apps other than Microsoft itself, the consistency and linking up between apps is much greater in Windows Phone than in Android; in particular, the contacts app is particularly good in Windows Phone, serving as a solid hub for managing communications across and between different apps or media; the corresponding Android app is relatively featureless, managed to mangle more than a few contacts when they were copied over, and still seems to forget contacts sporadically (it doesn’t know who C is, for instance); more generally, apps just feel isolated from one another 
• (As an aside, having used iOS quite a bit through an iPad, and more recently via C's new iPhone, it feels to me that Google just hasn't made as much of an effort as Apple have and (by necessity) Microsoft did in creating a joined up / seamless user interface experience; although I'm not a huge fan of iOS - and for some of the same reasons I'm irked by Android - it runs a much tighter ship than Android on this score)
• All that said, a healthy app ecosystem is a huge plus for Android; it's quite a change to finally know that there really is an app for that; Windows Phone’s coverage was always flaky, increasingly so with time, and even Microsoft bailed on some of its own apps (e.g. song recognition) while the platform was a going (if limping) concern 
• And all *that* said, my app experience to date is very far from frictionless; third party apps are routinely full of ads, lacking in expected functionality, expensive to upgrade, and of such uncertain quality that one is inhibited from paying to find out; the upshot of which is that I find myself sticking with apps from known providers; so, much as I'd always suspected, the so-called “app gap” that pundits would always dismiss Windows Phone for is, to a large degree, a tempting mirage and no more 
• But it is the case that it's nice to finally have apps for activities that I've hitherto missed out on, and even nicer to have familiar apps that are still being given the love and support they need; Google Maps, for instance, long used on my desktop, is a joy to use on my phone, while HERE Maps on Windows Phone was becoming quite dusty (e.g. it didn’t even have a way of selecting mode of transport - it was by road or nothing) 
• And I have really benefited from a few paid apps to move me across from Windows Phone, and get my music properly sorted (iSyncr); they’ve done a grand job in getting me seamlessly working in Android; although it’s still annoying that my Windows Phone WhatsApp account has to stay there 
• Notwithstanding all of the above improvements that my new phone has brought, I'd still prefer to be enthralled by Windows Phone's stylish and functional slickness; it's difficult not to see Android's persistence as another example of market share trumping product quality; even today, VHS can still beat Betamax 

I should add that, while Android is something of a Curate’s Egg, and largely a come-down from Windows Phone for me, the hardware of my new phone is really quite good. As expected, it has an excellent camera, but then I did buy it for just that. But it also handles Android slickly, and has an excellent battery life. Assuming I don’t hammer it, I can comfortably go 2 days without charging it.

It would have done a great job with Windows Phone as its OS ...