Adios Windows Phone

A hundred dollars off the new Huawei Honor 8 on Black Friday saw the official end of my 4 year relationship with Windows Phone. Sorry Windows Phone it wasn't you it was me.

Wait a minute, yeah it was you. It definitely wasn't me. You have any idea how hard it is to have this super kick ass phone that looks great, runs great, takes fantastic pictures but has zero third party support? Its like the Sega Dreamcast all over again.

My decision to jump to android was made about a week ago when I was standing in a Safeway looking at the price of cereal bars. You could save $2 if you added them to you Just For U coupon list, which I couldn't do from the store because the Safeway App is only available for Android and iPhone. Usually I figure out all my coupons at home from my desktop before I go to the store but that day I had forgotten. Living in the 3% Windows Phone market share cost me 2 dollars and really I don't know if I'll ever forgive Microsoft for it.

Funny story: When Steve Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers the official Clippers App wasn't available for Windows Phone. Two and a half years later it still isn't. Sure Ballmer isn't COO anymore but he still owns about 4% of Microsoft, you would think he'd have some interest in getting that app on WP but he doesn't. He doesn't care about WP and from what I can gather, outside of like 4 people, no one else at Microsoft does either.

tl/dr: I got a new phone yesterday.

I don't really know anything about Huawei, I know they made one of the Nexus phones before Google ditched that line in favor of their new brand of Pixel phones. The Honor 8 ticked all my boxes as far as android phones went. It even has a dual-camera set up on the back like the new iPhone which was a bonus. Speaking of the new iPhone, this thing looks A LOT like the new iPhone. You could tell the guy at the AT&T store who hooked me up with a new sim card thought I bought it at the port authority from a guy selling phones out of a briefcase. He had never seen one before and had quite a few questions about it, most of which I couldn't really answer other than "it has 4.5 stars on Amazon".

It should be equal parts fun and frustrating learning a new phone OS. I spent at least an hour last night trying to import my important contacts as opposed to the 2,100 people it tried to import from my corporate e-mail account. I figured it out eventually and was able to sooth my sorrows by loading up a bunch of apps that were never available for WP.

It was nice knowing you windows phone. I'll miss your live tiles and your seamless Outlook integration. You took lots of good pictures of my kids over the years but in the end I really needed to play Pokemon go. I hope everything works out for you.