Microsoft Office
Microsoft's Office apps are a major selling point for Windows Phone, and it really helps if you buy into the whole Office ecosystem. That means either using SkyDrive or Office 365 to store and swap documents in the cloud. But even without those, you can still create and open documents emailed to you, or drag and drop documents over from a PC (although not, at this moment, a Mac.)
Obviously, the Windows Phone Office apps can open, view, and round-trip documents; they can also edit documents saved in the newer .docx/.xlsx/.pptx format (although they can't edit the older formats without "x" at the end.) Microsoft Word and PowerPoint focus on being able to make minor text and formatting edits and add comments before you send the document back. Realistically, that's what you'll be doing on a phone with that tiny keyboard, anyway. Excel adds the ability to change and recalculate formulas, which is pretty exciting. Along with the "big three" apps comes OneNote, which is basically Microsoft's answer to Evernote, and a PDF reader.
The pocket Office apps aren't as powerful as Apple's Pages and Numbers for iOS, which are a full-fledged word processor and spreadsheet. But they're efficient and capable enough, and they guarantee not to screw up your Office documents when you send them back after editing them.
Windows Phone 8 supports a bunch of Microsoft device management features for businesses, including policy deployment, configuration managers, full device encryption, and business-only Hubs with notices and apps only for one particular organization. It's safe to say that this looks like a compelling option for businesses with Exchange servers who want something with BlackBerry levels of manageability, but hopefully a longer future lifespan.
The Windows Phone App DilemmaWith 120,000 apps, Windows Phone has apps for everyone. The shock for people coming over from iOS or Android is that it doesn't have the same apps. Windows Phone seems to exist in its own sphere.
For instance, take role-playing games, a category I love. Windows Phone doesn't have any of the titles I'm familiar with from Android. Instead it has the original Final Fantasy and Dragon's Blade. I've tried them, and they're both good games, but different. There are also plenty of exclusive, professional, great-looking games stamped with the Xbox tag, where you can earn Xbox achievements and chat with Xbox buddies. Those aren't on other platforms. You can entertain yourself on Windows Phone, but you'll be playing different games from friends with other smartphones.
Relatively few of my Android phone's apps were available when I tested. Instead, there are different apps which are kind of like popular Android and iOS apps. At the Windows Phone 8 launch, Microsoft announced that many of my favorite apps, such as Jetpack Joyride, Pandora, and Asphalt 7 Heat, will be coming sometime over the next few months. That should help, but they aren't there now.
Windows Phone isn't totally marooned. It has plenty of big brands, such as Delta Air Lines, Flixster for movies, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and such. Microsoft has said that the company is working with developers to get most of the top 50 apps from the other platforms on board. And I don't want to downplay all those excellent, big-name Xbox games. But it's safe to say that if you're on Windows Phone, you'll get what you need, but you'll be out of sync with the more popular platforms until Windows Phone gets those apps.
To get to the bottom of this, I noted down the top 20 free and top 20 paid apps each on the Google Play, Amazon, and Apple app stores. Eliminating duplicates (everyone loves those Bad Piggies), that's 95 apps total. Of those 95 apps, only 31 are available or announced at the time of this writing. Another 26 have different, similar apps in the Windows Phone store—Metrogram for Instagram, for instance, or Flick Baseball for Flick Home Run, for a total of 57 same-or-equivalent apps, or 60 percent of the list. Even counting out further oddities like the two ROM managers on the Android list, a 60-percent hit rate still isn't that great.
Microsoft has worked hard to get specific big-name apps onto its platform, and that's great. But the question that remains, and the problem Microsoft has had up until now, is whether it can attract Android and iOS developers en masse. We just haven't seen that yet.
Also, let's note that unlike Android (and like iOS), there are no alternative app stores for Windows Phone. Microsoft's store is all you get.
Next page: Syncing and Conclusions
Previous: Maps and Navigation
Reviewed By Sascha Segan from pcmag.com