7 Reasons I would prefer an Android Phone over WP8

My existing phone is a Karbonn A30 running Android ICS and my next phone is going to be an Android phone too. Both as a user and as a developer, I’ve come upon the realization that Android provides a much better user experience and overall satisfaction in mobile computing.

I had briefly considered using Windows Phone once, but I’ve discarded that idea after giving it a trial run. Here are the 7 reasons why I would only go for a phone running the Android Operating system and not WP8.

1. More features: This is one of the primary reasons a user buys any product, let alone a cell-phone. Android clearly wins in this department as it provides more features (out-of-the-box) compared to WP8. Just open the android settings menu and compare it to the feature-deprived WP8 settings screen to prove this to yourself. WP settings doesn’t even allow you to perform basic things like:
   1. Setting up a custom mp3 ringtone (You need a PC with Zune software running for that.)
   2. Setting up bluetooth options (No advanced options like bluetooth tethering )
   3. Brightness settings are only low, medium and high (whereas Android provides a slider to set a custom percentage).
   4. No built-in file manager (At least the lumia 520 I tested did not)
   5. Not enough power stats (Android shows a complete run-down of what apps ate how much battery life, WP doesn’t even show the exact percent of battery remaining)
2. More options for tethering: One of the major reasons that I use my phone is to tether my phone’s internet, so as to use it on my laptop. Android provides me three options to do this: Wifi tethering (aka Access point), Bluetooth tethering, USB tethering. WP8 only provides Wifi sharing and that too is not quite customizable.
3. More free apps: The Google play store is full of professional apps (many of them free, too). For instance, ES3 is a file-manager, archiver, FTP-manager and backup-manager combined. This app is not freely available on WP8 and I doubt the paid version would be having the features comparable to android version. Other examples are Terminal-IDE  (A fully-fledged IDE) and QPython (A fully-fledged programming environment!) that are both freely available on Android.
4. Opensource technologies: Android stack completely rests on Open source technologies. The Linux kernel, Apache Harmony and Dalvik VM are all Opensource components.
5. Supported by Google: Another reason to go with Android is that it is actively developed and supported by Google Inc, a company whose interests directly harmonize with that of the end-users.
6. More options for the Developer: Even as a developer, you will have a much better time developing an Android app than a WP8 app. First of all, the development tools (EclipseADT and Android SDK) are pretty well-documented on Android Developer site. Secondly, these are opensource tools that run on all platforms including Linux and OSX. On the other hand, developing a WP8 app requires Windows 8 64 bit version and nothing else.
7. No vendor lock-in: As a corollary to point 4, there is no vendor lock-in when you go for Android. Because the source code of android OS is freely available from the repository, you can customize it if you need to.