An Asian proverb: The fly that stands on the buffalo’s back thinks that it is taller than the buffalo.

Let’s face it; despite the great strides that Windows Phone has taken since Nokia’s (News - Alert) whole-hearted embrace of the platform, it is still a niche operating system for Nokia die-hards, Windows Mobile die-hards and hippies wanting to have a different device from their friends’ iPhones and Galaxies.

However, there are certain features of Windows Phones that make them desirable for new users and lovable for long-time users – features either not found or that are vastly inferior on Android.

If Android had some of these Windows Phone (News - Alert) features, it would dominate the smartphone world.


Image via CNet UK

Simpler UI

There is no middle ground when it comes to the tile-based homescreen of Windows Phone. You either love it or hate it. At the start, everyone was united in their hatred of it. The restrictions and the plain looking UI was reminiscent of the early iOS and at that time, cluttered homescreens filled with different widgets were “in.”

However, the bashings eventually mellowed and some noticed the genius behind the simple homescreen. There is no widget cluttering. Only apps that you want on the Start Menu are pinned and you can resize the tiles to save space. This is very different from the sometimes convoluted homescreens of Android phones that are just resource hogs that slow the phones down.

Hubs

Windows Phone Hubs are reminiscent of a Zune heritage. You can access not only your music files on your phone but also those stored in the cloud and you can even purchase new tracks using Xbox Music… all without leaving the said Hub application.

Also, downloaded applications are automatically integrated with their appropriate hubs: Music apps go to the Music Hub while Video Players go to Video. Photo filters and editing applications are shown in the Pictures Hub.

Although some manufacturers with custom user interfaces try to design custom hubs, they all fall short of what Microsoft (News - Alert) has done with the Windows Phone Hubs.

People App

The People App is a feature of Windows Phone that was very well received even during the launching of Windows Phone 7. Imagine all of your contacts connected or linked to their social media account and also displaying all updates from those accounts in a separate tab dubbed “What’s New?” Also, their pictures on those social networking accounts can be viewed in the separate “Photos” tab.

There is also a “History” tab which shows the latest interactions that you had with that contact, be it a call, message or Facebook comment. For the owner, the “Me” tile acts as the social media notification center of Windows Phone. There, you can see all of the updates from your social media profiles and you can also post a status on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter (News - Alert).

Such an app curbs the need to download third party buggy apps such as, er, the official Facebook app for Android, which seems like a beta release due to the app’s frequent crashes.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office has got to be the best mobile document processor available in the market nowadays. That fact hasn’t escaped Microsoft’s attention and besides their Windows Phones, they never made it available to other operating systems. There are document editors available for other operating systems but all of them pale beside this monster document editor.

Out of the box, all Windows Phones have full support for MS Office. It is not a trial version or something with limited functionality as Android phones offer. This version lets you create, view or edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and there are also templates from which you can choose to start a document.

Google offers Google Drive, the successor of Google Docs. It offers most of the functionality found in Windows Phone MS Office, however, it is only available (you guessed it) in the cloud. There is no offline support for editing and creating documents, only viewing them.

Never to be left out, cloud editing and cloud document viewing can also be done on a Windows Phone using the same application via email, SkyDrive and Office 365.

Unified Messaging

Unified Messaging is a staple feature of Windows Phone that could be utilized by Android: A unified messaging app containing all emails, text messages and other updates from social networking accounts. BlackBerry (News - Alert) 10 has already adopted a similar approach with the BlackBerry Hub.

Here, all of your accounts can show the emails or messages that you receive, even from Facebook or Skype if you’re online. The statuses of your contacts appear in the messaging app and if you try to reply to them, it will be routed via the appropriate service, depending on your data connection and the availability of your contact. Google could integrate Android’s native messaging application with its own Google Talk or even Google+ Messenger.

Don’t Ignore a Good Thing

I can almost see BugDroid, Android’s green mascot, laughing right now. “Seriously…?”

The numbers tell it all. Android holds the majority of the smartphone world and half of the American market at 51.7 percent, while Windows Phone can only boast a market share of 5.6% percent (Kantar WorldPanel, 2013). Surely, the sheer number of Androids is testament as to what’s the better operating system. Surely, there is a reason why more Android smartphones are activated every month than the total number of Windows Phones in the United States. Now that is something that Microsoft does not even dare to comprehend.

But I digress. Powerful Android coupled with the elegance and ease of usage of Windows Phone would be an unstoppable behemoth for iOS, BlackBerry 10 and the remaining OS stragglers stumbling along the way.

Taking advice from a fly is probably not too bad, especially if you’re a talking buffalo. Just kidding.

About Archie Mariano
As a resident blogger for eCycleBest.com, Archie writes anything about electronics recycling and his one true love: gadgets. A recently converted recycling activist, he graduated with a Journalism degree from a state university where he slaved as a staff writer at first then cracked the whip on poor writers as editor of their campus paper. A freelance writer and a bibliophile, he can be seen raiding bookstores, arguing with fanboys in gadget demos and sipping cold coffee while reading eBooks in cafes.