[darkoman4]

The biggest problem with the Skydrive, it uploads downsized photos to the cloud and your synced photos are worthless. Google+ for Android, iCloud ,Dropbox and even Flickr for HTC phones and Shugarsync for Blackberry upload full images. There is no advantage there at all, au contraire.

Edit: Found solution deep in photo settings.

[Zeroplanetz]

How about the benefit to not need an anti-virus protection? Or the benefit to not need to defragment? Windows phone for me is the choice because it offers enough customizability for my liking and I don't need to worry about my stuff being hacked or bits of files being thrown everywhere. Yes android has more apps but windows has more everyday stuff built into the os. But in the end it comes down to your personal preference. Yes listen to people but don't make your decision based on other people. Take it all in to account when you go and play around with the phones yourself.

[omniusovermind]

I'm also going to add these points to the sticky, but here are some positives that have been making me consider WP8 more strongly recently:

• As has been mentioned a million times, the UI is very fast and fluid. I think it ties with iOS for 1st place in this regard.
• text selection for copy/paste is WAY easier than Android and BB10. Can't speak for iOS, I don't do Apple. I copy/paste text a LOT on my phones. This isn't an eye popping wow factor feature, but sometimes the boring little details can become pretty important.
• Sharing on WP8 is only rivalled by Android. Both offer you a list of all installed apps. Nobody else does this
• The UI is highly polished even once you go deeper into it. Some OS's only look good on the homescreens but then get messy further into different areas of the phone like contacts, dialer, settings etc. WP8 did a great job with Look and Feel inside the UI and not just on the homescreen.
• I'm not a big fan of "openness" as I used to be. Back in the 90's when MS had this rep as a big evil giant monopoly the openness movement had more merit. Nowadays computing is simply just more secure on MS and Apple walled gardens. You'll be extremely hard pressed to find larger companies saying they're comfy with you hooking your Android Phone up to the network ;)

[omniusovermind]

How about the benefit to not need an anti-virus protection? Or the benefit to not need to defragment? Windows phone for me is the choice because it offers enough customizability for my liking and I don't need to worry about my stuff being hacked or bits of files being thrown everywhere. Yes android has more apps but windows has more everyday stuff built into the os. But in the end it comes down to your personal preference. Yes listen to people but don't make your decision based on other people. Take it all in to account when you go and play around with the phones yourself.

I feel the need to run LBE Privacy Guard, and have to waste a lot of time checking permissions these days. It's highly annoying to find a really cool UI tweak on Play Store or whatever name-an-app that has zero requirement to ever access the internet listing it as a permission. I'm sick of apps wanting to know my location with no need to, ever. I'm just getting tired of dealing with stuff like this, and it's getting old, real fast.

[cgk]

Xbox music is a huge benefit, you can stream music on WP,W8 and Xbox with the same subscription and can download as many songs as you want in one place and have them show up in the cloud music collection on the others. With iTunes or google play music you have to purchase each song separately.

But you can do this on spotify, in the UK, it's half the price if you are a student and the clients are better on most devices - I ever have one on my roku box.

[rockstarzzz]

But you can do this on spotify, in the UK, it's half the price if you are a student and the clients are better on most devices - I ever have one on my roku box.

Spotify collection is inferior in both quality and quantity

[Zeroplanetz]

Spotify collection is inferior in both quality and quantity

while spotify may be loved by some or several, I had it and deleted it. I'm not saying Xbox music is the way to go. Just that spotify is not a all owning god between music stuff. I personally won't use it even if its the last music service left.

[astraith]

You can currently:Access your Skydrive across both devices.Access your music collection across both devices.Access your documents - office and notes, across both devices.Control Xbox using Xbox Smartglass on WP and/or Surface.Access awesome UI across both devices.Sync games across both devices e.g. WordFeud - I play from laptop sometimes, sometimes from phone.

Plus possible more benefits going forward.

[astraith]

MS and it's ecosystem is a tricky one. On one had you can understand the business side with microsofts decisions to put all its apps/services on IOS and Android and on the other it seems counter productive in making it's own Mobile OS needed or wanted over the others.personally I think they should release watered down version of they're apps/services on IOS/Android and have premium versions on WP.

That's where I actually disagree. Yes, it is something that subtracts value, but look at Google. Google says screw you loyal gmail, drive, google+ subscribers. If you aren't on Android, you don't get our support. Yes, i know they support the iPhone, however that's because they don't have an option. They have to have their apps on that platform. To many users.But Windows 8, or Windows Phone? Nope, screw you guys. And I'm sorry, I am glad Microsoft isn't like that.