Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has a habit of annoying some of the more die-hard (or “crazy,” depending on your nomenclature of choice) fans of Apple’s products. How does he do this, you ask? Well, it seems that on occasion Woz has a tendency to speak favorably of smartphones that are not the iPhone. Wozniak famously carries multiple phones, and while he always insists that his iPhone is primary, he also uses other platforms, and is willing to speak freely about their advantages and disadvantages when compared to Apple products.
Most recently, Wozniak did an interview with A New Domain. On that particular day, Woz happened to be carrying four – yes, four – different mobile phones: a Motorola DROID RAZR, two iPhones (one AT&T, one Verizon), and a Nokia Lumia 900. During the interview he praised the Lumia 900 and Windows Phone 7.5. The Windows Phone, he said, offered a far more aesthetically pleasing experience than either the iPhone or Android.
He praised Windows Phone as “more intuitive and more beautiful” than both iOS and, especially, the Android platform. He said that “especially compared to Android, it’s just no contest.” Interestingly, he said that apps on his Lumia 900 were far more beautiful (he used the word “beautiful” a lot) than the same apps on the other platforms. This prompted him to speculated that either Microsoft or Nokia had approached the makers of apps like Foursquare in order to get them to make much more aesthetically pleasing apps for the Windows Phone platform prior to the Lumia 900’s launch.
Nevertheless, he did say that the Lumia 900 had its drawbacks. He noted that the Windows Phone platform has far fewer third party apps than either iOS or Android, though he noted that that wasn’t a particularly fair criticism, since app selection has more to do with the third parties themselves than with Microsoft or Nokia. More importantly, he noted Windows Phone’s lack of a voice interface. While Android has a dictation feature that allows users to speak wherever they can type, and the iPhone 4S has Siri, Windows Phone has almost no voice interaction (apart from the occasional Siri clone in the Window Phone Marketplace).
Wozniak went on to say that he owned about ten cellular devices, and that along with his two iPhones (a spare in case one battery dies), the Lumia 900 would be entering his day-to-day rotation.
What do you think? Is Woz right about the Lumia 900? Is it that much more beautiful than the iPhone or Android? Let us know in the comments.
