Microsoft’s head of Windows Phone Andy Lees recently said he was flattered by parts of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that appear to mimic features of Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango). “It’s always flattering when someone starts copying you ,” Lees told CNETAsia. Perhaps one of the most noticeable similarities is Android’s new ‘People’ feature, which provides a snapshot of any contact’s social network status — it is nearly identical to what Windows Phone 7.5 offers with “People Hub.” Read on for more.
“Fundamentally, [Google’s] point of view is different,” Lees explained. “They provide you with a grid of icons and a sea of applications and the more functionality you add, the more complicated and difficult to use the phone becomes.”
No doubt the home screens for each operating system are completely different; Android offers a widget and icon-based home screen while Microsoft has taken the tile-based Metro UI approach. Lees believes the Windows Phone user interface caters to developers better. “The problem with the Android model is that [if] somebody decides to do something, they hack up the operating system and they make it work,” Lees explained. “But that [makes] a dead end for that device, and that’s why phones don’t get updated, it’s why sometimes they run applications and sometimes they don’t.”
Thanks Callandor!
