WP7 user giving Android a shot

Posted by AndrewCamillo on May 5, 2012 04:06 pm 10

Hey army,

I'm new to this part of the Verge, so bear with me. I'll get the nasty part out of the way and say I'm a Microsoft fanboy. I've used windows mobile on 2 different handsets, and now I'm a proud Samsung Focus user. I wanted to expand my horizons and learn a lot more about the Android ecosystem, and an opportunity has presented itself; I have a ATT Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S) available to me, and I'm going to give it a shot for about 2 weeks.

via www.geeky-gadgets.com

VS

via st2.gsmarena.com

I think this is a fair trade because it shares a lot of the internals of my Samsung Focus, except for the Hummingbird being replaced with a Qualcomm chip. I'm posting here today because I would like people's input on what I should do with the Galaxy S to optimize the experience. I'm partial to vanilla android, so my plan was to throw ICS on it and see how that went. Is that a good place to start? Should I opt for a custom ROM instead? Should I leave it at Gingerbread, as it is right now?

On that note, what apps should I get? What are the killer apps that makes your platform compelling? What pitfalls are there, and are there solutions? What can I do to give android the fairest shake on this device?

Thanks in advance for the input. I look forward to using a new platform and learning all about what it has to offer. I know a decent amount about Android, but I've never been a consistent user, so I hope to learn a lot.