[empire29]

In this day and age it seems like the phone's ecosystem is even a stronger driving force than the quality of the phone itself. While the Lumia 8xx and 9xx are very nice devices (and I even think Win Phone 7/8 is a very nice OS), I wouldn't purchase a Lumia solely on what I perceived to be a young and unproven ecosystem around the OS.

All I hear is Win Phone 7/8 (3rd party) apps are limited in variety and and quality. Its a very hard sell when iOS and Android have such an expansive catalog of (quality) apps.

Phones these days are about the software -- good HW is table stakes.

[MBCook]

That's where I think I'd be. Even if you ignore my investment in iOS apps over the last few years, I'd much rather go with Android because I know the platform is alive.

One of the other developers I work with bought a Windows 7.5 phone (used). He actually really likes the interface and says it works quite well. But he's looking to buy a used iPhone to replace it because there are so few apps available. That was the same thing that drove both my siblings off their Palm Pres - the app store was empty, with the exception of a few "demo" apps like Connect-4. Windows Phone 7.5 is doing much better than that, but it's a dead phone anyway with Windows Phone 8 coming out in the next month or so.