[General Topics] ericsting:
Correct i think the LG doesn't have either an SD or removable battery. And yes the biggest draw back to WP that i see is the marketplace. Although IMO with windows 8 supporting the same apps as WP8 i think that has potential to improve quickly but only time will tell. the only reason i want the removable battery is because i've found it necessary to remove the battery in order to restart the phone (happened quite a few times) my wife wants it because she finds the battery to loose power after about 1 year or so and it can't last the whole day anymore so she would like to replace it at some point. I guess the main thing is we stick to the 2 year contract cycle and my main concern was a getting a phone that would last the full 2 years. given that the GS3 will already be almost a year old by the time we get it that would make it almost 3 years old by the time we get our next phones. So the thought on my end was should we wait the extra few months to get the next GS. Or get something else with a quad core so in 2 years our phones wont seem so old.

I got the blackjack second hand and had it for about 2.5 years, when i got it i signed up for unlimited data. When i got married my wife got an iphone 3g and i added her to my plan but somehow worked out that i would still have unlimited data. Unfortunately i lost my phone and had to get another fast but it was around 2 years after i added my wife so we were able to get the focuses on contract buy one get one for $100. But i had to give up my unlimited data plan and get a 2gb plan. I'm kicking myself to this day for that if i could go back i'd keep the unlimited data and buy a phone off contract and keep that unlimited data forever after but i digress.

Personally i really like the WP UI and i think my wife does too but she really hates the marketplace and not having apps. And i'm not talking about angry birds or games i'm talking about our bank (has IOS or android) our thermostat the NEST (IOS or android) and several other major corporation type apps. Although for me paypal and etrade just added WP apps so that's good. But the thing about WP i don't like is certain personalization things some of which are coming in WP8. Also again with the apps they just don't utilize the features well, like weather for instance why isn't there a weather app that i can pin and have a live tile that updates based on my current location? If there is let me know because i haven't found one, when i travel for work to someplace different every week i have to open the weather app and change my location within the app so the live tile reflects where i currently am. When 7.5 came out they demoed i think it was a qunatas airways app that was awesome and utilized location services on the live tile and reminded you of your flights and if you weren't close enough to the airport when your flight was coming up it would warn you. None of the other airline apps do this and delta's (that's who i fly) app quite frankly sucks big time, takes forever to load and crashes a lot, i can't do everything i could do through the website etc etc. Skype is another one if WP8 can truely integrate skype with messaging and video/ voice chat that that would be a huge plus. But i think my wife already made her mind up on android and we both heavily use google apps on the PC such as docs/drive gmail G+ etc.

I guess i'll see what comes out as far as new android phones but if we were to get phones right now my wife would want the GS3 and i don't see any way to convince her on any of the other currently announced android phones. Then for me it would probably be a toss up between the GS3 so we could share stuff between them or possibly the nokia 920. The only concern i have with the nokia is if it crashes big time i can't pull the battery and reboot. But i love what i saw from the camera and the wireless induction charging.

As far as the SD goes i guess the need/want for that comes from my current phone only having 8gb and it's gotten to the point where i can't have any movies or music on it because with the apps i have installed i only have like 1gb free. I would like to be able to have a decent size collection of music on there and a few movies. And that also leads me towards android because of support for FLAC and few more movie codecs while with WP i have to convert the media before putting on the phone so right now i have 2 copies of a lot of my movies 1 original full quality and 1 in a lower quality converted format that will play on the phone.

EDIT: just realized that was my first post. First post long time reader ;) On on hand i guess that's a good thing right ? after all these years i've always searched and found exactly what i needed on the forums. Many thanks.