[Windows Phone 8 General] bruce142:
To end all discussion about the negative points of Windows Phone 8, I'm going to invalidate the issues some people (including me for some time) were having with the WP8 OS (WARNING SOME CRITICS ARE STILL IN EFFECT IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN INTEROP UNLOCKED ATIV S):

- No decent free YouTube App : Not anymore, the official YouTube app has been revived, download here

- No File Manager : Not anymore (interop unlocked phones only) : download here

- No MKV support : there are apps out there (mostly paid apps like YxPlayer WP8, Moliplayer Pro and Best Player) which do support MKV. You might argue that these apps are not free and so the critic is still in effect, but VLC for WP8 (see Kickstarter : news update 10, all the way down the article) is coming, so no your argument is invalid.

- Manufacturer exclusive apps : one word proxy

- no customization whatsoever 20 tile colors and one lockscreen picture : SamWP8 (interop unlocked phones only) of -W_O_L_F- allows custom tile colors and there are lockscreen apps which allow to display weather information on the lockscreen (free ones like Bing Weather and MoWeather HD (which I can't install in English, keeps on installing in Chinese) and also paid apps like Weather Flow, Amazing Weather HD and WeatherSense. You might argue that you can't have widgets on your lockscreen like in Android : Lockmix, your argument is invalid.

- No Task manager : Close button in multitask menu since GDR3

- No Live Tile clock because of refresh frequency limitations by Microsoft : Sideloading TimeMe works perfectly, updates each minute (store version updates each 40 minutes).

- Windows Phone 8 SDK only for Windows 8 : Not anymore, Tutorial: Install Windows Phone 8 SDK on Windows 7 the Easy Way by compu829

- Lack of official apps, mostly web links (eg YouTube) : Vine has been released, Instagram will probably follow (it's from the same company), Facebook beta is becoming pretty decent, Twitter has an official app, YouTube has been revived (see first point), Foursquare has an official app and there are pretty decent free third party apps out there for apps who don't have an official version yet (like 9gag, instagram and others, most great apps were made by Rudy Huyn)

There are some critics which I admit are bothering even me and I can't invalidate them at the moment, these are :

- Windows Marketplace isn't as great as the other marketplaces (like Apple Store and Google Play), but it's growing (Rome wasn't build in a day, you know ;)) : many paid apps which should be free because they are too insignificant to ask money for (eg a Wallpaper app) but there are still some great store deals and even paid apps become free for a day (to keep you updated with these deals, install these three apps)

- Update rollout takes too long time to complete in some places, despite the name GDR (General Distribution Release). I still didn't received the GDR2 update here in Belgium/Western Europe (except for Germany and the UK) through the Phone Updates on my Ativ S itself, I had to flash it manually.

- No competition on hardware specs, all is specified by Microsoft. I hope the introduction of quad-core CPU's (like the Snapdragon 800 in the Lumia 1520) will bring change on this aspect.

- Even small adjustments (like turning captive buttons off and changing the phones language and/or region) requires a reboot, where on other OS's they don't.

- Keyboard language suggestions pack downloads itself in the Phone Updates, won't start automatic, requires reboot + requires migration of settings/data (takes about 15 minutes). On other OS's this is a simple download.

- Nokia has too big of a market share to attract other manufacturers, Nokia is also a privileged manufacturer (definitely after the Microsoft-Nokia deal took place) making fair competition almost impossible.

- Windows Phone and Microsoft have a problem recognizing minorities, Spotlight in Flanders (Dutch speaking part of Belgium) is French, how dare they :p.