Apple users always think that Apple invented everything, and that Apple has the best everything, which is usually not the case. Apple usually only invents words like "retina", etc.

Yes and no. What's new about Apple's implementation is that they briefly push the screen beyond maximum brightness. What you're saying was "copied" was actually copied by others from Apple, whose Photobooth application was flashing the screen since before smartphones were a thing.

My childhood friend has a Lumia 1020
Without the mentioned issues.
Also at the school someone had the Lumia 1020.
No complaints. ...
Maybe it's just a small unhappy percentage?

"In many cases I thought that will be better than my wife's iPhone, especially to native apps like outlook, word, excel and internet browsing but this is not true."

In what way is the iPhone better with native Windows apps?

Well the performance is better in the iPhone.
The Navigation and the apps are more mature and have more options and easier to work with. Maybe in a couple years will be better because they just seem to be unfinished but currently they are not better.

It's funny, but I have to think that if MS really (I mean *really*) wanted to take over the mobile market, they'd shake loose a hundred million or so and either bribe, buy, or bounty the top 2-5 apps in every single category on Android and iOS.

Sure, there are some stalwarts, but it seems that most developers would hire a dedicated developer just to port apps over for low- to mid- 6 figures, and to maintain the code for a developers salary.

Really, it's the apps that would keep me on Android or iOS at this point; once good hardware is ubiquitous it's all about the ecosystem.

@pwilly
iPhone and iPad changed the world.
Microsoft struggles to catch-up. They had a good chunk of the market with Windows & Windows CE. But they lost the mobile platform market. They had no competion but now there are more serious players like Apple, Google. There is a lot of catching up to do. All they are doing are changing and trying to hold on to their diminishing or segmented market.

Did MS take their eyes off the ball? Absolutely, their mobile strategy has been an epic fail. Can they come back? Only time will tell.
Merging the splendid NT6 kernel with mobile will help. Buying Nokia probably didn't.
With their head start, Apple and Google will continue to dominate the phone business for years.
The really big question is can they un-segment the market they segmented.

I don't see why buying Nokia wouldn't help. Nokia did have experience in making the best hardware out there, overall and most notably the cameras. The camera quality is central to smartphone users I believe, after all all you see in the streets is people taking photos with them. Now of course the people are also being hypnotized into thinking that they cannot survive without an app that switches off their heating from their phone, but that's hardly MS's fault.

@YiannisPP
It is very simple. There is usability and fun factor that other brands have and Microsoft does not. Is it Microsoft's fault? Sure is their fault. Apple did not have any phone in the market and they just made a revolution in this area. Part of their success is the Apps. Which is part of their marketing. It is very appealing when there are apps to make your life easier, fun and productive.

It is very simple indeed. You spoke like an Apple marketing executive. If you are not one, then their marketing has really been successful. My Nokia 820 is pretty darn usable, thank you. And definitely more fun than those boring Samsungs for example. I ain't saying that Apple didn't revolutionize this sector of course, but as I said, those famed apps which are now used as a weapon against MS, are not nearly as essential as you make them out to be. Sometimes I really do wonder how do I make it back home alive. How do I survive and how haven't I got depressed already, lacking those necessary and super fun apps and all...

And talking about making it back home alive, my 3-year old Nokia Windows phone has always been showing my the right way through its excellent offline navigation app, even 3 years ago when there was nothing comparable in other devices. But what would you know about it? You never tried it I'm sure. Even now that the rest have somewhat caught up, my GPS is always spot on while none of my friends who have iPhones and Galaxys really use them for that purpose. Now that's something useful, showing you the way when you're lost. Not being able to switch off the lights with my phone, not having chrome or FF, or an app to pay my card? Big deal, there are alternatives to all that, I go to Internet Explorer or Edge and just do everything from there.

Finally, my phone's yellow polycarbonate body is cracked on all four corners from the 20 times it has fallen off my hands or jacket pockets. That's because it was cheap and I don't treat it like a precious jewel, I just throw it around. The (bright and deep-blacks, intense colours) screen though still looks like new and looks better than all the other screens I see in devices of similar price range even today. But that's no problem, I can easily replace it with my more serious looking black version cover. Let me know what happens when you drop your iPhone and when you are able to replace the back cover or its battery. And when you can easily pass your photos to someone else's device that doesn't have itunes. And...OK, rant over.

@YannisPP
I have a Nokia 920. I am an all Microsoft user. My Nokia 920 fell down and the glass broke. The phone and display still works perfectly well. It is a well made device. It is very good. It is better than my wife's Note II. She recently aquired the iPhone 6 Plus. Up to a year ago, the navigation on my 920 was flawed. I always had to go to the Note II to find anything reliably. Currently the 920 is as good.
However, I have just borrowed the iPhone 6+ and it is a good phone. It has better sound, better network speed, more reliable, does not drop calls. It is just better. Of course is a newer device. Definetely the 920 is better than the Note II as device and the way it works.

You find apps useless but it is the apps that make the smartphones more usable and possibly more fun than just placing a call. Microsoft just does not have the apps. Are they important? Yes they are, apps provide a path to a complete user experience. I wish iPhone had live tiles.

You have been very unlucky if your glass broke. As I said mine has fallen countless times and nothing. As you yourself noted, comparing the iPhone 6+ with the 3 year old 920 is not right. I am not sure how your navigation was flawed, maybe not used properly somewhow? I stand by the general picture I painted about the merits of each brand's navigation quality over the last years. I'm driving all the time and sometimes I have to tell people to meet me somewhere where none of us have been before. I always get there, they frequently get lost. I am specifically talking about offline navigation.
Finally, I didn't say apps are useless, I am a developer myself (though not for smartphones). Their usefulness in improving one's life though is undoubtedly way inflated by the media and fanboys alike. Please give me a couple of apps that are missing from Windows and thus make it a no-no for you. I am curious.

And my 820 never drops calls on its own, I thought the 920 was more or less the same device with higher ppi screen and more memory... Do you mean that your 920 drops calls from time to time that you are sure the iPhone wouldn't? Because that would go against many reviews that put Nokia pure "telephoning" capabilities above Apple's....some iPhone models have been known to have reception issues over the years, not the case with Nokias at all.

Just the fact that drops calls or the quality is not as good is enough to buy the iPhone.

Sound quality is day and night. Is this a good enough reason to buy an iPhone?

It might be a 3 year old phone but it has 4G. Which was a good feature when it came out and one of the first to implement it. However, iPhone has 4G that works flawlesly.
Is this important absolutely you get Voiper on iPhone and works. It does not work on the 920. Is this important? Well it can save me a few hundrend £s a year and have freedom from land lines.

Have you tried to buy headphones for a windows phone? Most of them do not work even if they say that it works on windows phone. Is this microsoft's fault...no but...there are not readily headphones available. Is this enough to not buy a windows phone. Absolutely headphones are intricate part of the phone operation. Is this important well headphones with noise cancellation are very important and they exist for the iPhone everywhere.

Navigation is such a common app with very similar operation from one to another. How is it possible to be a user error using the navigation? Currently works much better but in the past did not!!!

If these agravations are not important in a phone selection then the criteria are very biased or not enough features are used.

I will try the 950XL but there are many reasons that is beyond Microsoft's capability to resolve them. They need to come up with a new device like Apple did with iPhone or all these other companies with the Android.

Headphones not working (never heard this before), calls dropping, OK, I give up, the 920 must be really bad and the iPhone really great...Your last paragraph says it all really, all those other companies coming up with "the Android", but it's beyond Microsoft's capability really...I get it now:)
By the way, is this your wife or kid thumbing up everything you write a min later?!

OK, I tried for a week. The OS itself works fine, but required a restart when new language was installed. OK, it's Window. The rest was looking fine, though notifications are on low side. You need to watch live tiles, but they all don't fit the screen, you need to scroll. it's OK.
Apps - that's the main thing. There almost no apps.
Banking support - minimal. Citi has only credit card support. There is no Chase, BofA, Barclays, etc. Amex app points you to a mobile website - sucks. Amex app on Android is excellent. Without the apps, how do you do mobile deposit for example?
Is there anything for NFC payments, like Android pay, Google Wallet, Samsung pay?
From two apps I use to track my bills (Mint Bills, Prism), Prism is available, but it's seriously outdated, dating back to 2014.

Online photos storage, sharing.
No google photos, no native flickr. There is some 3rd party Flickr app, but it sucks as hell. There is one drive, but there are only 2 options (hi res, and low res).

Low res option is really low, it lower than 5MP of my Nokia 1020. Hi res option is uploading original size (38MP), this gonna fill OneDrive pretty quickly. I'd like to upload Nokia's downsampled 5MP pictures. No such option.
Email. There is email app which supports Outlook, gmail, yahoo, etc. I tried it with exchange, yahoo and gmail. Exchange works fine, but yahoo and gmail really suck. Of course there is no native yahoo or gmail app.
I have 2 Samsung cameras with wifi/BT support and there are no apps for them. Samsung only supports Android/ios. There is no way to control those cameras from WP.
Travel apps (hotels, restaurants, airlines, travel agencies). There are some, but not many. Most of them point you to a mobile website, which is not always working well, and of course, you lose notifications.
The browser (IE) is better than Android browsers (Native, Chrome and FF), and it supports flash (not sure about silverlight), but it's not ideal. There is also Opera.

There is no Chrome or FF whatsoever.
I really struggled with uploading my photos to flickr. Picasa has some 3rd party app, and it was working somehow, also not ideal.
Online bill payments from any of the banks were not available. There was no app for my prepaid card (Serve), from where I pay many bills. I tried mobile site via IE. My bill was something like $50.56. I was only able to enter $50.5, but not $50.56. This was last drop, and I switched back to Android.
Lumia camera app was OK, but not of the same grade as Samsung camera app on my Galaxy K zoom, not even close. There are much less functionality than on Samsung, and also much less settings visible on the screen., for example no ISO displayed. To see what was the exposure after I took the shot, was also not available, but you can get it from EXIF later, not on the phone. No histogram, either.

Nokia has some pretty good hardware, but the smartphone part is killing it. I found the smartphone part to be unusable. I'd even call it a dumbphone. I was using Windows Mobile from 2006 to 2012. Not much changed since then. You need to go everywhere via a browser, which is better than on Android, but not as good as a native apps.

It s the apps stupid ;-). I ve tried a 930 for a week. I reeeeealy wanted it to work. It s not that the apps are not there, it is that they look awful and useability is like comparing ms dos to win7.

My advice, buy the cheapest win phone u can find. Try to replicate your experience disregarding sceeen size and speed. If u can live with it go spend. I made an expensive experiment with the 930. It tool me a week to decide to gp back to android and cost me 200 euros when i sold it used. Your experience might be different but lower your risk

Did i mention integration with the google ecosystem? Well it snot there... Try the youtube app in a win phone... :-(((

Lagdroid means that after a year or 6 months the phone starts to lag no matter how fast it is/was.
Not all phones get the Android 6.0 - fragmentation.
If you go Android one choise is Nexus with 3GB RAM.
Try to say OIS!

iPhone has OIS = Optical Image Stabilization, too!
Works wonders in low light and video.

Windows phone?
Absolutely Windows 10!
Get the bigger Lumia 950 XL. (Both have OIS)
Banking can be done via Browser.
Save the link as a Favorite and pin it on the Start Screen
Voilà! - Your banking app!
"But it's not the same! " - Right! It's better! :-)

The iPhone 6s is surprisingly water resistant despite the lack of advertising.

The only truly waterproof phone I know of is the Sony Xperia Zseries. It is also one of the best Android phones and has top notch cameras. Still, these cams in the new Windows phones appear amazing, and their camera apps are the best, bar none. I wish I could install the Windows/Nokia camera software on my Sony phone.

Thanks. Sorry, that is a typo. That was supposed to be "bigger than 1/2.3 sensors"

i dont think they will ever re-use this (very nice) sensor - together with the needed optics the phone needs to be very fat, and people don´t buy fat phones. sadly.

They might, as the rumor is LG plans to be going 1/2"(coincidently another sensor size Fuji used) for the LG G5.

What exactly did you not like about it?

I really would love Snapseed on Windows Phone. If there's something similar (and offers raw editing to boot) I'd like to hear about it.

Also, I couldn't stand the browsing experience in Windows Phone. Have they got rid of that weird font enlarging thing that was going on?

By next year Windows Mobile 10 will be able to run Android apps!
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8511439/microsoft-windows-10-android-ios-apps-bridges

You are welcome back then to try out the best mobile OS on the planet!