Comment by hedora

Oddly, Windows Phone 8 had the best user experience of any phone I've ever used, by far.

I'd still be on it if it existed and wasn't laden with Windows 10 style telemetry. I don't care about having a wide selection of apps. I care about having a low-distraction, well organized UI that's optimized for specific tasks.

For instance, opening an entry in the address book produced a cross-social-network feed of everything they sent you recently (including call logs, email, SMS, twitter, etc...).

That was fantastic, but prepared to have your mind blown: Typing an address into the navigation app and hitting enter (or tapping on a destination) immediately started navigating.

8.1 was strictly a UI regression. I heard 8.5 was even worse.