So after about a year experiment with the Windows ecosystem (Windows Phone, Surface) I’m moving back to Android for my phone. Not because Android is better (it’s not) and not because I don’t love Windows (I do), but because I’m suffering from app withdrawal.

Let me elaborate. The Windows ecosystem is definitely getting to the right place. Despite the nay-sayers over Windows 8 (and let’s be honest, it is a jarring interface change) the resultant interface once you learn it is pretty similar to most tablets with the added advantage of being a business computer. The only business computer. Sorry, an iPad just doesn’t do what 90% of us business people do — write email, read email, create power points, create spreadsheets and word docs — well. Close but no cigar.

If you need Office; Word, Excel, Outlook then any of the competing tablets just don’t stack up. Period. You’ll end up with a laptop + an iPad, or a home computer AND office computer AND Android Tab. The Surface is the first computer (and there are many — and probably better — similar Win 8 tablets) that let you use the same device for home, work AND play.

So what does this have to do with my Windows Phone? For the same reason that I like my Windows Phone — integration with Microsoft Products, back end storage and one of the cleanest phone interfaces that is both active and fun, as well as a stable it-just-works-out-of-the-box (my new Android had an app that kept crashing every few hours, and this was brand new!) I also don’t like it; e.g. it’s platform that’s new and that apps just aren’t available for yet.

Sure, you can find knock-offs; instead of Sonos there was Phonos, instead of Hue there was Litewave, but in the end the apps that are written for iJobsMachine or Android are more refined, more plentiful and more capable. They’re the standard that everyone else is measured against. And Windows just doesn’t measure up…. yet.

So when the Note 3 came out — with the accompanying watch — I jumped on board and left my Windows Phone sitting in the dust. Sadly as I really did like the interface, the heft of the Nokia, the built in wireless charging, the smoothly integrated crystal clear bluetooth and all of the other bells and whistles that Microsoft forces out of a hardware manufacturer. And even though I have a super bright responsive huge screen phone, I look at the just released Nokia 1520 Windows phone with sadness and yes, a little bit of envy.

That being said, since I’m a box.com user my back-end isn’t really Windows specific and since I have no intention of ever writing a Word Doc or Power Point on my phone I’m not married to the Windows ecosystem in the phone space (I can still OPEN all of these docs, and that’s good enough for me).

My mail works just as well, and I finally have a real calendar (hello Microsoft, why can’t you have a clean day/week/month calendar that’s actually USABLE on your phone — real miss, that).

So let’s check back in a year. Maybe I’ll be back in love again with Windows Phone.