Honestly IE on WP8 is a great experience so I haven't felt the need to look but no, all browsers use IE on the phone.
And for me the key feature is everything just works. Theres no need or feeling that I need to flash a rom (which I felt I has to do endlessly on Android). The integration with the ecosystem is nice, sure it's missing some core features iOS and Android have after years of beating MS to the market but hopefully it'll show up.
The major thing its missing is device integration, my fitbit not syncing saddens me everyday and theres not much I can do about it.
Live tiles, arranging my start screen to show exactly what I want without having to open any apps, I think is the single biggest feature that I love about WP. I also love the text prediction and correction when typing. I haven't seen any other mobile OS do it as well.
Android and iOS are pretty much one and the same for me. They do similar things and they come stock with a very similar UI. I'm not big on the list of icons/folders and multiple pages setup.
Regarding ios7, I don't like the new text-as-button thing they have going. It's hard to find them sometimes. I also really dislike the difference in pre-ios7 apps and ios7 apps as far as UI goes. It's jarring to me. It'd be like having a windows XP window pop up in Windows 8, or an OS9 window pop up in OSX.
I am also not a fan of the all-caps ios keyboard. Windows Phone keyboard displays the characters exactly as they're about to appear, but in ios they are always capitals (just differently sized) and it makes for a good bit of errors for me. I still have an ipad with ios7, so I interact with it second-most of all mobile operating systems.
Do you think an alternative launcher for Android that featured a similar approach to live tiles would capture that advantage? As opposed to all the Newton/Palm style launchers out there.
I suppose they could, but every good launcher I had on android wanted donations or an up-front + theme fee. The best android devices are really expensive, whereas you can get a brand new windows phone for wicked cheap (mine was $50 when I got it, my wife's was free).
I remember the first WIMP computer I had (well my dad had) an A5000, with 4mb of RAM (this had to be soldered on, and was considered wantantly excessive). If I wanted 256 colours, resolution would suffer as it lacked VRAM.
Windows 98 had gradient title bars, I this was a big deal. I remember being impressed by how smooth it looked. I wasn't completely used to high resolution, high colour systems.
Metro shuns this, information is put above anything else, the fact that I only want to see my mobile signal if I've a problem by default, it is hidden unless I have none.
It doesn't take long before this really starts to make sense. I'm tired, I don't want to be bamboozled by information, I want important stuff put up above anything else.
It's exactly the same reason Web Browsers have 'hidden' away the lesser used functions. I type this on a desktop with 2 * 30" of screen real estate, yet I still want my browser to hide the file menu, have no favourites bar, not waste space for the tabs and the title bar. You get where I'm going with this.
I also have a few Android devices, and a iPad, I find it almost tiring to use them in a way, I'm no longer impressed by having a 3d glass effect or similar, it just impedes my usability. I don't like skeuomorphic patterns, I'm an veteran user, I don't need familiarity, I want information presented as effortlessly as possible.
That said, I hate the lack of a notification timeline. I am genuinely saddened to see how Windows Phone team appears to have lost their release cycle momentum (three years ago major features came fast and frequent, now... not much).
Are there multiple web browser options?