I do miss Windows Phone. The animated tiles meant that a lot of the time you didn't need to switch to the app to get the info you needed (weather conditions, how the market is doing, etc.)
And it was fast I really dislike the pointless animations that iOS and Android go through - since the icons in Windows Phone were rectangles the few animations it did have were quick because they didn't have to worry about clipping arbitrary regions.
I think WP suffered from the problem (among many) that app statistics are based on people actually using them. If no one opens your app, you can't track if they're using it. So now it seems like no one is using your app on Windows Phone. Combine that with WP natively replicating the features of a lot of apps (you didn't need to install Twitter and Facebook because it was built into the People app that shipped with the phone), and it paints a picture of lower user engagement on WP.
There's a perverse incentive on other platforms for app makers to send you notifications that require you to open the app to view. It increases user engagement numbers, because no one really knows how to measure user engagement properly.
I had a Lumia 920 for years. More than being fast, it felt fast. The animations were placed to make all the load times consistent. When you get used to a specific timing, the device always feels right.
And it was fast I really dislike the pointless animations that iOS and Android go through - since the icons in Windows Phone were rectangles the few animations it did have were quick because they didn't have to worry about clipping arbitrary regions.