Which is better: an Android or a Windows phone?

Side story: 

I run Dexetra, which created Siri for Android (Iris (Dexetra Product) which has over 4 million users. We have larger cloud team compared to our smaller Android team. We develop Android Mobile first products (like iris and Friday). So I have been using Android since HTC Dream (G1) through all the Nexus devices. And I have grown with it. I find it pretty nifty and easy to use.

But recently I realized, for a layman it's really hard to understand (at first use). I did this interesting test with my room mate (who's using an old Symbian non-touch phone) and gave him a Windows Phone (Lumia 800). He could instantly get hold of it, and navigate through it. After a month of use, he actually got really attached to the phone. Then I gave him an Android phone, Samsung Galaxy Ace (and took back the Lumia). The very next day he told me

"I prefer my old Symbian phone over this Droid, as it was so hard to understand and navigate. It is shit".
I was literally shocked. I realized that Android has a huge learning curve  and requires getting used to. It is not very snappy as well, it jitters on regular use.
I did the same experiment with my sister. She was originally using the Galaxy Ace (for around an year). So I bought her a (low end) Lumia 510. Again she loved the OS, and the behavior. She said

"On Android, I have to learn where I can find each setting, in Windows Phone it is where I would expect it to be"


But later on she was kind of bored with the lack of app selection. As an Android user, she was used to getting a lot of apps, and tinkering with the phone to free up space and installing new apps, uninstalling old ones etc. But with Windows, the experience was very smooth and refined, but without a truck load of apps. How to unroot your Kingroot rooted android device

To even it up though, there were unlimited music downloads with Nokia Music, which came free with the phone.

In short

An Android person would be surprised to find the smoothness of Windows Phone and the way the features are placed, but maybe disappointed at the app choices.

But a guy new to smartphones would pick Windows Phone over Android, if he tries both of them.

Side story: In the end my room mate went and bought a Nokia Lumia 800 for himself, after trying out various other options ranging from iPhone to Galaxy S3. And he is in love with the device! by Narayan Babu

Bench mark  performance for Android  phone

If you want to check the performance giving same hardware, then still you need some benchmark for performance. how to make an android Long lasting battery for your smartphone

Since I know what you mean by better, I'll answer your question which is only asking for a comparison point-wise.

1. Apps - Android OS wins this. It's more mature and have a very good app eco-system. It has one of the biggest collection of apps. Apart from that any new update/new app will be sure to arrive at Android phones before any other OS except iOS. Although many popular apps are already in WP8, but still you will miss free apps by Indie developers. They could be malware though.
2. Security - This point belongs to WP8 alone. Android apps are known to have a lot of malwares and permission misuse. The plus point about WP8 is all the apps are tested with TCR level tests(TCR is the list of technical test every game have to pass before listing in XBox store). And believe me they are not very easy to pass. The company where I work, has a gaming QA department and I know how many games get failed by just having a loading screen of more than 15 seconds(one of TCR test).
3. Another strong point is all the apps have a very strict permission criteria. For example, apps can't access videos folder and can't create new folder or access files from any folder. While in Android the apps have full freedom to load or save a virus or delete your precious data (although they need to ask for permissions in start, but who looks at permissions)
4. Quality - Due to the rigorous testing of Microsoft, apps have higher quality than any Android phone. To submit app on Play store, you just have to hit publish and the app will be live within 2 hours. While it'll take 5 days of testing from Microsoft to get app live in WP8. Google uses scripts to clean the malwares from the store and sometimes does it manually too.
5. Performance - I've seen Android devices freezing and hanging, apps crashing and many other issues more frequently than Windows devices. This might be just me, but my Nokia Lumia rarely freezes, while my Sony Xperia and Galaxy S4 freezes quite often. Only Nexus devices works brilliantly, due to no bloatwares I believe. I've heard good performance from Moto-X and Moto-G too.
6. And this has nothing to do with hardware, S4 has better hardware than Galaxy Nexus, still I'd choose Nexus everytime. Lumia works smooth as butter every single time, except on few instances. I havn't checked Android Kitkat yet, but due to the new ART compiling, it should perform better.
7. Fragmentation - Android is fragmented and the you don't know when your device will receive its last OS update and then abandoned for future releases. Although you can root to cynagenmod versions. Microsoft have abandoned Windows Phone 7 in past, but ensuring updates to all WP8 devices. In fact the updates are faster than Any Android update (Not as fast as iOS updates though). You normally get WP8 update within 2 months of announcement.
8. Freedom - Android wins this and that's why it's still my favorite. You get a lot of freedom in Android, but it might not matter to you if you're not a developer or a tech geek. Windows is too restrictive, because of high security. But I'd choose freedom over security every time, since I am an aware user and always checks permissions and even scan the outgoing data, using packet sniffers to check if the app is sending confidential data in plain text. Although just having a good antivirus like avast would be enough. But still for an average user, it's troublesome. AND you can always root your device to get latest OS update and to get superadmin access over your phone.
9. Hardware Utilization - That point might not be acceptable by many of you, but I believe that if you run Android OS and Windows on same hardware, Windows will perform better. I've only used Nokia devices in WP8 so I might not be 100% correct here, since Nokia is known to have better phones. I've a Nokia Lumia 820 and the picture quality of its camera gives any Android device's camera a run for its money. I use this phone, just because of it's camera. 

I generally look for above point while choosing a phone, that's why I've ignored many other points too. I might be biased towards Windows, because I am currently using a WP8 phone as a personal phone, using Android phones just for testing. But everything I've said here is from experience I have got. by Abhishek Jain

Conclusion: Neither is better in an absolute sense. It really just depends on what you need as a user.