If the tech business were fair, you would be considering the Nokia Icon for your next smartphone.

The Icon, which goes on sale this week for $199 with a two-year Verizon contract, has a lot to like: a graceful design, a brilliant display, a remarkable camera and an innovative set of microphones to make better-sounding home videos. The Icon runs Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, which has a cleaner and more coherent user interface than Google’s Android, and a more flexible and more informative home screen than Apple’s iOS.

But the tech business isn’t fair.

While the Icon is nice, you should not make it your next phone if you expect to be able to do everything with your phone that you can do on Android or iOS. Like any Windows Phone, the Icon is a fundamentally hobbled device, all but locked out of the teeming ecosystem of new apps and smartphone-powered gadgets that are expanding tech’s frontiers.

While this disadvantage might not be apparent in your day-to-day use of the Icon — you’ll have no problem making calls and sending texts — the phone’s shortcomings will haunt you whenever you want to try the next great thing.

If you want to use your phone to play the latest games, to experiment with new social-networking apps, to try the newest ways to pay for merchandise or to control the newest smartphone-connected devices (say, a smart thermostat), Windows Phone isn’t for you, at least not now. If you do choose a Windows Phone, go into it with your eyes open to the fact that you are most likely volunteering for a second-class digital existence.