It's like an Apple Store, but cooler. You people that live in other countries don't have them.

Ugh, Zunes. Even before because a Mac user, I had bad experiences with them. Ask Phe about hers sometime, and why she's a proud iPod (now iPhone) user instead.

Galaxy Nexus Smokes Windows Phone, Still Loses

For those of you unfamiliar with the "Smoked by Windows Phone" contest, Microsoft started this little competition at CES this year. The point of the contest is to pit your current smartphone against a Windows Phone to see which can perform a certain task faster. If you win the competition, you get $1,000. If you lose, you get the chance to trade in your device for a Windows Phone. Microsoft liked the challenge so much that they've now started running a modified version in some of their stores, with a custom laptop as the prize. It appears, though, that even if you "win" you are still declared the loser. At least, such was allegedly the case with blogger Sahas Katta, who gave a lengthy description of his account on his Skatter Tech blog last evening.

Keep in mind that we're only hearing one side of the story, but the account sounds pretty reasonable and well within accepted Microsoft practice. According to Katta, he heard about the Smoked by Windows Phone competition this weekend. Microsoft had the contest available in its Santa Clara Microsoft Store, and so Katta took his Galaxy Nexus to the store to put it head-to-head with WP7. After signing his release to allow his face to be used for marketing purposes, Katta stood in the line and waited for his shot. To prepare, he set his device's lockscreen option to none, so that it could be accessed that much quicker. Every second counts, after all. When he got up to the front, he had to power off his device, then boot it up in front of an employee to show that he had no apps pre-launched. The contest was then describe in these exact words:

"Bring up the weather of two different cities."

Katta's Nexus already had a weather widget on the homescreen that showed the weather for both San Jose, and Berkeley, CA. So when the contest began, he simply powered on his screen and declared, "Done!" a second later, the MS employee also declared success. In this instance, it seems like the Galaxy Nexus was the clear winner. But it was not to be. The Windows Phone user also had two live tiles on their homescreen that showed weather for two different cities in two different states. The second of difference came because of an option in Android that Windows Phone does not have. With Windows Phone, you can't bypass the lockscreen. That gave Katta just a tiny edge that should have won him the competition.

Instead, he was told he did not win, because he was supposed to show the weather in cities from two different states. Of course, the MS employee already had that option configured on his device prior to the start of the contest. However, at no point was Katta told that he needed to show cities in different states. Read the above quote again as a refresher. When he pressed for a reason, he was supposedly told that Windows Phone, "shows the weather right there." As that seemed a little unclear, he again pressed for a better answer and was told that Windows Phone won, "Just because."

It was at this point that a manager told him he had to show two cities in different states, and that "his phone couldn't do that."

Katta was a good sport about it, though, and held his sign that said, "My Android got smoked by Windows Phone". He says he left the store in distaste, but was happy that he had a chance to compete. He would be happy to smoke Windows Phone with his Android again in the future. Again, we only have one side of the story, but it seems very Microsoftesque. What we'd like to know is if any of you have taken the Smoked by Windows Phone competition. How did you fare? Do you think this is unfair advertising by MS to sell their ailing phone OS?

[via Skatter Tech]

Update:

Not an hour after this story was written, Ben Rudolph, a well known Windows Phone evangelist apologized for the way Katta was treated by the MS employees. On behalf of Microsoft, Ben is awarding Katta his laptop and a phone to smooth things over. No word, though on if they'll still post a picture of him holding that sign...