Galaxy Nexus smokes Windows Phone, Microsoft backpedals
In their quest for smartphone relevancy Microsoft has resorted to one-upping the competition through the presumptuously-titled “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge. And while most would find it hard to name more than a handful of reasons why the latest Windows Phone release “smokes” the competition, the reality is that no one has bested Microsoft’s platform in a series of head-to-head challenges that aim to prove Windows Phone is faster than the rest when it comes to things like taking pictures and checking the weather. According to Microsoft, the OS remains unbeaten, but that’s not the story being told by one Galaxy Nexus owner.
Yes, the Galaxy Nexus “smoked” Windows Phone, and here’s how. Sahas Katta took his Android 4.0 smartphone down to a local Microsoft store where he was challenged to show the weather for two different cities faster than an employee of the store could do the same with a Windows Phone. The employee already had two tiles pinned to their homescreen for finding weather in two different locations, but Katta was himself not unprepared. In advance he disabled the phone’s lockscreen and placed two weather widgets pointed to different locales on the homescreen of the Galaxy Nexus. The Nexus easily won.
But the employees of the Microsoft store didn’t see things the same way. Reaching into their bag of excuses, Katta was told that in order to qualify as a winner he needed to show the weather for two different cities in two different states. Given advance notice there is no doubt Katta could have met this criteria, and he isn’t buying the bull that MS is throwing. He took to Twitter to voice his complaints and sure enough, Ben Rudoplh, the Microsoft man pushing the “Smoked by…” campaign, has apologized for how things were handled and offered a rematch. Katta’s response? “I would be happy to smoke a Windows Phone with Android, again.”
[via The Verge]