Galaxy Nexus wins Microsoft's 'Smoked by a Windows Phone' Challenge

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Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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http://www.droid-life.com/2012/03/2...ge-microsoft-store-refuses-to-acknowledge-it/

What was his test? Once he got to the front of the line of people taking the challenge, he was asked to power down his phone and then back up again to kill off background tasks. Then the task itself was for him to display weather on his phone from 2 different cities faster than the Windows Phone. Since he had disabled his lockscreen and had two widgets on his home screen showing weather in 2 different cities, all it took was the press of a button and he was done. The Windows Phone user on the other hand had to swipe away a lock screen, causing her to be a split second later than our friend with the Nexus.
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At first MS didn't want to pay out the prize, but they announced via Twitter that he'd be getting the $1000 laptop.

Can't say I'm surprised though, WP7's single digit market share speaks pretty loudly. :p
 
Dulanic

Dulanic

Diamond Member
Oct 27, 2000
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The idea behind the test was beyond dumb lol "Display weather from 2 cities fastest"...
 
NikolaeVarius

NikolaeVarius

Lifer
Oct 25, 2006
11,036
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Dulanic said:
The idea behind the test was beyond dumb lol "Display weather from 2 cities fastest"...
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They need to make it something that people wouldn't "normally" do so that the preconfigured Windows phone can obviously be faster most of the time.
 
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TheStu

Moderator<br>Mobile Devices & Gadgets
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Sep 15, 2004
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Though a lot of the tests are obviously ones that WP7 would excel at, a fair number of them are thing that ordinary people would do. At CES they had a booth setup, and one of the tests was, take a picture, tag it, and upload it to facebook. Well all that is integrated into the camera app on WP7. And there were other things as well, features that are baked into the OS. They aren't going to get up there and have a contest to see who can launch angry birds the fastest or something like that.
 
tdawg

tdawg

Platinum Member
May 18, 2001
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Bateluer said:
The story is that they lost. :p

Edit - Laptop is probably decent, but nobody wants a WP7 device to begin with. Guess he can pawn it off on CL or something though.
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WP7 lost because the guy basically won the lottery by having his phone configured perfectly for the test. What are the odds that he has two weather widgets on his home screen and that was the exact challenge?
 
NikolaeVarius

NikolaeVarius

Lifer
Oct 25, 2006
11,036
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tdawg said:
WP7 lost because the guy basically won the lottery by having his phone configured perfectly for the test. What are the odds that he has two weather widgets on his home screen and that was the exact challenge?
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Of course, the idea was that the Wp7 was configured for that exact same test but STILL lost.
 
Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
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tdawg said:
WP7 lost because the guy basically won the lottery by having his phone configured perfectly for the test. What are the odds that he has two weather widgets on his home screen and that was the exact challenge?
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Shrug, I have The Weather Channel app set up with three locations, my house, my parents house, and the zip code of my next travel race. Setting up multiple weather locations is pretty common.


NikolaeVarius said:
Of course, the idea was that the Wp7 was configured for that exact same test but STILL lost.
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Yep, which is what I've said a couple times now. :)
 
T

TheStu

Moderator<br>Mobile Devices & Gadgets
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Sep 15, 2004
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NikolaeVarius said:
Of course, the idea was that the Wp7 was configured for that exact same test but STILL lost.
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It would have been a tie, but the GNex user had disabled his lock screen. So as soon as he turned on the screen, the widgets were in view with the weather. If he had had to unlock his screen first, it would have almost certainly been a tie (if the WP7 weather tiles were in the top 8).
 
A

_Aurel_

Member
Jan 10, 2011
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TheStu said:
It would have been a tie, but the GNex user had disabled his lock screen. So as soon as he turned on the screen, the widgets were in view with the weather. If he had had to unlock his screen first, it would have almost certainly been a tie (if the WP7 weather tiles were in the top 8).
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So what? Disabling the lock screen is a baked-in feature of ICS. A lot of people don't like having a Lock-screen on a smartphone because it's display type already ensures that you won't have to worry about any interaction inside your pocket unless you somehow fumbled the power button.
 
Red Storm

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
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_Aurel_ said:
So what? Disabling the lock screen is a baked-in feature of ICS. A lot of people don't like having a Lock-screen on a smartphone because it's display type already ensures that you won't have to worry about any interaction inside your pocket unless you somehow fumbled the power button.
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Yeah I'm not sure I get that argument either. That's basically saying the Nexus won because the guy took advantage of built in Android features.
 
P

Puddle Jumper

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Nov 4, 2009
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TheStu said:
Though a lot of the tests are obviously ones that WP7 would excel at, a fair number of them are thing that ordinary people would do. At CES they had a booth setup, and one of the tests was, take a picture, tag it, and upload it to facebook. Well all that is integrated into the camera app on WP7. And there were other things as well, features that are baked into the OS. They aren't going to get up there and have a contest to see who can launch angry birds the fastest or something like that.
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This is a perfect example of why Microsoft is losing. They act like being able to post a photo to Facebook is a revolutionary feature when Android has been able to do that since day one. Additionally Android's sharing ability is dependent on Google manually building new services into the apps, any developer can choose to add their app to the list of possibles sharing methods.

Here is the share via menu on my Galaxy S2. Before anyone complains that "social networking service x" is not on the list it's probably because I don't use it and therefore don't have the app installed.

CCsfC.png


I think it's extremely funny that Windows Phone 7 couldn't even win in a scenario were it was given every possible advantage.
 
Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
8
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Puddle Jumper said:
This is a perfect example of why Microsoft is losing. They act like being able to post a photo to Facebook is a revolutionary feature when Android has been able to do that since day one. Additionally Android's sharing ability is dependent on Google manually building new services into the apps, any developer can choose to add their app to the list of possibles sharing methods.

Here is the share via menu on my Galaxy S2. Before anyone complains that "social networking service x" is not on the list it's probably because I don't use it and therefore don't have the app installed.

CCsfC.png


I think it's extremely funny that Windows Phone 7 couldn't even win in a scenario were it was given every possible advantage.
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No Twitter client? The hell? ;)
 
TuxDave

TuxDave

Lifer
Oct 8, 2002
10,571
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They've done this challenge for a while (although it used to jus be $100 on the spot). Of course the employee and phone were setup to excel at specific tasks so that they wouldn't be giving money away left and right. It just looks like the winner of this challenge took some time to do some research and setup his phone to excel in those same tests. It's a fun challenge but it doesn't really prove much.

But at CES, a small handful of phones won (sometimes it was due to LTE, sometimes the user was just faster).

&#8226;Phones we beat: A few each of iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, Galaxy Nexus, ATT Skyrocket, Droid Charge, Droid Bionic, various BlackBerries, Palm Pre Plus.
&#8226;Phones that beat us: iPhone 4s (posted a picture to twitter just a hair faster), Droid Bionic (got an SMS to a friend a smidge faster than I did), and Galaxy Nexus (also posting a photo to Twitter)
 
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Zaap

Zaap

Diamond Member
Jun 12, 2008
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Microsoft and their cheap stunts. It amazes me the culture of hopeless lameness that comes out of that company.

A 'challenge' like this is completely meaningless if one of the participants also makes up the terms. The ony way it'd have any meaning is a third party issuing random challenges to the two sides and really gaging which performs better.

But then MS in their nearly infinite capacity for total lameness clearly thinks people are too stupid to figure out something so obvious, hence why they think cheap stupid stunts are an effective way to sell their thirdrate mobile OS.

In a world where everyone really was as lame as MS executives think they are, the Kin would be a huge success, Windows Phone would be #1, and everyone would be planning their Windows 8 parties.
 
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T_Yamamoto

T_Yamamoto

Lifer
Jul 6, 2011
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this isnt much of a challenge. reading the reddit thread, i feel like they are throttling all the clients at the store.

ms and their crappy phones
 
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soulcougher73

Lifer
Nov 29, 2006
15,727
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Widget Locker lets you put widgets on your lock screen. That is what i use. I could put 2 weather widgets there if i wanted. No need to unlock the phone to get weather updates.
 
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MrX8503

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2005
4,529
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After reading the challenge, it was kinda lame.

Both phones had the weather preset. The challenge should have been setting up the weather from bone stock.
 
L

lothar

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Jan 5, 2000
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