How To Beat Windows Phone Challenges?

Feb 19, 2001
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I think it's time for this forum of geeks to rise up and smack down the MS bull. The original Windows Phone challenge by Ben the Windows guy at CES was pretty cool. He gave the people tasks and they were allowed to practice and what not, but the crap they do at the MS stores now are just BS. Pure BS. Anyone wanna help brainstorm how to beat this?

Here are the tasks:

(1) Pocket-to-Picture-to-Post,

- This I would need help. I still just snap a photo with android camera and hit Share and select FB for example. That then loads FB and you then post. Very slow overall. Especially with the number of apps I have, that list is huge and I have to scroll to find Facebook or Twitter. Google+, Dropbox, Box, Gmail, etc are all the list. It's kinda bloated. It'd probably be good to downsize your pictures to minimze any processing work your phone even has to do...

Further research shows this might be viable: http://tasker.wikidot.com/automatically-take-and-email-your-photo

Edit: I tried this later and unless you resize your photos, my SGS2 takes 2mb photos. There's a solid delay for upload (issue if they throttle you), and theres a delay between the time your email is transformed into a Facebook post. The whole thing takes almost a minute. It'd be faster to do it manually through the gallery as it sends a lower res compressed photo.

Edit 2: That way is stupid. Just install Tweetdeck, install the widget to your homescreen, there's a photo button. Turn off AF on your camera, and set it to lowest resolution. The snap will be almost instantaneous, hit ok, and it takes you to the share screen with a yfrog link already. Just hit ok. Done.

(2) Real-Time Information with Live Tiles,
(3) Using the People Hub to Stay in Touch with the People You Care About Most,

- Probably the hardest one to beat. WP7 opens People or Social or whatever that crap is and you're done. It loads their best friensd and all the stuff about them. I'm sure they wouldn't count my Android Pro Widgets that acts like the HTC People widget which lists my favorites in a tiled icon format as auto winning.

(4) Updating Your Status Across Multiple Social Networks

- Android Pro Widgets should have this covered pretty well. If you have the widget on desktop and hit the Post button, you can select both FB and Twitter. Would be more challenging if they made you do other stupid networks like Linked In or whatever Ben made them do at CES.

They only make people do Facebook at my store because it's enough work to get people to install Facebook. I don't think they would bother with twitter also.

Tweetdeck is another fast way to post.

(5) Local Scout ("Challenge").

They had some people look up movie times at a local theater. Saw the WP guy use Flixster, so I just downloaded it, added a few local theaters in the favorites. I think this one is interesting because if you use a high memory device (say like my SGS2), then it could stay in cache in the background giving you a nice advantage. I'm almost certain the WP guys have Flixster pinned to their live tiles which means you need all the help you can get.

Other possible ways are to bookmark movie showtime searches on the browser. Should be faster to load the browser than these bloatware apps.
 
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Puddle Jumper

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Nov 4, 2009
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1) You can use Tasker to take a picture without even needing to open the camera app and I would think you could automate the share option as well although I haven't tried it. Make sure you are using the same connection they are since they have been known to have the challenger use a throttled wifi connection to give WP7 more of a chance.

3) is vague enough that they could probably try and get you on a technicality even if you do access whatever they want faster.
 
Feb 19, 2001
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As I was waiting for my turn at Valley Fair mall, I stood behidn the window and watched the contestants draw their cards.

I watched them count down and I didt heir tasks. For the flixster thing, I had the app open 5 minutes ago, and it was STILL cached! I have a shortcut on my desktop and it popped the app up and loaded the prevoius window with the showtimes for my local theater still open before the WP guy could even launch Flixster. I looked up and tried my best to pretend I was pressing buttons still and saw he loaded a showtimes page. I woudlt hen put my phone down. Ok, but this is watching from behind the window.

The other one where they were writing stuff to social networks I completely won. Just hit post on APW and bam.

Since I'm still at the M$ store I'm gonna play around with Tasker... LOL. And this is why its imperative to downsize to 640x480 photos. Save your camera and internet time. You know they don't even CHECK to see you're on their wifi. I think you could do it on 3G/4G (latency disadvantage, and I'm sure AT&T would find a way to screw me over at the wrong time, but at least I don't get throttled... I still feel safer on the "rigged wifi" though). They're trying to rush through so many people at this mall that they don't do any check on your phone. Now things could be different on a weekday though.

Edit Just did a speedtest (32mbps down) and the downloads are good but somehow I cant do the upload test AT all. Could be blocking something on their side.
 
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runawayprisoner

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Apr 2, 2008
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Wasn't there a way to disable the lock screen? That should take off a lot of time for you.

...Dang it, I'm so out of touch with Android. If you had a jailbroken iPhone 4S, I could have told you everything you needed to win every single one of those challenges...
 
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I'm on one of their randomass PCs and somehow I can't visit the Tasker site. It auto redirects me to their Windows Phone site. I was wondering if they're tampering with my IP specifically, but I can still browse AT Forums. Any other link on the Google Search works except the official tasker site... sigh.
 

runawayprisoner

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Apr 2, 2008
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Probably they realized the danger of Tasker and its potential to murder them at every single challenge.

And I think disabling animations (windows and such) would help somewhat as well.
 

Puddle Jumper

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Nov 4, 2009
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Probably they realized the danger of Tasker and its potential to murder them at every single challenge.

And I think disabling animations (windows and such) would help somewhat as well.

Yeah, Tasker was the first thing I thought of when the article about these challenges came out and I am sure someone would have tried using it on them by now.
 
Feb 19, 2001
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Ok. My turn up. I dressed up as a geek today. I wore my Android shirt and had my TouchPad arround for entertainment. The guy suspected me.

He made me reboot my phone. Luckily I drew the movie showtime challenge. I lost by a second or two at most. He said he was done, put down his phone and I put down my phone 2 seconds later. He looked over and was impressed but said I lost. Yeah I probably did barely.

Strategy: No Lockscreen, Flixster app on my desktop. If it was cached it would've been instant win. The fact that it had to load a fucking advertisement probably screwed me over.

But I saw at least 4-5 lose this challenge and they were still typing in a search query in their browser. Obviously not the way to go... LOL
 

zerogear

Diamond Member
Jun 4, 2000
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A Laptop, If you lose, you get a Windows Phone... I don't think you can really lose either way.
 
Feb 19, 2001
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A Laptop, If you lose, you get a Windows Phone... I don't think you can really lose either way.
except being first 100 in the Silicon Valley is hard. The Slickdeals thread shows people showing up close to opening time everywhere else and still being #50 or so. Meanwhile here if you show up 1 hour before, you're already 200+
 

runawayprisoner

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Apr 2, 2008
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Ok. My turn up. I dressed up as a geek today. I wore my Android shirt and had my TouchPad arround for entertainment. The guy suspected me.

He made me reboot my phone. Luckily I drew the movie showtime challenge. I lost by a second or two at most. He said he was done, put down his phone and I put down my phone 2 seconds later. He looked over and was impressed but said I lost. Yeah I probably did barely.

Strategy: No Lockscreen, Flixster app on my desktop. If it was cached it would've been instant win. The fact that it had to load a fucking advertisement probably screwed me over.

But I saw at least 4-5 lose this challenge and they were still typing in a search query in their browser. Obviously not the way to go... LOL

Aww, bad luck!

How long did it take him to do that approximately?

On a non-jailbroken iPhone 4S, it'd take me 8-9s to look for showtime of any movie, and 6s is the fastest I can muster on a jailbroken device.
 

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
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I want to do this challenge so I can swap out old MyTouch3G that's sitting in my drawer. I wonder how bad the lines are in Atlanta...
 

Puddle Jumper

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Nov 4, 2009
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If there was a Microsoft Store nearby I'd be tempted to pick up one of the cheap Palm Pixi's that are floating around and lose the challenge with it to get a Focus S as a backup phone.
 
Feb 19, 2001
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Aww, bad luck!

How long did it take him to do that approximately?

On a non-jailbroken iPhone 4S, it'd take me 8-9s to look for showtime of any movie, and 6s is the fastest I can muster on a jailbroken device.
I don't know. I was so nervous my hands were shaking.

The wifi on my phone is finnicky and is picky with routers and made me nervous. I knew this was gonna be the biggest hold up if they throttled me or my phone took a while to acquire IP address. After I rebooted my phone, Flixster took me back to the Theaters tab. I hesitated for a moment and because he wanted me to look for Hunger Games and not any local theater (the other guy was making people look at local theaters), I hit "My Movies" seeing the "Movie" word. However, I should've hit "Box Office" which shows you the top list of movies and Hunger Games is naturally #1. By the time I did he was already done.

Perhaps a better way is to just make browser shortcuts and put them on my desktop. 1 for Hunger Games, 1 for a local theater. LOL. Loading the Flixster app and hitting "Skip" for the stupid ad definitely slowed me down.
 

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
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Did you use the phone you wanted to trade-in or did you use your faster phone? Do they care?
 
Feb 19, 2001
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Did you use the phone you wanted to trade-in or did you use your faster phone? Do they care?
I got there at 10:30am (store opens at 11). I was #186. That's not the first 100 so I didn't bother.

I kinda stayed around hoping people would leave and then I thought about it for a while. If I had been in the first 100, I would've used my Motorola Milestone to flat out lose and get a new phone. However, after watching them do the challenges and seeing how utter bullshit it is, I decided that if I'm not eligible for a new phone anyway, I might as well play to win. So that's when I started preparing my SGS2.

But if you are in the first 100, they do ask which phone you used, and write it down. Sure it's a non tech person doing that, but they ask you while you are at the challenge booth, and I'm pretty sure if I said Motorola while my giant SGS2 is on the table, the MS challenge guy would be like "wtf." I have heard of people trying the challenge on a phone and trading in a different one on Slickdeals, but then again Slickdeals has the people with least ethics there who will do anything for a good deal :D There's 3 booths. First booth is the challenge station where you play some Microsoft version of the Apple Genius. Then there's a booth where they show you the phones you can pick from. The third booth is a bunch of guys checking your ID and taking down your name and stuff. I'm guessing thats where they record what phone you want too. Not sure if they really communicate down the line effectively and care in the end what phone you're trading so long as its a smartphone and meets the MS requirements.
 
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runawayprisoner

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Apr 2, 2008
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Moral of the story: ad is bad.

But sincerely, I do agree the challenge is a bit biased and bullshit. They do want to show Windows Phone 7 looking better than the competition after all.

Then again, if I find the urge in me, I'll go and try it out myself (closest Microsoft store is in San Jose). Hunger Games showtime takes like... 3 seconds to query on a lockscreen-disabled 4S. There is no way a stock WinPhone 7 device can beat that.
 
Feb 19, 2001
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Moral of the story: ad is bad.

But sincerely, I do agree the challenge is a bit biased and bullshit. They do want to show Windows Phone 7 looking better than the competition after all.

Then again, if I find the urge in me, I'll go and try it out myself (closest Microsoft store is in San Jose). Hunger Games showtime takes like... 3 seconds to query on a lockscreen-disabled 4S. There is no way a stock WinPhone 7 device can beat that.
Well that's my store, so if you happen to go tomorrow morning, I'd like to see you take them on :D
 

runawayprisoner

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Apr 2, 2008
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Well, I can't go anywhere until Friday, and that's April 6. Looks like I'll miss out. :(

Also using a jailbroken device just to smoke them seems a bit much to me now that I think about it. I shouldn't have to resort to that to get at them.

As a developer, I could also write one app (and deploy it on my personal phone, bypassing the App Store) to do all of the above challenges within... 2-3 seconds. That's another route I'm thinking of, but it's still overkill.

Maybe it's best that I don't do anything.
 

Puddle Jumper

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Nov 4, 2009
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As a developer, I could also write one app (and deploy it on my personal phone, bypassing the App Store) to do all of the above challenges within... 2-3 seconds. That's another route I'm thinking of, but it's still overkill.

I had thought about that possibility as well.
 

runawayprisoner

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Apr 2, 2008
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I had thought about that possibility as well.

It's not really worth the effort for a $1000 laptop or for bragging rights, though I suspect it could be done.

In fact, it wouldn't even take an app. Just a website that preloads all of that information from somewhere, and then all you have to do is tap a shortcut...
 
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whats funny is the guy asked if i had any sort of lock or passcode on my phone. i asked if he wanted me to turn it on because I already knew he suspected me to be a gadget geek, and he already figured that I turned mine off, but his response was

"no you should actually turn it off because it'll slow you down in this challenge."
 

Deeko

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
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But sincerely, I do agree the challenge is a bit biased and bullshit. They do want to show Windows Phone 7 looking better than the competition after all.

I don't really see how its bullshit. Every marketing campaign highlight's the product's strong points. They aren't going to have a promotion like this and then have the challenge be something they'll lose, like run a benchmark.