Dang, this is a nice deal. Does it have to be activated in order to just use it as a media and game player? Throw a 64gb microSD in there and you've got a hell of a portable media center.
MS clearly isn't against throwing money around in order to grab marketshare. Remember the good ol' eBay 30% Bing Cashback days?
you dont have to activate it to use it as a media player or download stuff from the app store. though as i've discovered windows phone 8 sucks for media at this point.
it comes with both nokia music and xbox live music. nokia music CANT FAST FORWARD or REWIND at all which is mind boggling. and xbox music , can only fast forward by holding down the "next track" button (so a lot like most a car stereos). there is no way to scrub tracks i.e. just seek to a given location. i.e. no seek bar. WTF? winamp had a seek bar nearly 20 years ago.
and if you think you can replace it with a 3rd party the app selection is pretty much horrible in the windows store in regards to alternatives. so yeah xbox live music sucks. and nokia music sucks even more. and the app store has apps in it, but they all appear to be god awful other than the few first tier apps in there (spotify and twitter for example are more or less like their android versions).
that said, it will play your video / music files without a line on the phone. just the player isn't exactly great.
best part of this phone by the way is nokia HERE maps / drive. you have to have a SIM card in it for it to work to validate your region (but you can put an unactivated one in, it comes with a t-mobile micro sim). but this feature alone probably is worth almost the entire price of the phone.
the GPS software allows offline downloads either state by state (california was 255mb) or entire country (2.5GB), so you dont need any data or wifi to use it. its got great point of interest, even has speed limit data, and can figure out what speed you are driving. it even starts beeping if you are speeding haha. pretty much destroys google maps and its very fast. probably a better GPS device than most sub $200 standalone gps products on the market. ive driven bmws and audis with $2000 nav systems that would get crapped on by this phone.
So yeah, its honestly a decent device just for use as a GPS , a mediocre at best media player, a pretty much terrible 5MP camera with no flash, and it can surf the internet and be a backup phone. for $70-80 great deal
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