Microsoft Drops Price on Nokia's 41-Megapixel Phone 197
TechRadar reports today the first major public-facing move that Microsoft has made with its newly acquired Nokia devices business: "The headline-making Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone-cum-camera is now available for $100 less in the United States, potentially a sign that Microsoft is already ringing the changes at Nokia.
The Microsoft Store stateside is now selling the 41-megapixel Windows Phone 8 handset for $199 (around £127, AU$216) on a two-year contract, compared with Nokia's lofty $299 (around £191, AU$325) launch price.
The price is being matched by the AT&T network, but Microsoft is going one better (for a limited time) and chucking in the camera grip accessory for everyone who picks up the device.
Early indications are that the heavily-hyped Lumia 1020 hasn't been flying off the shelves, so perhaps this price cut can offer Microsoft a boost in the early stages of its Nokia stewardship."
They could give it for free (Score:3, Interesting)
After 3 iPhones, I switched to Windows Phone 8 (Score:2, Interesting)
The primary way it is better is that the screen is so much bigger. This is easy to dismiss, but it makes a ton of UI hacks done for the iPhone needless. For example, the fact that the address bar isn't on the screen all the time is a hack to compensate for the small screen. Then that leads to a need for the hack where you click the top of the screen in the browser to rapidly scroll to the top. Sometimes that's a nice feature, but only if your screen is so small that they can't always display the address bar unless you've scrolled all the way to the top. Sometimes it's the most annoying thing in the world - like when you've scrolled past 7 pages of information reading in the browser and then accidentally click the rapid scroll-up button. There is no rapid scroll-down button to undo that.
How about moving an icon from one screen to another on the iPhone? What a pain. I would always have to use the very tip of my finger and then try to move the icon all the way to the left or the right and then most of them it would re-shuffle my icons in all kinds of unintended and undesirable ways.
The integration to Skydrive is much better than iCloud as well. My Lumia 928 has 32 GB of storage but with SkyDrive I get an additional 125 GB (of which 25 GB was free). I can seamlessly access pictures, video and music right from it as long as I have a signal.
The Nokia maps are the best maps application I ever used. Much better than either Google Maps or Apple Maps. Speaking of signal - the maps application have online and offline capabilities. So if I have no signal whatsoever there is a local copy of map data on my phone so I can still get directions.
I could go on all day. But for every way that matters to me, the Lumia 928 is superior to every iPhone I've ever owned. iPhones just haven't improved significantly in the last several years. Sure there's Siri - who I once dictated the text message "OK I'll take a look" which got translated to "OK I'll fuck". I didn't find much use for that and my Lumia 928 has much better voice recognition.
Re:Dislike competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
> You want Windows Phone 8 to die so consumers have less choice?
I do want more choice in the phone space, but I don't trust or want it to be from Microsoft - or for that matter propriatary. Why do you want Microsoft to have more control of our digital lives? They have more than enough. Competition works best with a bunch of small players in a market.
So yes, I really just want an actually "open" system to actually be given a chance to shine*. (I'm currently holding on to my Palm Pre Plus which still rocks, but is slowly dieing). I'm currently thinking about getting a Firefox OS device [2], but the specs are SOOO bad compared to my Palm. If I could get it without a dataplan w/ AT&T, I would have already purchased it.
I think the new gen of open source phones that are coming have a better shot (in that the company will actually try*!). Firefox OS, Ubuntu Mobile, Jolla, Tizen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre [wikipedia.org]
[2] http://www.ebay.com/itm/271258990669 [ebay.com]
* Nokia gave open systems 1 release after saying it was a dead platform and then switched to Windows phone. HP gave up on their TouchPads after 2 months of sales.
Re:After 3 iPhones, I switched to Windows Phone 8 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Price Drop? More like Rice Crop. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Your loss (Score:2, Interesting)
Its the best mobile OS on the market right now.
Even if what you say is true, at this point Windows Phone 8 is still likely to join the ranks of technologies like Betamax and BeOS: "Better" solutions that just never gained critical mass.