Here below is the letter I sent to AT&T. Man I sure hope someone there is listening.
Dear Mr. Bradley or Mr. de la Vega:
I do not know if you are the right folks to reach out to, and if not, could I ask you to forward this to the correct person at AT&T?
I want to take a moment and tell you that the Nokia Lumia 1520 was to be my next purchase as a follow-up to my Lumia 920. However, I am learning that the 1520 will be stripped of its built-in Qi charging and will have only 16gb of internal memory while the international version of the 1520 will have built-in Qi charging and 32gb of memory. If this is the case, I will not purchase this device. Additionally, there are folks at my company and in my family that are equally frustrated by this decision by AT&T to down-spec this phone. Finally, there are quite a few folks in the WPCentral forums who are equally upset with AT&T for potentially ruining this apex phone.
Let me explain my position on this matter. First, I know (or at least I have heard that) AT&T is officially backing the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) wireless charging standard and not the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) Qi standard, but the 1520 will not be available with A4WP and it is available internationally with Qi. I also know that some think that A4WP will eventually win due to its supposedly superior technology. But no Nokia currently supports A4WP that I am aware of. So AT&T has forced MS/Nokia to deliver a neutered phone only to AT&T with wireless charging contact points and are forcing customers who require wireless charging to install Qi wireless charging backs. I assume AT&T feels that should A4WP eventually win, customers with wireless charging backs will switch their backs to A4WP but the reality, at least from my point of view, is that Nokia will never go back to older models and develop these A4WP backs. I have no problem affording a charging back...that is not the issue. The issue is that with this back installed, there is no possibility to put the phone in a protective case such as Otterbox and almost everyone puts their expensive phones in cases designed to give full protection from drop breakage. The Qi back does not protect the screen in drops, nor does this Qi back offer any way to clip the phone to your belt. If the Qi back provided for these scenarios that would almost be acceptable though I understand that the Qi backs are finicky...but they do not. Second, I can say with absolute certainty as a long-time user of Windows Phone that it is not satisfactory to the power user who would be interested in upgrading to the 1520 that AT&T has downgraded the memory from 32gb to 16gb. I have nearly 16gb of software alone on my Lumia 920 and I can assure you that 16gb is not enough.
I would also like to share with you that I have tried for the last hour to migrate through the gauntlet of AT&T customer service folks to try to help prevent AT&T from executing on this terrible plan to neuter the Lumia 1520 and have been unable to get anyone to pass me on to a decision-maker on this matter. It is a bad situation when a company gets so large that it will not connect customers to decision-makers in some form or fashion. As a manager in my own company, I want to warn your management team that when decision-makers are not in tune with customers and there is no mechanism for a customer to voice their opinions to those decision-makers at least that I was able to root out, then the company is sure to drift astray of their customer's wishes.
So in the end, I urgently request that AT&T change its plans for the Lumia 1520 and offer the international version of the phone for sale to its customers provided it has the correct radio frequencies. If it is too late to change your order for the neutered version of the phone, then offer the international version for $50 more or whatever along side the neutered version. There is no need to strip built-in Qi charging from the phone to protect us from future developments in the A4WP versus Qi war...we customers are not concerned about this and want Qi built-in because if you think about it, there is no risk to us if A4WP wins. We still have our Qi chargers (in my own case, 4 of them) and Qi accessories will remain available in the foreseeable future.
I also want you to know that the reason I did not upgrade to the Lumia 1020 with its coveted camera is that the phone does not have Qi charging. I have Qi chargers at home, in the office, in my car and even on my motorcycle. It works well for me and wireless charging is a requirement for future phones. These things are power hungry and wireless charging goes a long way towards making it simple to avoid power issues.
Thanks for your attention, I hope you can correct this wrong, and best regards,
Derek P. Thomas
Lancaster, Ohio
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram