Realized I never came back to this thread as I was doing some traveling over the weekend.
Had an absolutely EPIC experience at the Microsoft store in Boston on Saturday morning. I went straight for the 521 when I got there and was immediately blown away by the quality of a device that is supposed to be low end. The screen was better than I was expecting, it felt really good in the hand and was as light as a feather.
A store rep came over to help me and gave me a bunch of info on Windows Phone in general and the 521 in particular. Now, the reality is I've already been doing my research on the phone anyway, but I like to test out reps when I'm in a physical retail store just to see if they know their stuff. In this case, my rep was very knowledgeable about the phone, both the pros and cons, and if I didn't have any previous knowledge about the phone, I feel like he would have been able to help me make a smart decision.
Once we got through all that, we got down to pricing. I asked for the retail price on the phone which produced the $149 mark. I asked if they were price matching the Wal-mart online listing, which produced an affirmative with no hesitation. Bang, down $20 right there. Quite frankly, I would have walked out of the store as happy as could be at that price, but then the rep asked if I had ever taken the Bing It On Challenge. Again, I've taken it several times online (with varying results), but I wanted to see where he was going with things, so said no. He said that they could knock another $25 off the price if I take it. BOOM. It took all of 2 minutes, and I end up walking out of the store with an impressive phone phone for about $110 (tax included).
The only disappointing part of the experience was that they couldn't get me hooked up with the $30 prepaid T-mobile plan, so I had to go bounding off to the T-mobile store to get that taken care of (awful experience on that end, but not much Microsoft/Nokia can do about that).
Actually had a chance to test out the camera yesterday, so I might load those in the appropriate thread later today. The phone itself flies in terms of performance. The apps situation was a lot better than expected given all the negativity around WP (Weave is a particular highlight for me so far; just wished they had official apps from the major sports leagues to make getting highlights easier). I also popped my micro SD in and, without formatting, everything showed up basically perfectly, which was great Saturday as the Wi-fi on Amtrak blows at times. The only real concern I have going forward is the low RAM, but I wouldn't let that deter folks thinking about purchasing the phone right now. WP itself has some annoying niggles that I've spotted, but they're hopefully things MS can correct in short order.
On a side note, what's the deal with this update coming from T-mobile for the Wi-fi calling? It's absolutely useless on the plan I have, so I don't really need/want it, but is it going to reset all my apps and stuff if I update? Also, I wasn't sure if I wanted to port my old phone number over to T-mobile until I had made sure the service would work for me (it's actually been solid so far, thankfully). I'm assuming I won't lose anything if I get another SIM and port my number over, correct?
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