Smoked by a Windows Phone

[Winterfang]

The host ask a person what do the do with their phone most of the time. Then he decides a challenge based on that, I don't see how that's fixed. If you send a lot of pictures to facebook in your iphone then you know exactly where to go fast so it's pretty even I say.

There was a controversial challenge against a person on a Galaxy S II, the challenge was posting a picture on Facebook I think. The Galaxy S II was faster according to the person but it gave him an upload error, he claimed that Windows Phone doesn't gave you an update error so it was declare the winner automatically so he complained on message boards etc...

The host accepted to re-do the challenge and reworked the rules a little to make it more fair, the Titan still beat his phone by about a second. He got smoked by Windows Phone.

 

[Pronk]

There were apparently only 10 things or so that were open to challenge, and all skewed to suit WP (as you'd absolutely expect). As for everyday things, how about this?

Toggle wifi on/off quickly
Toggle GPS on/off quickly
Set volume for calls to one level and volume for music to another
Set up a wifi hotspot to share connection
Cut and paste a picture from the web into an email
Reply all to multiple recipient tweets
Download a picture from image search

All everyday things that WP would be slower at or (in some cases) can't do at all or can only do if you have a suitable update. And that took all of a minute of thinking. Don't get me wrong - I'm not on some bash-a-thon here, I just have a real dislike of braggart marketing because it can be so easily short-circuited and fed back with interest (for example, I've been looking round the web and in various stories on this I've seen "hey, now make a skype call - aaaaaaaaah!" comments five times in five different places). There's enough tiresome "my phone is better than yours" from the fanboys of the world without the companies making the stuff getting in on it too!

 

[mkr10001]

There were apparently only 10 things or so that were open to challenge, and all skewed to suit WP (as you'd absolutely expect). As for everyday things, how about this?

Toggle wifi on/off quickly
Toggle GPS on/off quickly
Set volume for calls to one level and volume for music to another
Set up a wifi hotspot to share connection
Cut and paste a picture from the web into an email
Reply all to multiple recipient tweets
Download a picture from image search

All everyday things that WP would be slower at or (in some cases) can't do at all or can only do if you have a suitable update. And that took all of a minute of thinking. Don't get me wrong - I'm not on some bash-a-thon here, I just have a real dislike of braggart marketing because it can be so easily short-circuited and fed back with interest (for example, I've been looking round the web and in various stories on this I've seen "hey, now make a skype call - aaaaaaaaah!" comments five times in five different places). There's enough tiresome "my phone is better than yours" from the fanboys of the world without the companies making the stuff getting in on it too!

I don't see what's wrong with doing it that way though. Of course he's going to show off the 10 best things about WP and he will want to show them to people. Obviously there will be things an iphone or an android can do better and I'm sure if either of those two had done a smoked by an iphone/android then they would also have picked the top things the phone can do.

I can toggle wifi and gps off and on quickly from a lie tile. This setting the volume thing is weird I'll admit that but it's not really a task that you might do every day is it.....you don't sit there thinking "you know what I think I'll just change the volume of my music and my calls to two different volumes"?

Wifi hotspot...yeah ok

cut and paste a picture ....just tried...it takes seconds...literally about 2

i dont understand your tweet one :S

downloading the picture or are we counting searching for it first?

Those skype comments are ridiculous though and pathetic.

If you don't use skype ...why would you care that you can't make skype calls. Use a computer FFS

Besides, Tango is far better than skype. We could just use that. Doesn't install a load of crap onto your computer for skype dialling from within the browser.



Why would the companies not want to get in on it? After all, they ARE trying to sell the phones.

 

[mhans311]

There's nothing wrong with this. Just a bit of fun. No one really cares that much. I love android and I love WP. I do not like IOS. There are definitely strengths and weaknesses to both Android and WP. There's nothing wrong with a company showing off the strengths of their product compared to the competitors.

Sent from my Trophy using Board Express

 

[jleebiker]

Bear in mind, this is just for fun.

Also, both parties agreed to what the task will be. It's not like people went into it blind.

 

[scottcraft]

Seemed to me it was a chance to share some good parts of WP with people that aren't familiar with the platform. Of course there are things other platforms do better, but this was mainly about exposure.

Sent from my Windows 7 Phone using Board Express

 

[Reflexx]

There were apparently only 10 things or so that were open to challenge, and all skewed to suit WP (as you'd absolutely expect). As for everyday things, how about this?

Toggle wifi on/off quickly
Toggle GPS on/off quickly
Set volume for calls to one level and volume for music to another
Set up a wifi hotspot to share connection
Cut and paste a picture from the web into an email
Reply all to multiple recipient tweets
Download a picture from image search

All everyday things that WP would be slower at or (in some cases) can't do at all or can only do if you have a suitable update. And that took all of a minute of thinking. Don't get me wrong - I'm not on some bash-a-thon here, I just have a real dislike of braggart marketing because it can be so easily short-circuited and fed back with interest (for example, I've been looking round the web and in various stories on this I've seen "hey, now make a skype call - aaaaaaaaah!" comments five times in five different places). There's enough tiresome "my phone is better than yours" from the fanboys of the world without the companies making the stuff getting in on it too!

Most of your list I rarely did even with my other phones. Not anything near something like posting something to Facebook, looking for a restaurant, etc... Most of your list consists of one-off things, not real activities that you do a lot.

And btw, any marketing campaign will focus on a product's strengths. And Windows Phone's strengths happen to be in the activities most people do a lot.

It's not about being a braggart. It's about having fun in a way that gets attention.

It's competitive fun.

It may not be your personal style. I would guess that you're not really the competitive type from your posts? I may be wrong. But it sounds like you actually look down on those that like some competitive spirit.

It's not like he was putting down anyone or saying bad things about other phones. He was just pointing out how cool Windows Phone was to people that may have had no idea.

 

[roffleswaffles]

Most of your list I rarely did even with my other phones. Not anything near something like posting something to Facebook, looking for a restaurant, etc... Most of your list consists of one-off things, not real activities that you do a lot.

And btw, any marketing campaign will focus on a product's strengths. And Windows Phone's strengths happen to be in the activities most people do a lot.

It's not about being a braggart. It's about having fun in a way that gets attention.

It's competitive fun.

It may not be your personal style. I would guess that you're not really the competitive type from your posts? I may be wrong. But it sounds like you actually look down on those that like some competitive spirit.

It's not like he was putting down anyone or saying bad things about other phones. He was just pointing out how cool Windows Phone was to people that may have had no idea.

Home run post.

I kinda wish they offered tutorials or just showed how Ben did the things he did... that would have been nice to see and show people why WP does it better rather than just proclaiming "DONE!"

 

[based_graham]

Home run post.

I kinda wish they offered tutorials or just showed how Ben did the things he did... that would have been nice to see and show people why WP does it better rather than just proclaiming "DONE!"

He does he shows off local scout, live tiles, Me Hub etc and the cool thing is hes very cool about it Ben is a big plus for Microsoft

 

[scottcraft]

I've been watching some of the videos and I think Ben really did a good job with it. He didn't put down any of the phones, he showed why he won and he gave away some phones to some of the losers. I enjoyed watching.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Pronk]

Most of your list I rarely did even with my other phones. Not anything near something like posting something to Facebook, looking for a restaurant, etc... Most of your list consists of one-off things, not real activities that you do a lot.

And btw, any marketing campaign will focus on a product's strengths. And Windows Phone's strengths happen to be in the activities most people do a lot.

It's not about being a braggart. It's about having fun in a way that gets attention.

It's competitive fun.

It may not be your personal style. I would guess that you're not really the competitive type from your posts? I may be wrong. But it sounds like you actually look down on those that like some competitive spirit.

It's not like he was putting down anyone or saying bad things about other phones. He was just pointing out how cool Windows Phone was to people that may have had no idea.

One-off things? Come on.

I turn my wifi on and off all the time because I like to save on battery when I'm leaving the house and not using my wifi network. Ditto GPS when I come into the house. LOADS of people do that. Cutting and pasting a picture (and here I mean not just sharing a picture you find, but getting e.g. a picture and some text on a website, say to a restaurant you're going to later, and copying/pasting it into an email)? Seriously - people send each other stuff they see on the web, or content from other people's emails/texts/tweets/FB pages, every day all day. You can't do this on Windows Phone easily AT ALL because copy/paste is limited to text.

You can't reply to multiple recipient tweets directly from the Me hub either - hitting reply only responds to the first person listed. So unless you only ever tweet replies to a single person, that's slower/doesn't work. And talking of not working, Bing image search does nothing. Zip. It's utterly pointless other than as a nice gallery - you have to link through to the original website and then download from there.

Similarly, loads of people set up wifi hotspots when out and about to use tablets/laptops. If that wasn't a feature people wanted, why are there so many threads wanting to know when it's coming in for the phones that don't have it?

This is what I mean. I could go on, but as I actually *like* WP, I have no desire to. But if this idea does go to a full marketing campaign other people will, and they'll highlight EVERY shortcoming, flaw, weakness and area still to be caught up with, and how many of the tests were skewed in WPs favour (e.g. the "check the weather in two different places one" - a REAL speed test would be to check the weather in two places that weren't already set up as live tiles, or at the very least check the weather in the same place as the other guy was looking up). I also bet that Ben practiced his keystrokes over and over again pre-show so he was almost doing stuff by instinct, whereas his competitors were all going from a cold start.

This whole thing could have been a really nice, positive campaign, it could have been just all about WP being faster and set up as "Can you be as fast as a WP phone?". It wasn't - the whole thing was about WP "smoking" other phones. Their choice of words and their angle. The problem is, that encourages people to want to beat you back. I have no issue with competitive spirit - I just like to see wins from a level playing field, and I don't think this was. And if people are honest, I think they'll have to agree. The best test was the one that WP actually lost by a hair to an iPhone 4S posting a picture to twitter, because it was the fairest and most comparable where the people concerned were doing the same thing at the same time. And the fact it was more or less a dead heat is fantastic, and in my opinion MUCH more meaningful than e.g. seeing who can list a load of restaurants first with no context of how accurate the list is, whether other options could give a much better refined search faster, whether the competitors even knew the best method of doing it on their handset and so on.

Anyway, I'm done arguing the toss. If most people think it was great, fair enough. I'll just sit in the corner and grumble to myself about comparing apples to oranges!

 

[Big Supes]

One-off things? Come on.

I turn my wifi on and off all the time because I like to save on battery when I'm leaving the house and not using my wifi network. Ditto GPS when I come into the house. LOADS of people do that. Cutting and pasting a picture (and here I mean not just sharing a picture you find, but getting e.g. a picture and some text on a website, say to a restaurant you're going to later, and copying/pasting it into an email)? Seriously - people send each other stuff they see on the web, or content from other people's emails/texts/tweets/FB pages, every day all day. You can't do this on Windows Phone easily AT ALL because copy/paste is limited to text.

You can't reply to multiple recipient tweets directly from the Me hub either - hitting reply only responds to the first person listed. So unless you only ever tweet replies to a single person, that's slower/doesn't work. And talking of not working, Bing image search does nothing. Zip. It's utterly pointless other than as a nice gallery - you have to link through to the original website and then download from there.

Similarly, loads of people set up wifi hotspots when out and about to use tablets/laptops. If that wasn't a feature people wanted, why are there so many threads wanting to know when it's coming in for the phones that don't have it?

This is what I mean. I could go on, but as I actually *like* WP, I have no desire to. But if this idea does go to a full marketing campaign other people will, and they'll highlight EVERY shortcoming, flaw, weakness and area still to be caught up with, and how many of the tests were skewed in WPs favour (e.g. the "check the weather in two different places one" - a REAL speed test would be to check the weather in two places that weren't already set up as live tiles, or at the very least check the weather in the same place as the other guy was looking up). I also bet that Ben practiced his keystrokes over and over again pre-show so he was almost doing stuff by instinct, whereas his competitors were all going from a cold start.

This whole thing could have been a really nice, positive campaign, it could have been just all about WP being faster and set up as "Can you be as fast as a WP phone?". It wasn't - the whole thing was about WP "smoking" other phones. Their choice of words and their angle. The problem is, that encourages people to want to beat you back. I have no issue with competitive spirit - I just like to see wins from a level playing field, and I don't think this was. And if people are honest, I think they'll have to agree. The best test was the one that WP actually lost by a hair to an iPhone 4S posting a picture to twitter, because it was the fairest and most comparable where the people concerned were doing the same thing at the same time. And the fact it was more or less a dead heat is fantastic, and in my opinion MUCH more meaningful than e.g. seeing who can list a load of restaurants first with no context of how accurate the list is, whether other options could give a much better refined search faster, whether the competitors even knew the best method of doing it on their handset and so on.

Anyway, I'm done arguing the toss. If most people think it was great, fair enough. I'll just sit in the corner and grumble to myself about comparing apples to oranges!

I've only ever manually switched off my Wifi/3G on around 5 occasions. 1, to force the update, and the other times were due to this Wifi issue WP has (running slow). It takes me under two seconds to turn my Wifi on-off from a PIN locked screen, but even so, if you want a more direct route, you could pin the Connectivity Shortcuts app.

.... and, that'll be enough to give WP a strong chance in a race.

As for the tests being fair. I don't see how posting and tagging a picture to Facebook isn't. Neither do I see how using local scout to find a restaurant as cheating. Getting the end result is the test. How each tool gets there is to show their strengths and weaknesses.

I applaud MS for the way they tackled this promotion. I think they got it just right. Sure they could have dialled down the baiting, but this whole thing was geared up to be playful. The reason it works for me is because WP is the underdog. Spec obsessed Android fans and The iSmug will happily take the challenge as they're confident they know better, as... of course this Windows Mobile thingy can't be any good. Everyone loves an underdog, especially when it takes down the almighty competition. Windows Phone has seen some great exposure, and more importantly, 'recognition' due to this mini campaign.

 

[Pronk]

The facebook one I haven't seen, so I don't know. The restaurant one isn't necessarily an unfair test, but the result does have to be taken with some heavy caveats.

Did WP get a list of four star restaurants up first? Yes (sort of - it got a list of restaurants up graded by rating, not specifically 4-star ones only). But that's where the comparison has to end really because the people are likely looking at and doing different things in their apps. What if, for example, I want to filter by distance then star rating? That might be easily doable in another search app but Local scout doesn't allow that, so it would take longer to find the same end result using it as I'd have to eyeball the star rating for all local entries. Who has the best customer ratings system with the most feedback, and where is that info sourced from? Did the contestants all know the best way to just get a list up fast or were they doing it in a way that got them the most information or the most accurate result for what they specifically wanted? This isn't saying Local Scout produced poor results at all, just that the results everyone produced aren't really directly comparable. Or to put it another way, someone searching via a restaurant app might have to wait a few seconds more, but they might get richer info that someone using Local Scout might have to run a new search to get. In the circumstances it might not matter if you're e.g. just looking for the nearest coffee shop as fast as possible regardless of what chain it is or any other criteria. Or it might matter a lot if you want a vegetarian restaurant 3 star and above within a 3-mile radius with customer reviews.

Getting the end result fast might indeed be the test, but there's no assessment of how useful that result is so the test to me is flawed because speed isn't the only criteria that's relevant. I can get dressed fastest for the day if all I wear is a sack, but will I be comfortable? Probably not, so my boast about being quickest is consequently devalued.

That's why I liked the tweet test - it's doing the exact same task to get the exact same end result. And the fact that WP effectively drew with an iPhone 4S doing it is something to genuinely be proud of. I'd love to have seen WP7 beat Android and the iPhone running an identical search via Yelp!, as it's available on all three platforms, but we didn't get that - and that's what bugs me (with the caveat I'm a real stickler for detail and fairness so probably get annoyed by this sort of thing more than most would).

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and change out of this sack. It's itchy

 

[jalb]

It was fun.... and it had flaws. Welcome to the desert of the real.

 

[mkr10001]

One-off things? Come on.

I turn my wifi on and off all the time because I like to save on battery when I'm leaving the house and not using my wifi network. Ditto GPS when I come into the house. LOADS of people do that. Cutting and pasting a picture (and here I mean not just sharing a picture you find, but getting e.g. a picture and some text on a website, say to a restaurant you're going to later, and copying/pasting it into an email)? Seriously - people send each other stuff they see on the web, or content from other people's emails/texts/tweets/FB pages, every day all day. You can't do this on Windows Phone easily AT ALL because copy/paste is limited to text.

You can't reply to multiple recipient tweets directly from the Me hub either - hitting reply only responds to the first person listed. So unless you only ever tweet replies to a single person, that's slower/doesn't work. And talking of not working, Bing image search does nothing. Zip. It's utterly pointless other than as a nice gallery - you have to link through to the original website and then download from there.

Similarly, loads of people set up wifi hotspots when out and about to use tablets/laptops. If that wasn't a feature people wanted, why are there so many threads wanting to know when it's coming in for the phones that don't have it?

This is what I mean. I could go on, but as I actually *like* WP, I have no desire to. But if this idea does go to a full marketing campaign other people will, and they'll highlight EVERY shortcoming, flaw, weakness and area still to be caught up with, and how many of the tests were skewed in WPs favour (e.g. the "check the weather in two different places one" - a REAL speed test would be to check the weather in two places that weren't already set up as live tiles, or at the very least check the weather in the same place as the other guy was looking up). I also bet that Ben practiced his keystrokes over and over again pre-show so he was almost doing stuff by instinct, whereas his competitors were all going from a cold start.

This whole thing could have been a really nice, positive campaign, it could have been just all about WP being faster and set up as "Can you be as fast as a WP phone?". It wasn't - the whole thing was about WP "smoking" other phones. Their choice of words and their angle. The problem is, that encourages people to want to beat you back. I have no issue with competitive spirit - I just like to see wins from a level playing field, and I don't think this was. And if people are honest, I think they'll have to agree. The best test was the one that WP actually lost by a hair to an iPhone 4S posting a picture to twitter, because it was the fairest and most comparable where the people concerned were doing the same thing at the same time. And the fact it was more or less a dead heat is fantastic, and in my opinion MUCH more meaningful than e.g. seeing who can list a load of restaurants first with no context of how accurate the list is, whether other options could give a much better refined search faster, whether the competitors even knew the best method of doing it on their handset and so on.

Anyway, I'm done arguing the toss. If most people think it was great, fair enough. I'll just sit in the corner and grumble to myself about comparing apples to oranges!

highlight the text, coy, long press the picture, share picture, email, paste text. Done. Easy

 

[Pronk]

highlight the text, coy, long press the picture, share picture, email, paste text. Done. Easy

Easy is highlight everything you want, copy, paste wherever you want it when you want to. What you've described certainly works (and indeed is the only way to do it on WP7), but wouldn't be fastest, nor is it easiest.

 

[roffleswaffles]

Honestly, I understand what Pronk is getting at, but let's be real. Marketing has never been about ~fair comparisons~ between products. Remember the Mac vs. PC ads? From what I remember, Apple received a lot of criticism about some of the messages they contained, but the commercial is widely considered successful in getting people to switch over to Macs (smh, people).

I also look at this from the perspective of having been around tech blogs and seeing how constantly Windows Phones are smacktalked left and right by people who comment on tech news -- to me, it's really about debunking people's notions about the phones being "lame" and inferior to Android and the iPhone and about how the WP is just as good, if not better, than these other phones.

 

[Reflexx]

One-off things? Come on.

I turn my wifi on and off all the time because I like to save on battery when I'm leaving the house and not using my wifi network. Ditto GPS when I come into the house. LOADS of people do that. Cutting and pasting a picture (and here I mean not just sharing a picture you find, but getting e.g. a picture and some text on a website, say to a restaurant you're going to later, and copying/pasting it into an email)? Seriously - people send each other stuff they see on the web, or content from other people's emails/texts/tweets/FB pages, every day all day. You can't do this on Windows Phone easily AT ALL because copy/paste is limited to text.

You can't reply to multiple recipient tweets directly from the Me hub either - hitting reply only responds to the first person listed. So unless you only ever tweet replies to a single person, that's slower/doesn't work. And talking of not working, Bing image search does nothing. Zip. It's utterly pointless other than as a nice gallery - you have to link through to the original website and then download from there.

Similarly, loads of people set up wifi hotspots when out and about to use tablets/laptops. If that wasn't a feature people wanted, why are there so many threads wanting to know when it's coming in for the phones that don't have it?

This is what I mean. I could go on, but as I actually *like* WP, I have no desire to. But if this idea does go to a full marketing campaign other people will, and they'll highlight EVERY shortcoming, flaw, weakness and area still to be caught up with, and how many of the tests were skewed in WPs favour (e.g. the "check the weather in two different places one" - a REAL speed test would be to check the weather in two places that weren't already set up as live tiles, or at the very least check the weather in the same place as the other guy was looking up). I also bet that Ben practiced his keystrokes over and over again pre-show so he was almost doing stuff by instinct, whereas his competitors were all going from a cold start.

This whole thing could have been a really nice, positive campaign, it could have been just all about WP being faster and set up as "Can you be as fast as a WP phone?". It wasn't - the whole thing was about WP "smoking" other phones. Their choice of words and their angle. The problem is, that encourages people to want to beat you back. I have no issue with competitive spirit - I just like to see wins from a level playing field, and I don't think this was. And if people are honest, I think they'll have to agree. The best test was the one that WP actually lost by a hair to an iPhone 4S posting a picture to twitter, because it was the fairest and most comparable where the people concerned were doing the same thing at the same time. And the fact it was more or less a dead heat is fantastic, and in my opinion MUCH more meaningful than e.g. seeing who can list a load of restaurants first with no context of how accurate the list is, whether other options could give a much better refined search faster, whether the competitors even knew the best method of doing it on their handset and so on.

Anyway, I'm done arguing the toss. If most people think it was great, fair enough. I'll just sit in the corner and grumble to myself about comparing apples to oranges!

People that place a priority on those activities will use a different phone. Who cares if they point that out?

Place two ad campaigns by each other comparing the tasks that WP makes fast and easy vs the ones that you can do on Android or something. I would reckon that most regular people would look at the non-WP tasks and think, "I hardly ever do that.". And the ones that do perform those tasks regularly are better off with a different phone anyway.

You can't market your strengths from a position of fear.

 

[mkr10001]

None of the people in those videos were dicks about it. They all took it in good faith and had a laugh.

Maybe all the android fan boys who were arguing with Ben and wouldn't accept defeat were edited out...maybe we'll see an outtake reel

 

[Blacklac]

None of the people in those videos were dicks about it. They all took it in good faith and had a laugh.

Maybe all the android fan boys who were arguing with Ben and wouldn't accept defeat were edited out...maybe we'll see an outtake reel

I would bet that just proves people talk alot if crap over a keyboard, but wouldnt in real life.