How to sell Nokia Lumias

Here's the iPhone upgrade "choose model" page AT&T just gave me. Oh, carriers!

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http://twitter.com/mkelley mike k

maybe they’ll make it like one of those “joke” javascript pages, where if you try to click an iPhone, the Nokia will appear in it’s place or the iPhone runs from your arrow
grimc

Here’s the iPhone upgrade “choose model” page AT&T just gave me.

Sure, Rob. Or should I say, HEATHER.
- Alpacaman
  
  Rob’s secret identity! Heather Beschizza! How has he kept it up for so long?
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    Personally, of course, I use a Moto F3.
    - oasisob1
      
      That’s the one I used when I was in the UK. Simple. Takes phone calls.
  - grimc
    
    I’m betting glasses. Heather Beschizza–crimefighter, champion of justice, righter of wrongs and powertrain for the powerless–probably wears thick-framed glasses which totally obscures her milquetoast, unremarkable, everyman, mediocre, pedestrian, lowest-common-denominator, easily overlooked, human-as-wallpaper, soporific, white bread, sunk-screw, Alicia-Silverstonesque-prechewed, laugh tracked alter ego.
    
    Also, “Rob’s” ginger mane. You can’t not see it!
    - HeatherB
      
      I have wire rimmed glasses thank you very much.
haxabutt

All jokes aside, you should definitely look at the Lumia 900, it’s an amazing phone.
- BarBarSeven
  
  You are right. No better companion to Heather Beschizza’s Zune than a Windows phone.
  
  PS: MODS, you know every time I have logged in via Safari (version 5.1.5) on my Mac running 10.7 in the past few weeks I can login, but I cannot leave comments. In FireFox right now. Heck, if I go back to Safari right now and try to edit this comment, the text box is blank. Some kind of JavaScript choking happening.
  - Guest
    
    it’s probably your disqus cookies
    - BarBarSeven
      
      Nope. I do web work and regularly toss the cookies and cache and the problem persists. Logging in with my BoingBoing ID via Disqus the same way I have for months since the new commenting system came into place, but only issues in the past few weeks.
  - Bodhipaksa
    
    I had the same problem. I had to enable third party cookies in order to be able to post.
    - BarBarSeven
      
      Okay, why was that checked off? Only happened since the last Safari update perhaps because I never fiddle with that. Anyway, thanks for the help!
      - Bodhipaksa
        
        My problem was with Chrome rather than with Safari, so it may have been a change in Disqus’s cookies that was the problem, rather than with our browsers.
  - teapot
    
    Or… don’t use Safari cause it’s junk? I use Safari on my Mac like I use IE on my Windows machine: on the odd occasion the web designer neglected to ensure compatibility with all browsers.
    
    I occasionally get the problem you’re describing but when I click on the ‘blank’ box my text immediately appears there. In any case – swear off the Safari and you will be happier for it… the fact you can’t use the URL bar to search should be evidence enough that it’s not designed for use by human beings.
    - BarBarSeven
      
      “…the fact you can’t use the URL bar to search should be evidence enough that it’s not designed for use by human beings.” So you are talking about Chrome & it’s ability to allow one to search from the URL bar? Chrome & Safari are based on the same core engine. So if you are favoring Chrome over Safari you barely understand how this stuff works.
phisrow

Regardless of the relative merits of the phones, AT&T seems to have missed the, um, minor shift in the phone market where people started caring about what programs their phones could run…

Not a problem among the techies; but it sure will be fun to explain to the upsold noobs that no, in fact, those apps they bought on their iDevice will not be coming over to their ‘upgrade’, nor will any of the other rapidly-increasing number of ‘ecosystem’ tie-ins. That should make the customer happy.

If it were just a matter of selling phones based on hardware appearance and whether or not they came with Snake, the Lumia is, by all accounts, a pretty solid device; but the costs of switching ecosystems are not small.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/TFVMREESR52F4UGLKWZPUPODKI Yann
  
  really? so the reason to stay with a brand and the basis behind brand ‘loyalty’ is the hassle of paying $10 for half a dozen new apps? this is the big problem in your life that you are avoiding? ..and your going to bring up snake? that really adds credibility to what you say!
  
  (notice nothing of what I wrote spoke positively or negatively about either iphone or lumina, but merely showed how utterly hollow every word you typed was)
  - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
    
    You know that some people have more than six apps, and some apps cost more than $2, right, my needlessly and weirdly harsh friend?
    - Guest
      
      Please stop complaining that other people like their things.
      - Petzl
        
        Seriously, we have the recent Thomas Kinkaid thread for that.
      - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
        
        Was that a comment to me? I was more complaining about the weird-ass “how utterly hollow every word you typed was” comment.
    - retepslluerb
      
      I have far more apps than that, but the apps I’ve used and don’t need anymore far outweigh those I use. Changing platforms would probably cost me between €50 and €100 – neligiable costs, compared to the bother of learning a new workflow,
  - http://twitter.com/ElrandoHorse MGardner
    
    You completely missed the point. The point is that the selection of available software on WP is tiny compared to it’s major competitors.
    It’s not simply a question of having to re buy apps, it’s a question of whether or not they are available at all.
    - Forkboy
      
      Yep, for a successfull platform you need either have either quantity or quality in terms of apps. Windows has the former, Mac has the latter, iOS has both and Windows Phone 7 has neither.
      - 50thomas
        
        So none of these are commercially successful?
        Or did you mean a good, useful platform?
    - 8088y12
      
      It’s not as simple or as dire as that though. 70,000 (and growing quickly) is not a ‘tiny’ market. Sure, it’s a fraction of what iOS and Android have, but it’s still a huge list that covers pretty much every type of app anyone needs, including most of the major apps.
      
      For the average consumer it’s not really an issue unless a specific app they need is not available.
      
      And I think the average consumer can afford to spend $15 to replace their apps when moving to a new platform. Plenty of people are moving from iOS to Android and not suffering.
      - xtophr
        
        “plenty of people are moving from iOS to Android and not suffering”
        
        Define suffering.
    - phisrow
      
      In this specific case, it doesn’t help that the platforms being compared are the ones with the largest and smallest ecosystems; but my intended point was really somewhat broader:
      To a substantial extent, cellphones historically weren’t ‘platforms’ in the market relevant sense. Even people who cared largely got to purchase based on features-on-box, with no expectation that those would change during the phone’s lifetime. The carriers could treat phones from different manufacturers as largely interchangeable(and some, like Verizon, even imposed their own UI skins in an attempt to increase uniformity).
      
      Architecturally, there were platforms(BREW vs. JavaSE vs. S40) and Blackberry was sort of the Proprietary-big-iron-UNIX of the cellphone world but for most end user purposes there really weren’t.
      
      Now, not so much. The level of platform switching cost is still well below that of heavily integrated enterprise systems, and arguably lower than that of personal computers for many users(though personal computers have the power to do wasteful-but-convenient things like virtualization that phones generally can’t); but it is much higher than it used to be and it isn’t entirely clear that the carriers have come to grips with that.
- Ralidius
  
  So what you are saying is that users are so stupid that they end up corraled in by the ‘ecosystem’. Guess that is a good hint to not get sucked in by one of those brands in the first place, or you really are just taking the risk that something new and different may end up being disruptive and costly. No matter it is better or not. Just accept that missing out on the “new” is something “good” because who knows, maybe there isn’t a app that shows you how you are caught and while being a clueless consumer you start to let mediocrity shine through your comment that adds up to scare mongering people because other than ‘snake’ there is nothing more or nothing better than what you already own. How pathetic and telling.
hub

You know what’s wrong? That actually you go see the carrier for an upgrade. Carrier hate losing customers, that’s why they offer you upgrade: to sign a new contract. And then you lose leverage.

Whatever phone you like, buy it, bring it and use leverage.
- Ryan_T_H
  
  Leverage for what? They don’t negotiate and at least in North America I have never heard of a discount for not getting a discounted phone.
  
  You are going to be paying them $X a month anyways. May as well get a deal on the phone.
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    You can take your unlocked phone to MVNOs and get pay-as-you-go plans that are much cheaper (even with unlimited data) than contract plans. So if you save about $20-$30 a month, it takes about 18 months for paying $600 for the unlocked model turns out to have been a good deal!
    - OoerictoO
      
      sure. and getting the phone on contract comes with a hefty discount on TOP of the “free” financing
TheKaz1969

Maybe it is for users who no longer feel “cool” or “special” because Android now has Instagram?
- herartsheloves
  
  No amount of skinny jeans or thick black glasses could make WP cool… if I could root the phone and put Android on it, I’d scoop it right up.
semtek007

That Lumia 900 is gorgeous! I switched to Phone 7 about a week ago and I have to say it’s a pretty amazing system. There might be only a small handfull of aps available compared to the iphone or android, but when I looked at the apps I regularly used on my android phone I came to the conclusion that phone 7 allready did most of these things (leaving me to just install a youtube app and the TED app).

P.S. It also has Civilization Revolution ;)
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  Maybe I’m lame, but I have an Android phone (Nexus S) and I like it, and I’ve unlocked it and upgraded to ICS and so on, but I really don’t use many apps at all and when my contract ends, I might consider WP7 as an experiment with a new contract.
  
  That Nokia Lumia 900 looks fantastic (their build quality has always been outstanding) and the GUI is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else right now. ICS is a decent improvement, but WP7 is just plain exquisite, design-wise.
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Witt/1041651388 David Witt

Another Windows Phone convert here, via the Nokia Lumia. As a mobile Designer/Dev, I’ve had 2 iPhones, but switched over to WP for a test drive and decided to stay. MSFT has done a fantastic job with the Metro UI, which is a very different, and I would say better, experience. The Lumias are the first devices with enough power to really make Metro run.

There are some apps that aren’t available yet on WP, but the gap is closing, and in return WP has unique apps of its own, such as Local Scout, and the Nokia Maps interface is superior to Google Maps, imo.

All in all, it’s good to have a viable alternative mobile OS in the ecosystem, and it’s an interesting turn of history where Apple is the 800 lb gorilla and Microsoft/Nokia is the designer’s choice.
DewiMorgan

Device mobility would be nice in apps. I’d like to be able to sell people a single app file that would run just as well on any of their various pcs, phones, pads, and pods.

It’s feasible in Flash or Java, but support for those seems lacking.

I guess I need to wait for HTML5 for that. Even then, the app markets just aren’t set up for it.
- Ralidius
  
  The lack of support and downfall of Java and Flash (also because of ads for flash) is in part because of the code once deploy everywhere feature. Now we have this false, let’s do it through standards committee HTML, like apple isn’t on there like a dog on a bone, plus the Microsoft/Apple duopoly is going to make it not happen over and over again. But yeah, nice idea.
timquinn

Tonight’s homework; determine which of these commenters were paid to post.
- clockwars
  
  And which ones can feel the burn!
http://twitter.com/russlan_v .::RV::.

I have a Nokia Lumia 800 and it just blows others, iPhone included, out of the water.
- chaopoiesis
  
  Leaving the Lumia in the water.
  
  Good Lumia!
clockwars

It’s definitely an upgrade whether you like it or not..

Nokia phones actually work, and you don’t have to worry about “holding it right”
None of that BS.

The device has one of the most original and interesting design,
the LCD is superb,
And WP is the most elegant OS i’ve used (I’ve tried everything)

So yeah, upgrade!
And see for yourself
- http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi
  
  Nokia phones work? My N95 got repaired 3 times in the first 12 months of owning it, then carked it completely 6 months before my 2 year contract expired. My sisters N97 barely functioned until she had the communications ombudsman get her out of her contract.
  
  I’ve yet to have tested any of the Nokia windows phones, but there is a reason people fled Nokia once “smart phones” actually got smart and decided usability was of more concern than cramming in a million hard to use features.
- teapot
  
  Tonight’s homework; determine which of these commenters were paid to post.
m_gonyea

Remember when AT&T was evil? Oh boingboing…
markfrei

A year ago I wanted to move to WP7 (and did).

It was hard to even find WP7 phones in the stores I checked. When I did find a store with actual WP7 phones to play with, they usually had some iOS or Android sales zealot trying to talk me out of it.

So having AT&T actually present this as an option (the horror!) – well, it’s not nearly as obnoxious as my experiences of a year ago.
OoerictoO

does ATT have an “upgrade iphone” IE specific to the IPHONE upgrade page? or is it just “upgrade phone” and they give you reasonable choices?

iphone to android convert here, considering going back if the others can’t build better/shinier hardware.