Microsoft Gets Smoked On Smoked By Windows Phone Challenge ?

Lately Microsoft has open a challenge for it’s competitor to see who could perform a task with their smartphone, faster. It is called Smoked By Windows Phone.

For the challenge,Smoked By Windows Phone, Microsoft was offering cash prizes to those who could win the challenge. As reported that at Mobile World Congress 2012, Microsoft Windows Phone still dominated majority challenge tasks but not all.

Then there was Sahas Katta with his Galaxy Nexus running Android 4 challenged the Smoked By Windows Phone campaign at the tradeshow floor to Microsoft's retail stores.

The challenge is which OS could pull up two different cities weather faster. And Katta is already prepared with this challenge by disabled the lock screen on his Galaxy Nexus.

All Sahas Katta do was only pushed the power button to start home screen, which had two different weather applications running with two different cities. But the Microsoft store employee had to take two steps: Press the button to wake the screen, and then slide-to-unlock to get to the home screen. The result was Katta won the challenge with simple reason, that two steps takes longer than one, plain and simple.

But on the other side, the Microsoft store employees refused to accept Katta's win, eventually claiming that he was supposed to show the results of two different cities in two different states.

However the Katta took a complain about this unfair challenge result to Twitter and Microsoft's Windows Phone champion, Ben Rudolph, reached out and offered Katta a rematch, and later, a free laptop and Windows Phone for his tribulations.

Microsoft wants to show off to the people that it’s platform is light enough. For the contest to be 100% fair, the challenger should be the one suggesting the challenge, and both phones should have the same start position (i.e., either both have lock screens enabled or neither of them do).

We can tell that this challenge context is which OS could perform a task faster, not by step by step of running a task. It is fair to show the speed in accessing primary features on a smartphone, whether no lock screen or not.

But in the case of Smoked By Windows Phone Challenge above, Microsoft is already losing,  whether lock screen enabled or not, it is up to users as long it is comfortable.