Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating system is due to launch on the 29th of October in San Francisco. Devices will start shipping soon after, which means the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 are still several weeks away. Now when it comes to pricing, different markets have different business models. In many parts of Europe and Asia, people buy their phones unsubsidized, meaning they pay the full price of the device. That makes buying something like the iPhone 5, which sells for about 680 EUR, a very painful proposition. In America however, consumers sign two year contracts in exchange for a substantial discount.
AT&T, the second largest wireless operator in the U.S., has announced that they’re going to be the only company offering phone subsidies for the Lumia 920. That’s obviously a bad thing since Apple’s iPhone, and two of Samsung’s flagship devices (the Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy S III), are offered by multiple operators. Rumors from earlier this year suggested that Verizon, the largest operator in the country, would offer a Nokia device called “Atlas”. We didn’t know anything about that device, until today that is.
Thanks to the anonymous Twitter user @evleaks, we now have a photo of the “Atlas”, and as far as we can tell … it’s a variant of the Lumia 820. But, and this is a big but, they modified the look of the device. We’re not fans of it. In fact, when we first saw the leaked photo, one of our staff members just walked out the room laughing.
Does this mean Windows Phone 8 doesn’t have a future? Not at all. HTC’s two Windows Phones, the 8X and 8S, are rumored to launch on multiple operators. It’s funny because HTC used to have a very close relationship with Microsoft, which they then abandoned to fool around with Google for a few years, but now it looks like HTC is back in bed with the desktop and office software giant.
[Via: The Verge]