Galaxy Nexus owner refused prize upon beating Windows Phone challenge, receives apology and goods later

Élyse Betters | Mar 26 2012 - 11:41 am PT

Skatter Tech’s Sahas Katta wrote a blog post yesterday about his Windows Phone challenge experience and explained how he beat the contest using a Galaxy Nexus, but Microsoft employees withheld his prize “just because.”

Katta claimed he beat a “Get Smoked” Windows Phone challenge at the Santa Clara Microsoft Store yesterday. The assigned quest was to “bring up the weather of two different cities” faster than a competing Windows Phone user. Katta cold booted his smartphone as instructed, accessed his unlocked screen, and quickly viewed two separate weather widgets for San Jose and Berkeley that were luckily running on the device’s home screen.

Despite executing the task first, Katta was immediately told the Windows Phone “smoked” him:

I excitedly thought I won out of pure luck. However, I was quickly told that I lost. I asked for a reason and was told Windows Phone won because “it displays the weather right there.” That was rather unclear. I showed her my device which also was showing off the same information with two side-by-side weather widgets on the center home screen. After pressing for a better reason, I was told that Windows Phone won “just because.”

After trying to push for a real answer since I clearly won the contest by their rules, another Microsoft Store employee (possibly a manager) came by after noticing me asking more questions. Thinking on his feet, he quickly gave a ridiculous out-of-thin-air reason that I need to display the weather of different cities in different states and that “my phone could not do that”.

Katta futilely tried to argue his case but eventually stopped. Before exiting the Microsoft Store, an employee took a picture of him standing in front of a sign that read, “My Android was smoked by Windows Phone.”

Do not feel too sorrowful for Katta, however, due to an apology from a Microsoft staffer that surfaced on Twitter this morning. Along with the vindication, Katta won the laptop (and phone) pledged in the challenge’s advertisements:

So, it looks like all is well in the world again.