It's time for another From the Forums where we bring you the latest and greatest discussions from our community forums. From discussing pricing and specifications of upcoming hardware, to ranting about competitor marketing, it's all covered in the Windows Phone Central forums.
To kick us off is Bear lx with a thread to ask the question, "How much would you be willing to pay for a windows 8 phone?" We're yet to read up on carrier and retailer final pricing for Window Phone 8 hardware, but with how prices are developing through pre-order announcements, we can conjure up a rough idea.
"The Galaxy S3 is $549, HTC One X is $499, and the iPhone -- which is usually the most expensive -- is $649. If Nokia is going to charge $899 for a phone, I am definitely going to pass... in fact it will upset me to the point of never buying one. At this point in the game, they cant expect to convince people to buy one of their phones over competitors if they are going to charge nearly double."
Until official pricing is witnessed at launch for all hardware in question, we'll never be 100% sure how this will play out. But until then, how much would you be willing to pay for your next Windows Phone? $500? More? Be sure to head on over to the "windows phone 8 pricing... how much is too much?" thread to voice your opinion.
The iPhone against Windows Phone Apollo
With the iPhone comparison against ... well ... any competitive device, it's relatively unheard of for such tasks to include iPhone cases that are usually purchased and applied by owners to protect the deivce. Forum user gwydionjhr decided to take a look at the iPhone when comfortably sat inside an Otterbox.
"The thing that continually goes unsaid is that 90% of people are going to wrap that "jewelry" like iPhone5 in a big honkin' case, just like they did with the iPhone 4/4S. If you're going to do a spec comparison, especially one centered on the dimensions I think the case for the iPhone should be included in those specs. That super thin and light iPhone5 quickly becomes pretty ridiculous when placed in a real world usage senario."
As one can see from the above chart, the iPhone really is a chubby little kid when compared against the Lumia 900, HTC 8X and the heavy and sizeable Lumia 920. But what are your thoughts on the size of the iPhone compared to Windows Phone 8 hardware? Does it really matter? Be sure to join in the debate over in the "A little perspective on the iPhone vs WP8" thread.
Miscellaneous: Windows 8 app count blown out of proportion?
Windows Phone Central forum user shingi_70 has created a thread to tackle the apps issue that Windows Phone -- and soon-to-be-released Windows 8 -- will experience. Is Microsoft doing enough, or could the software giant pump more funds into app development?
"There are reported to be around 2000 apps in the windows 8 store with around 100 being updated per day and a couple of weeks back they opened up the market to devs worldwide. So anyone else thinking that its being blown out of proportion. Microsoft has shown off a ton of Windows 8 games that will be in the market at launch."
What are your experiences with the Windows Store? How do you think Microsoft can tackle apps through lessons learned from Windows Phone? Head on over to the "Do you think people are blowing the windows 8 app count out of proportion." thread to throw in your $0.02.
