Smartphone Beta Test: Nokia offers for latest

Nokia Announce that the "Smartphone Beta Test" is over in its latest ad for the "beautifully different" Nokia Lumia 900 available via AT&T. As an aside, you have until next Saturday to get the flagship Windows Phone model for free. Through April 21st, those buying the device will get a $100 rebate from Nokia as compensation for the data connectivity problem early models suffered with, even if your unit came out of the box in perfect working condition.

Now, back to Nokia's latest ad. You probably know that the "Smartphone Beta Test" is just the Finnish based manufacturer's way of saying that all other phones that came before the Nokia Lumia 900 (presumably even its own models, including the Nokia Lumia 710) were just test units and that the Lumia 900 is the first phone that is perfect out of the box. That is a risky marketing strategy and smacks of irony considering the problems that the phone has had right after being launched.

Nonetheless, the new spot is supposed to show how a non-Nokia owner is happy with his smartphone because by being the same as everyone else's handset, he is "expressing himself as an individual." Not only doesn't that comment make any sense of course, but all of a sudden a loud and obnoxious female starts yakking that she has the same phone. It is obviously a bit of a shot at Android and iOS users. The Nokia Lumia 900 is off to a great start and now that a software fix has been made available to owners of the phone, it should be interesting to see if Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T have a real competitor on their hands.