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It should be clear by now that Microsoft, Verizon and Nokia have decided that the main selling point of the Lumia 928 is its stellar PureView camera, geared especially for photos with minimal available light.

Now in a new infographic, aka those trendy collages that combine stats with bold artwork, we see in numbers just how many use their camera in such conditions. Some of the figures include noting how we spend 90% of our lives indoors, with half of that in the dark or how 52% of people take snaps of their food (presumably at dinner time).

Microsoft is getting feisty again with their Bing service as they’re taking the fight to Google with quite a snarky holiday ad released on YouTube.

With its "A Visit from St. Nicholas" style narration, the ad takes on Google’s practice of listing shopping results not so much based on lowest price or other reasonable metrics but rather who paid the most. As it turns out, some of the top results in Google are there because a company paid to have them there, as opposed to being what is best for the shopper. Or so that is what Microsoft alleges.

Marketing, it's always been hit or miss with Windows Phone over the past two years with not any in particular sticking. Things might be a little different this time around with Microsoft picking up a couple of big celebrities to pimp the platform. 

Perhaps it shouldn't be "odd" to see Verizon promoting Windows Phone, after all, the powerhouse US carrier is planning on selling not one, but three Windows Phones this year: Lumia 822, HTC 8X and the unspecified Samsung Odyssey (expected to have a 4" S-AMOLED display, WVGA resolution, and a 5MP camera)

Still, you know things are changing when you see a nice ad right on Verizon Wireless's front page with the line "Introducing The new Windows Phone. So advanced, it's actually simple."

We dig that tag line. And we're glad to see Verizon onboard with Windows Phone. Thanks, Andrew K., for the tip!

The Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone's Pureview Camera turned a lot of heads this week with it's very impressive low light and stabilizing features. The demo video and still images gave hope that a "knock your socks off" camera was heading to the Lumia Windows Phone line. But the video and still images have been dissected more than a High School science project with accusations that Nokia faked it all and the camera isn't as grand as Nokia would like us to think. But is this a case of bad advertising or a bad camera?

We think it's two separate issues and too many nay sayes are trying to mesh them together to make the Lumia 920 look bad. We believe this because the specs on paper lead credence to the camera's touted performance and most importantly because we've seen the camera perform up close and personal.

Microsoft has released a number of new advertisements that carry on the "Smoked by Windows Phone" marketing campaign, which started at CES 2012 earlier this year. Ben ('The PC Guy') Rudolph heads up the adverts that are set to air on TV. The above video shows Rudolph challenging a member of public on the streets of Seattle (as opposed to Microsoft Stores) to see who can locate and share a restaurant with friends the fastest.

We like the new style used in the videos, which appear to be slightly more calm and focus more on the beauty of Windows Phone instead of simply how many wins the platform can achieve. Rudolph runs the participant through exactly why Windows Phone is more efficient at everyday tasks. Luckily, he gave Ramona a shiny new cyan Lumia 900 so Android wont slow her down in future.

Be sure to check out the Microsoft YouTube playlist of the advertisements to view the rest.

Source: Microsoft (YouTube playlist); via: Windows Team Blog

Two days ago we ran a fun little piece on a Nokia Lumia 900 ad showing up on some sites. The ad featured a rendered 900, spinning around with Live Tiles in motion. Nothing odd there except that two of the Live Tiles had new and very specific behavior:

1. Contacts - The tiles flip and it says "Meet up with Sarah"
2. Photo Hub - Flips and splits into two tiles, one with the latest photo, the other with a count

The contacts/People Hub behavior was a tad redundant but also not a bad idea. The Photo Hub count confused people as knowing how many pictures you had didn't seem very useful. We guessed at the time that instead that count was for non-viewed photos from contacts i.e. new Facebook uploads, etc which seemed plausible.

Of course the ad was Photoshopped--in fact the whole thing was. The question wasn't the means but rather the intent (if there was any).

Nokia PR got back to us yesterday on the matter though and perhaps not too surprisingly, deny that what we see is anything more than a marketing error:

"Just to clarify and remove any questions, I want to let you know that this was a change that was made in in the advertisement process and is not an indication of what may or may not come in future iterations of the Windows Phone software. Perhaps someone got a little carried away tinkering in the photo and video editing process, as it did not come from engineering or product management in any way.

Basically, you shouldn’t take that image to mean that the product might change."

Of course we weren't exactly expecting Nokia to give us a slow-clap and congratulations on figuring our an unintentional leak. But having them go on record denying any accidental reveals of slight OS upgrades should put the matter to rest.

Still, we think they're pretty decent ideas. We should note for Windows Phone 8 we're not expecting a major UI revisions but rather slight changes and additions. So we'll what happens in June and come back to this.

Looks like AT&T is not forgetting their important demographic of Spanish speakers as they're running a new ad for the Lumia 900 featuring Ricardo Arjona. For those of you not familiar, he's a very popular and famous "Guatemalan Grammy Award- and Latin Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter" (thank you, Wikipedia!).

In other words, they landed a fairly be celeb for this ad which seems to show of the strengths of the Lumia 900 fairly well. More importantly, this commerical is targeted for Mother's Day, which is an opportune time to buy mom a $99 Cyan Lumia 900, especially if has Ricardo Arjona serenading her. (We'll stick with flowers, thanks)

Okay, perhaps it's a tad cheesy but to be honest, it's no different than any other smartphone commercial out there and the ladies deserve to have a nice phone too.

So go buy one for mom, she'll finally forgive you for not calling her more often.

Thanks, Jonathan, for the tip