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February 13, 2012
Mobile

My favorite photos & stories from the “Smoked” tour of Southern California



I’m on a flight back to Seattle from San Diego, where yesterday we wrapped up our “Smoked by Windows Phone” tour of Southern California.  This was a really great trip; not only did we show hundreds of people why Windows Phone is simply faster than other smartphones at the real, everyday stuff that real, everyday people do on their phones, but my crew and I had the chance to meet some really cool people.  Here are some of my favorite photos – and stories – from our 3-day trip. 

See you back in Redmond!

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This little girl watched our challenges for about 30 minutes before coming over to ask me “Is your phone better than my dad’s iPhone?”  She loves to play games so I showed her Kinectimals for Windows Phone.  Those cute, cuddly cubs pretty much sealed the deal for her and her dad.

4 at a time

These four guys came to South Coast to challenge me, but got there right as we were packing up.  But they came down to Mission Viejo to try their luck the next day!   Really nice guys who love technology.  To say thanks for their energy and for being such good sports, I upgraded all of them on the spot to Windows Phones.

WM upgrader

This is Christopher.  He came into the Mission Viejo store to upgrade his 5-year-old HTC Windows Mobile 5 (!) device to Windows Mobile 6.5.  I saved him the trouble by upgrading him to an HTC Titan.  Really nice guy who I know will make great use of that new phone.  He also earned 100 nerd-cred bonus points for wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt…that matched his girlfriend’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt.   Totally awesome.

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Brian and Krystal said the most important thing they do on their phones is take pictures of their son.   As a dad of 2 (almost 3, our next little one is due soon!), I know exactly what they mean.  Since there’s no phone better (or faster) at that than a Windows Phone, so I hooked them up with a pair so they never miss a moment. 

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Marion’s been a Windows Phone fan since day 1, and he’s also an aspiring Windows Phone app developer.  I got him a Samsung Focus S to use as his every day phone so he could turn his first-gen Focus into a dev/test unit.  I know he’s going to build something amazing!

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Smile

I wrote this on the chalkboard in my hotel room.   I thought it pretty much summed up the trip.