Don't colour us surprised if this is true to some extent as it's a simple marketing stunt that involves cash, but reports are coming in that the Smoked by Windows Phone challenges are sometimes rigged, or those who actually beat Microsoft's OS were denied their win / prize. Not only are relatively large sums of money involved, but Microsoft recently bumped the stakes to include a limited edition PC worth $1,000.
According to Sahas Katta, from Skatter Tech, he was wrongfully robbed of his glory (and brand-spanking new PC) by a Microsoft employee who refused to accept that his Android handset won. Katta went along to the Santa Clara Microsoft Store to give the challenge a go after hearing about the stakes increase. Using an Android handset with widgets galore to combat the Windows Phone live tiles, Katta felt prepared for the task that would be presented to him by the employee.
"The Microsoft Store employee I was up against then explained the selected challenge. Her exact words were the following: 'bring up the weather of two different cities.' The one who could do that first would win. I felt like I struck gold since I knew I already had two weather widgets on my home screen: one for my current location (San Jose, CA) and another for Berkeley, CA.
After a three-second count down, I hit the power button on my phone and said 'DONE!' out loud. I had disabled the lock screen entirely, which is a rather awesome out-of-the-box feature of Android that takes you straight to the home screen with a single push of the power button. I didn’t even need to touch the screen, since the two weather widgets were already there."
According to Katta, having won the challenge by a mere few seconds, the employee turned around to say that Windows Phone won because "it displays the weather right there." Confusing indeed since that's exactly what the Android widgets did as well - they both displayed the weather 'right there'. After speaking to a manager and receiving bizarre reasons as to why he lost, Katta left the Microsoft Store empty handed.
All we'll say is: it's not the first time a company has had problems with a marketing stunt, so we shouldn't be surprised if - in this case - the Smoked by Windows Phone challenge differs between employees, or is judged slightly differently. Though I would like to add that the manager should have handled the situation more professionally, if what Katta reported on had actually occurred. (And this is a big "if" as we're just taking their word).
Have you been to challenge Microsoft and Windows Phone in the challenges? If so, did you notice any cheating?
Source: Skatter Tech; thanks Sandy for the heads up!

We're going to see tons of game delays this year and that's OK
We'll be seeing a lot of games delayed throughout 2021, more than were delayed in 2020. Right now, you should only depend on playing things that were originally supposed to release last year. Here's why that's OK.

AMD's Radeon RX 6000 GPUs have arrived. Here's where to find them.
AMD's Radeon RX 6000 GPUs aren't easy to find, and you might be wondering which models are available where. Check out the retailers and models you can expect to buy when stock normalizes.

These are the biggest PC announcements from CES 2021
CES 2021 was different in that it wasn't held at a physical location. Instead, companies relied on press kits and virtual presentations to showcase all the new products. We've rounded up the best PC-related announcements in case you happened to miss the show.

These are the best GPUs for playing Escape from Tarkov
Looking for a new GPU to play Escape from Tarkov? Here are our top picks for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, from both NVIDIA and AMD.