Guess which tile is the most special, Elmo!

This post is an abyss-style product review. What that means, of course, is that I’ll criticize a product I’ve never used, seen or touched.

When we last heard from the Windows Phone it was featured in a humorous ad campaign that promised to “save us from our phones.”

Well, how did it do?

The new ad campaign features people doing Important Things. In one commercial a parent is about to attend their child’s soccer game. In another a person is out clubbing.

In each case, however, before the people enjoy the real life activity at hand, they have to check their Windows Phone 7 to make sure all is well with the online world before engaging in some real life.

The clubbing commercial is particularly telling. Although the man is on a dance floor in a target-rich environment, he has to check his “Xbox LIVE” before he can even think about cutting a rug with the ladies. What is Xbox LIVE? It is merely the “unbeatable entertainment experience” for the Xbox 360. What is the Xbox 360? It’s a video game console made by Microsoft. I assume in the commercial the man must be keeping the unit under his shirt. Or maybe in his pants to improve his appeal the opposite sex and/or gender of his preference.

Yes, in the view of Microsoft, it would be normal for someone to go out on the dance floor and stop to check the status of their video game console before engaging with live human beings.

Maybe with the new Kinect live feature the man can put the phone in Kinect Live mode and dance with his video game system back home. No longer does dancing by yourself have to be embarrassing!

I have judged enough. I deem Microsoft’s promise of saving us from our phones to be an EPIC FAIL. At the end of the day Microsoft merely wants people doing more of the same with their electronic leashes. They merely prefer that it happens with their product rather than a competitor’s.

If Microsoft truly wanted to save us from our phones they’d invent a feature that tells the online world it will have to wait while we are out doing real stuff. They could call it an answering machine or something like that.