Mary Jo Foley describes the strategy behind Microsoft’s introduction of the second-generation Nokia Android phone:

Microsoft is making Windows available for zero dollars (a k a free) on phones and tablets with screen sizes of under nine inches. That means the company is counting less and less on the Windows operating system as a revenue source. Instead, services and applications are where Microsoft management are looking to earn money — through ads, subscriptions, premium upgrades, etc. — in the future.

So, an Android phone that hopes to make money based on services and therefore ships with Microsoft’s services installed instead of Google’s. Looking forward to hearing how this is really a threat to Apple.

For the next month,

Over at Macworld I look at how the relative end-user experiences compare on different platforms and how they help explain Apple’s high customer satisfaction ratings.

Blackberry still exists. Which is kind of where their bar for success is right now.

Mary Jo Foley notes that references to the Surface Mini are sprinkled throughout Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 User Guide. So the question is was this a pause to retool it or has it been summarily canceled?

Now on the App Store for $4.99 for the already bored four days into summer kid in your household. The boy and I have played this on the Wii and even though the LEGO game formula is a little rote now, tired of having on his helicarrier.

(Via Touch Arcade)

On Turning This Car Around, we look again at gear and Lex tells the most terrifying baby monitor story ever.

From the Verge’s live blog of the Amazon Fire phone announcement:

Basically this is the fastest “Hey I see that thing I want to buy that thing” machine ever made by human hands. Push a button, buy the thing I’m looking at. It’s kind of stunning if you think about it. And terrifying.

That was pretty much my reaction as well.

The unlimited photo storage, dedicated camera button and headphones that are supposedly less tangle-prone are nice, less terrifying features, though.

MacNN:

[The China-based Economic Daily news service] claims that the Apple iWatch will see release in the third quarter, with production at Foxconn, Pegatron, Quanta, and Inventec. An OLED display is expected, but power draw issues are currently causing problems.

Uh-huh. Sure. That’s gonna happen.

Pricing is reputedly $349, with about 10 million units available at device launch.

I’m so old I remember when the iWatch cost thousands of dollars. I’m sure we can take this price to the bank, though.

(By the way, we didn’t get those new iPhones at WWDC we were supposed to.)

Ina Fried for Re/code:

AT&T has been pretty quiet about its plans for “toll-free” data service since announcing its plans at CES in January.

With sponsored data, companies foot the bill for certain kinds of data use, meaning it is free for consumers. AT&T said at the time it was testing the service with a handful of partners, but has gone radio silent since then.

That could change Wednesday if, as some suspect, Amazon chooses to subsidize some of their customer’s data usage on the smartphone it is introducing.

Huh. If only there were some kind of phrase for a situation in which when you are not paying for a product then you are the product. Oh, well.

At least people already know Amazon just wants you to buy more stuff. I find the relationship with an Amazon device to be a little more honest than the relationship with a Google Android device. I do have a hard time imagining how AT&T’s network will hold up if Amazon phone owners can stream Prime video over LTE for free. Still, that would be a neat feature to have if it worked.