> With the always-connected social features they want on the phone, there is really no alternative plan pricing.
Always-connected doesn't necessarily mean huge amounts of bandwidth. They could have built this thing as a social media device that was doing simple messaging and heavily restricted / optimized features for photo & video. I think there would be a space in the market for such a thing for teens, but MS clearly badly missed it. And if they have pissed off their carrier partners in the process then it is even worse because they desperately need their support if WP7 is going to be a success.
Always-connected doesn't necessarily mean huge amounts of bandwidth. They could have built this thing as a social media device that was doing simple messaging and heavily restricted / optimized features for photo & video. I think there would be a space in the market for such a thing for teens, but MS clearly badly missed it. And if they have pissed off their carrier partners in the process then it is even worse because they desperately need their support if WP7 is going to be a success.