14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, it has emerged that Microsoft pulled Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL demo units from stores in the United States because of what seemed to be an undisclosed issue and although at first the company remained tight-lipped on this, a Redmond spokesperson finally confirmed it.
Both the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL are part of Microsoft's new mobile offensive, so seeing them pulled from stores is definitely surprising, especially because the company needs to build up momentum ahead of the big release for the public.
These demo units are supposed to let potential customers across the United States to try out the phones before they hit the shelves and help them decide whether to buy them or not, but following Microsoft's unexpected decision to pull all devices, such a thing is pretty much impossible.
No word on possible issues
Microsoft confirmed in statement we received earlier today that demo units are indeed no longer available in stores, but the company hasn't provided a reason for its decision.
“Last week’s Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL phones announcements generated huge interest. We made some prototype devices available for a limited time in our retail stores, so that customers could get an early look at our best Windows experience with Windows 10, on our most productive smartphones ever. We’ve now removed the prototypes from the stores as we finalize the experience, and look forward to rolling the phones out next month,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying.
As we previously reported, it was believed that a secret hardware issue with these devices was at fault for the decision to pull them from stores, but as you can see in this statement, the company says nothing about such a thing.
It's all about “finalizing the experience,” so maybe Microsoft just wants to install the new OS version on these devices before getting it ready for everyone. But installing an OS update could be very well performed by store staff too, so Microsoft might be hiding something here.