Microsoft has allegedly regained its lost Nokia Lumia 920 smartphone which was preloaded with the company's next iteration of Windows Phone 8, dubbed Windows Phone 8.1 (or Windows Phone Blue).
A Microsoft employee apparently lost the valuable Lumia 920 on a bus, which was later sold on eBay by a seller in Seattle, Wash., to Reddit user ChinaMan 28 on June 5. ChinaMan 28, who later identified himself as Jeremiah Wong, noticed a few key differences between the phone that he thought he had bought, and the phone he had received.
For one, it was running a version of Windows Phone 8 that he had never encountered before; there was a new home screen and an etching with the word "MSFT," on the Lumia's back. To identify this new mysterious operating system, Wong took to Reddit.
The Reddit community quickly dissected the screen images of Wong's phone, identifying it as Windows Phone Blue, a Microsoft prototype OS of the next major update to Windows Phone. The community then broke down the new features of the phone, from a highly demanded notification center to tweaks to the OS's multitasking view.
In an exclusive interview with The Verge, Wong said Microsoft remotely locked his phone after his Reddit posts went live. Microsoft's legal team then contacted Wong (they found his his cell number in one of the uploaded pictures), asking that he take down the images of the leaked system from his Flikr account, where Wong had uploaded the photos, and return the device to the company.
To compensate Wong, Microsoft offered to both reimburse him and send him a replacement phone.
"I was incredibly surprised at the lack of intimidation and even more surprised at their accommodation," Wong said to The Verge.
That stands in stark contrast to Apple's actions a few years ago when an Apple employee lost a prototype iPhone 4 in a bar. A bartender took the phone, recognized its value, and sold it to Gizmodo, a Gawker Media tech publication.
Gizmodo decided to publish the details of the phone, sending Apple and then Apple CEO Steve Jobs, into a very public, very litigious, tantrum.
According to The Verge, the Windows Phone Blue update isn't expected to hit the mass market until early next year.
