Nokia Lumia 2520 Commercial Misleads, Plays On Geek Insecurities

Nokia has released a somewhat misleading commercial having a go at a tablet that could be interpreted as an Apple iPad while touting its own, new Lumia 2520 tablet. The ad focuses on the competitor tablet's lack of a keyboard and allegedly shorter battery life. The problem with the ad is that it fails to mention that the attachable Nokia Power Keyboard that makes mechanical typing possible on the 2520 — and extends the tablet's battery life by a claimed 50% — doesn't come standard with the 2520.

Here in Realityville, you have to buy the Power Keyboard separately. That's an additional $149 above and beyond the $399 subsidized, $499 off-contract price of the 2520 slate by itself. Yes, you can get a Power Keyboard for free if you bought or will buy a 2520 between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2, 2013, but that's only in the United States according to Nokia's offer rules. The commercial is aimed at the UK market. Plus, you can get attachable keyboards for iPads as well, so the contention is a bit of a non-starter (though the iPad keyboards don't necessarily charge the tablet as the Power Keyboard does.)

Don't get us wrong, we rather like the 2520, as well as the Power Keyboard. The tablet comes preloaded with Windows 8.1 RT, runs on a quad-core 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 chip with 2GB of RAM, can run for a full day of heavy use with its 8120 mAh battery (which can be charged to 80% in an hour, Nokia claims), and the LTE and software preloads are attractive features as well. The Power Keyboard improves the battery life even further and turns the tablet into a full-on laptop, as it were.

But the ad just doesn't make the distinction between the two pieces of hardware, and that's not cool. Also — if we're to be especially Scrooge-ish this afternoon — the commercial is kind of cheesy. The poor guy with the competitor tablet has some insecurity issues tied to the devices he's running. Just go and talk to the ladies, fella. They don't care about your tablet.

SOURCE: Nokia