Microsoft Offers Lumia-Fitbit Flex Bundle, Forgets It Just Launched Own Fitness Tracker

Here’s some exciting news if you’re in the market for both a new smartphone and a fitness-tracking wristband: AT&T has a deal right now where you can pay $99 for a shiny new Nokia Lumia 830, and with that get a Fitbit Flex wristband, which costs $99 by itself. That sounds like a great deal: unless you’re part of the team that just launched Microsoft’s own fitness-tracking wristband.

Of course, the price alone would keep Microsoft from giving away their new Microsoft Band with the purchase of a new smartphone: it costs $200, being a pseudo-smartwatch as well as a tracker. The Fitbit Flex doesn’t have a display at all, but has four little lights that indicate how far you’ve gone toward your step goal. Useful, but not the same as skimming your e-mail inbox, as you can do on the Microsoft Band.

With that in mind, this may not be a case of Microsoft snubbing its own product, as PCWorld put it, but the timing is rotten. Unless you were in the market for a fitness tracker that doesn’t strap e-mail access to your wrist or cost $200, we suppose. It could be that AT&T devised this promotion by itself, but that seems unlikely.

If you’re interested in the Lumia/Fitbit bundle, it will be available from AT&T starting on Friday.

Microsoft snubs its new Band, bundles Fitbit Flex with new Lumia phones [PCWorld]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist