An Indian site's 'reviewing' of the Nokia Lumia 800 phone purely on its specifications was a strange thing to do - but anonymous commenting apparently from Nokia and Microsoft staff didn't help matters

A Nokia employee and, apparently, another from Microsoft have been caught posting anonymous comments boosting their product on a review of the new Nokia Lumia 800 phone using Microsoft's new Windows Phone software.

The review, posted on the Moneylife.in site in India, was not based on a hands-on review of the product but only its technical specifications, in which it was compared principally to Samsung's Galaxy S Plus handset.

The reviewer, Yogesh Sapkale, concluded - perhaps brutally, since he hadn't laid a finger on the phone - that " Although Nokia sees its Lumia 800 to be a competitor to Apple iPhone [sic], it is nowhere near the niche product. In fact compared with iPhone, the Lumia 800 can be termed as 'noPhone'."

A number of commenters on the article were unimpressed - including one who called himself Harish. "What an crap review!! it's one of the best phone available, iphone is so dumb compared to this.... Guess some one is paying you lumpsum, congrats..", he wrote.

He posted his comment from the iP address of 192.100.117.41 - which belongs to Nokia.

Another commenter calling himself Aditya Agrawal wrote: "dude, gone are the times when actual consumers just use to care about the technical specificiations of mobiles. today, people want devices which are beauitful, fast and easy-to-use. for most of the consumers, it does not matter if the phone has 512mb or 1gb ram. if the 512mb performs better in real-life, that't the one customers are gonna prefer. just a small advice [sic], go to a store and use windows phone 7.5 for 10 mins, the last thing you will care is whether the phone has a single or a dual core."

Agrawal posted from the IP address of 207.46.55.31 - which apparently belongs to Microsoft. (That IP address seems to have been used to make a number of unwelcome edits to Wikipedia; many have been reverted.)

A number of other commenters were - to say the least - nonplussed at Sapkale's decision to "review" the phone based only on its specifications (although it's worth noting that some western gadget sites aren't above writing "first look" and "review" pieces which do exactly the same, but without the disclaimer).

Sapkale, who revealed the data about the users' IP addresses in a followup post, justified his unusual approach to reviewing it on the basis that he was doing a feature comparison for price-sensitive consumers. "India is a very price sensitive market when it comes to spending hard earned money," he wrote. "This is the mistake many manufacturers, especially from the western countries, has made in India. Obviously they are still paying the price for this overlook. Most Indians prefer to save money and then spend it rather than taking credit for a smartphone that may cost them a month's salary. It is the same reason why iPhone 4S, which is available at Rs42,000" - equivalent to £534, only slightly more than the UK price - "is still unable to see better sales in India."

Nobody has come out of the episode looking good. Sapkale was accused of breaking his own site's privacy policy by posting the IP and email addresses of the commenters, while the commenting duo's failure to declare any interest looked, at best, like astroturfing.

(You can read my review of Windows Phone Mango running on an HTC Titan; and Vic Keegan's and Juliette Garside's reviews of the Lumia 800.)