The degree to which the point is missed is tremendous.
What we have here is a modern refresh of the Lumia 920. That much should be abundantly clear. Whilst it's relatively well rumoured that a phone with a few more tricks up it's sleeve could well be coming later in the year, the timing of the 930 is obvious. It's been launched to show off Windows Phone 8.1, and get /that/ OS into the hands of reviewers.
The approach of integrated hubs and experiences just didn't work well in the long run. Baking those things into the OS made it more difficult to update with new functionality without having to push out an OS update. So what we have instead is a whole range of new functionality that arguably should have been there a long time ago.
The idea here is to make a bit of a statement 'look, we can do what those other phones can'. Complaints like 'it doesn't have a notification centre' now go away - but that's fine, because reviewers will always find something new to complain about. Now the complaint is that it somehow Windows Phone 'hasn't stayed true to itself' - as if said reviewers had been praising it all along.
In reality Windows Phone has now taken a big leap forward, and this new milestone is the perfect jumping off point for another 12 months of minor feature pack updates which will keep on making Windows Phone better.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
