cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Try the Tech : Microsoft Lumia 950 - just a bit too soft so far! (Part 1)

Anonymous
Not applicable

With just over 24 hours under the belt with the Lumia 950 I thought I'd throw up my initial thoughts on the device.  

 

The device is quite large, not far off the Sony Z1 for example and not as nice a fit in the hand as an iphone6.  It is too large for one handed use if you want to get your thumb to reach all of the screen without doing some hand gymnastics.  

 

Weight is on the light side for its size but it feels well put together.  The all black case and minimal exterior buttons ensure that it seems business like and ready for the journey a mobile phone will usually go on.IMG_1375.jpgThe device was well packaged but easy to access.  Packaging is always important as it sets the tone for starting to use the phone.  In the box is a short welcome guide, charger and extra USB lead for use with a computer.  The phone needs to have its back removed to add the sim card to it, soemthing I haven't had to do with a phone in about three years so it was quite handy to have a little blue arrow sticker indicating the best point to lever the case apart.

IMG_1391.jpg

Once the SIM card was installed and the battery and back put back in place the first snag hit!  The Windows 10 O/S had started up and seemed to be going through the full set up process but hung immediately at a screen stating that it was getting things ready!  Ten minutes of waiting later and I decided rebooting was in order.

 

Second go round and everything was working correctly.

IMG_1405.jpg

The system collected the relevant sign ins for Microsoft products, asked if I wanted to auto upload photos to OneDrive, etc.  The initial start screen then appears just like the start menu on Windows 10 desktop which I have to admit to finding quite easy and straightforward to use.  Positive moments here then, thinking all was going to progress well.

 

However, Windows 10 seems like Android about three to four years ago.  Think early version 4 android.  There are frequent stutters on the system.  You press the start button to go home and the phone seems to think about it before it actually does anything.  By comparison an iphone 6 seems like the button is directly connected to the phone, it does what you want rather than seeming to do what it wants!

 

Teething problems possibly!  It is my first use of a Windows phone after all.

 

Getting to grips with the hardware I was looking forward to trying the camera as Lumia's have always had a great reputation.  The Zeiss lens was a further draw as this should provide for better contrast and colour rendition.  The reality though is similar to my first impressions of the rest of the phone - underwhelming.  

 

IMG_1417.jpg

 

Firstly, live images.  The camera starts capturing prior to you pressing the shutter button and slightly after so you get a very short bit of video instead of the photo itself.  I am sure in marketing rooms this feature seems brilliant, in reality it is just a bit wasteful fo storage when you only want the main photo.  It really doesn't bring much to the photo application in my opinion.  

 

Secondly, the image quality.  It just isn't there.  My most recent two phones have been a sony z1 and an iphone6.  In comparison to either of those sensors the 950 is like looking at a compact camera from about 9 years ago. 

 

The image shows pixelation, there are artifacts around straight lines towards the edges of the images.  The colours are quite good but overall the image is simply not what I had hoped for.  I need to get out and shoot in the outdoors to see what it can do but so far it isn't setting my world on fire.

 

Now to the battery life.

 

The phone went on charge last night at abotu 4pm and didn't get turned on again until just before 8am this morning, certainly long enough to get a good charge in it.  Today it died after just over 13 hours.

 

I would like to say that this was 13 hours of hard use but no.  I decided to trial the phone as my daily work phone and used it accordingly.  This included a couple of times checking emails before and after a meeting, three phone calls, a couple of pages browsed on the internet.  I loaded instagram beta and loaded one photo to my feed and checked my calendar.  All in all a very easy and light use day by my standards.  

 

By comparison my current phone, an iphone 6 will get heavy, heavy use through the day including camera, internet, email, youtube, sky movies, podcasts, etc. and will still be fine through until half way through the next day.  

 

It's not looking good for Windows so far.

 

I have a lot of further testing to do but so far I can't say I would be breaking down any doors to get a windows based device.  

 

I plan on doing a stress test with the device and putting it through the normal usage pattern my iphone would go through to see just what the battery can stand.  I also want to dig through the settings further to see if the stutters can be ironed out.  Sadly the continuum feature requires other hardware as this seems like a great feature but will have to go wtihout being tried out.

 

One other feature which I must comment on, the windows store!  When I say the O/S feels like stepping back a few years with android, the app store feels like going back to 2009 when I got my first HTC Hero and android offered not much in the way of add-on software.  Microsoft really do need to do something about the apps offered as it is quite a weak store at present.

 

The final point so far is this.  The good point of the windows phone environment appears to be its interoperability with the windows 10 desktop environment, where software you use on the desktop can be used on a mobile phone.  However, all the good things here - outlook, word, excel, onenote, powerpoint and wunderlist are available as very good and useful apps on the two largest phone platforms.  It leaves you seriously questioning why Microsoft have bothered keeping on developing their own mobile offerings instead of simply concentrating on improving their already excellent apps on other platforms.

 

I will update more as I continue the journey!

 

Stephen.

 

*Part 2 of the review can be found here*

26 Comments