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

Anonymous
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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.

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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
jonsie
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Good review of your initial thoughts slight_smile

viridis
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Nice little review.
If you would answer me a question..
Now, I looked at this as a possible purchase due solely to the claims made about its camera.
We all saw the video where he took a pic about 5ft away from some woman and then zoomed in to the crystal clear eyelashes...
Was that a load of nonsense?

Anonymous
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So far I'm going to call BS on their sales talk about the camera. However, I must qualify this by saying that I am a part time wedding and landscape photographer so my standards are quite high.

There is certainly a lot of information captured by the sensor and you certainly could zoom in quite a bit but the quality of the image just isn't any better than something like a Canon g7 compact which is about 10 years old now.
Cleoriff
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Hi @Anonymous Thanks for a great start to your review. Lovely to see pictures and I really appreciated your personal step by step guide for setting up, as well as your initial impressions.

For someone like me, with my limited technical knowledge, I found this an enjoyable read, presented in such a way that I had no problems understanding anything so far.

Anonymous
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Great to hear you enjoyed the review so far. I will update more in a couple of days after more stress testing and getting out with the camera as well.
Cleoriff
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@Anonymous wrote:
Great to hear you enjoyed the review so far. I will update more in a couple of days after more stress testing and getting out with the camera as well.

Good news @Anonymous I love pictures...lots of pictures. wink

jonsie
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It's a shame about the camera, that would seem to be one of the major selling points. I'd love to see some more pictures once you have fully tested it.

MI5
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I'm both surprised and disappointed by the reports of poor battery life.
I've had three WP8 phones and the battery on those will go for days and I was hoping W10 would continue that good work too......
Anonymous
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Windows 10 still seems like it's a work in progress, and it's certainly not as smooth in operation as any of the Apple devices that I've previously owned. Having said that, the Lumia seems more stable than my Surface 3, which is prone to crashing occasionally. But I do like Windows 10, so I can forgive its shortcomings wink

 

On the subject of battery life, I'm guessing that the large AMOLED screen is responsible for the disappointing performance, but it's worth noting that the replaceable battery will fully charge in around an hour, which is all my phone gets before I go to work, and it will comfortably get me through the day (although I appreciate that's dependent on how you need to use it).

PhoneChanger
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Interesting review there, I have been trialing the same device (courtesy of Microsoft this time), and I have been quite pleasantly surprised by the device.

The live photos can be turned off in the camera settings, but it is quite useful in that you can select an image with the best lighting, etc out of the single image it has taken. Admittedly it is a bit of a gimmick just like it is on the iPhone, but Nokia did do this feature long before Apple. I think some people will find it useful.

Image quality is good, on-par with the S6 edge from the samples I have taken.

Battery life is much much better than the S6 and is easily on-par with the iPhone 6. My daily usage has been 15-20 mins of emails per day, 1-2 hours web browsing. An hour of so of social media / youtube, and the odd call / SMS. I have found the phone to still have 50%+ when I get home from work at 6pm having been off the charger from 7am, and thats with glance, WiFi, location all on (bluetooth off).
Toby
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Fantastic initial thoughts @Anonymous and a very thorough description!

 

As @MI5 says, its a shame to hear if the battery life woes. Was there a particular action/app that you noticed drained more battery?

Anonymous
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@PhoneChanger wrote:
Interesting review there, I have been trialing the same device (courtesy of Microsoft this time), and I have been quite pleasantly surprised by the device.

The live photos can be turned off in the camera settings, but it is quite useful in that you can select an image with the best lighting, etc out of the single image it has taken. Admittedly it is a bit of a gimmick just like it is on the iPhone, but Nokia did do this feature long before Apple. I think some people will find it useful.

Image quality is good, on-par with the S6 edge from the samples I have taken.

Battery life is much much better than the S6 and is easily on-par with the iPhone 6. My daily usage has been 15-20 mins of emails per day, 1-2 hours web browsing. An hour of so of social media / youtube, and the odd call / SMS. I have found the phone to still have 50%+ when I get home from work at 6pm having been off the charger from 7am, and thats with glance, WiFi, location all on (bluetooth off).

That pretty much echoes my own experience. The other thing to consider when drawing comparisons with other "flagship" models is price, and I think the Lumia offers excellent value for money.

gmarkj
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the live photo option is similar to the time shift offering on the Xperia Z1 - it takes about 15 photos ranging from before to after you press the button and then allows you to pick the best.

I've never noticed it take up additional storage on the device (maybe me being naive) but have seen all of the shots appear in the google photos app and on the web (leading to lots of annoying extra scrolling - ggrrr).

the screen is a little bigger than the Z1, but at a higher resolution so I'm not surprised at the battery life - admittedly mine is now almost 2 years old but rarely gets through an entire day - off charge about 5:40am and would die about 12 hours later if not topped up.

When I tried the 640, the battery life seemed really good but the screen is both smaller and lower res than the 950 so not a great comparison. But performance was good and phone was responsive to touches immediately. So surprised if the higher spec model is worse (unless W10 has some part in it?).

Look forward to seeing a more in depth view on it.
PhoneChanger
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Something that makes the device look a lot better (in my opinion) is to get the extra row of icons (similar to the 950 XL)

To do this:

Go to System -> Settings -> Display
Where is says size of text, etc change this from the default 400% to 350%, tap apply and the phone will restart
Go to settings -> Personalisation -> Start and select 'show more tiles'
PhoneChanger
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This will give you 4 rows rather than 3
jonsie
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Good tip wink

Anonymous
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When you test the camera, can you post the shot to shot time.  One of the most frustrating things with my nokia 1020 is the lag between shots.  It would be good to know if this has improved.

Anonymous
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To be fair in general business day usage it is probably ok. Being replaceable is certainly handy.
The screen seems to murder it! As does the instagram beta app!
Anonymous
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I have done more testing of the camera and sadly still cant find many positives to mention about it. I expected so much more from it.
Anonymous
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I think the main culprit seems to be instagram. Once the app is loaded (it's in beta so may be a bit of work in progress) the battery seems to take a noticeable hit.
Anonymous
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The shot to shot time isn't actually that bad. It is pretty speedy with reactions, it is simply the quality of the image that lets it down. It is exasperated when trying to edit the images. I will post some examples tomorrow when I get them off the phone but the quality is lower than my older Sony Z1 by a long shot and certainly less than the iphone 6.
MI5
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The Z1 has a superb camera and was always one of it's USP's at the time. Still is hard to beat even today.
viridis
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Quite disappointing to read that about the cam.
The demos at the reveal painted a much different picture.
Anonymous
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It has been an unusually hectic couple of weeks so I havent had a chance to update this review until now.

 

For around two weeks I have used the phone as my 9 to 5 business phone.  Overall I would say as a business related phone it does everything you could ask of it, in one form or another.  

 

Email is handled quite nicely in the Outlook application, the calendar sync's nicely, the phone has a good quality audio and is quick to use.  For day to day operation it works pretty much as you would want it to.  Being only 9 to 5 the battery drain isn't a problem, the camera drawbacks can be overlooked and the lack of applications doesn't cause a worry.

 

Would I recommend the phone as far as business use is concerned, yes.  It interfaces with an exchange based work place very well and the browser is capable to dig through a number of web based systems.

 

What is still a let down -

 

App's!  Or the lack there of.

The window's app store is truly a let down and offers slimmer pickings than Android after the same length of time in existence.  

 

Browser Options - Again the lack of!

My day to day job involves a lot of web based systems, quite often using a multitude of accounts to access them.  Browsers such as firefox and, in particular, Chrome offer full compatibility (and backwards compatibility) as well as account sync and browser history, etc.  The built in edge system is good but lacking in maturity compared to any of the other mobile O/S's.

 

All this being said, the phone O/S got out of my way and allowed me to just get on with making use of it for what I required.  My initial impressions were that the phone would be a nightmare to use for the fortnight but I was left feeling that I had actually gotten everything I wanted from it as a business phone.

 

As a personal mobile I do believe Windows based phones are the wrong choices completely but this is mostly down to the application availability.  The phone itself lives up quite well against the Android based competition, including the higher end androids.  The screen is nice and clear and quite pleasant to watch video on, though I do wonder what benefit such high resoution brings, 1080p is a perfect fit for anything up to a 6" screen size in my opinion.  Certainly there is not much content that can make good use of the available res.

 

Against the iphone I'm afraid there is nothing to draw a user away to the Lumia.  

 

Before anyone starts the fires and grabs the pitchforks, as mentioned earlier in the thread I had been an android user and devotee since the HTC hero in 2009 but the iphone 6 was a revelation for myself.  Each users needs and desires will be different but my own are that the operating system either be helpful for the actions I am taking or get out of the way.  I am long past the need to have desktops set up when all I need is a launchpad for the applcation I actually want to make use of and the iphone gives me that.

 

I will update this with some more photos tomorrow but I do feel more positive as I come towards the end fo the review period.  As above, a good business user phone but not suitable for a personal phone until (if) the app store gets a major push.

Toby
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Great update @Anonymous! Its a refreshing inclusion to mention browser functionality.

Looking forward to seeing the picture quality slight_smile

Martin-O2
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Hey guys, 

 

I've split this review into 2 sections. Part 2 has a different perspective on the handset after a few weeks of use so I think its helpful to split the review into 2 sections. 

 

Part one 2 of the review can be found here

 

Great work @Anonymous!