[Quick Impressions] Who Just Got The Lumia 950 XL?

[Mohammad Abdul Gaffar]

Have you recently unboxed your 950XL? Or maybe you just had some time to play with it in the store?

What are your thoughts based on your limited experience with it? Initial impressions? What stands out? What do you like or dislike about the device?

Remember, this thread is for initial impressions for the Lumia XL. For full, more detailed user reviews, check out http://forums.windowscentral.com/am...5346-[real-users]-my-lumia-950-xl-review.html

Along with the phone I got a very impressive thin cover which made the phone look amazing. Well. The weight is okay for the phones size. The iPhone 6s is heavier. And thinking about using with with one hand? No problem. Single hand keyboard is available. Then upgrades and appgrades .

Charge your phone for 6 hours initially. (or that's what my phone techie told me)
Well I have a long lost of apps for the moment. If anyone is interested I can share it with you. It's a dual sim phone. I have one sim for the moment. First of all. Install all your necessary apps. Learn the OS if you haven't used it. Spend tome on settings and get all your preferences in order. And start sorting the tiles. Go to Battery saver and switch off unwanted apps on the background. Appraisin, MS poweruser and windows central apps would keep you in track with updates and phone relates news and upcoming / potential apps. It's quite useful.
myTube Beta for windows 10 is a great YouTube Client. Set up all your accounts and synchronize contacts and get your backups. Start using it. Iris scanner is awesome. Well you won't be disappointed. The display is super good. Camera awesome. Enough apps to do what you need. Had a few restarting issues. But hey, No faults. Other than that this baby works just fine.

 

[Mohammad Abdul Gaffar]

YouTube has an awesome client app. myTube Beta for Windows 10. You won't regret. Google+ of course i can't say for sure cuz that could be hard except through a browser. Edge browser is maturing. So hopefully with tome you won't be needing other browsers. Well depends on your preference. Bank apps are very hard very sorry. Syncing old emails make sure you sync it for everything. The default would be sync for 7 days. Unless you change that you won't be able to search your old emails.

Hope it helped.

 

[walterruco]

I have mine lumia 950 xl for about 1 month... and is my best buy since ever... everything is perfect :smile:

 

[DaveGx]

For me it's exactly the opposite. The heavy 1520 with its smooth rounded corners made it tricky to handle for me. The much lighter 950XL with its straight sides is far less likely to slip out of my hands. It's actually one of the things I like most about my upgrade. If they can iron out the kinks in W10m I'll be very happy with it. And they'd better, because by now I'm past my return window!

Ummm, the 1520 does NOT have rounded corners and they're anything but smooth. That was one of my biggest knocks on it was the sharp square corners.

 

[Joe920]

Ummm, the 1520 does NOT have rounded corners and they're anything but smooth. That was one of my biggest knocks on it was the sharp square corners.

I meant rounded sides, contrasting with the straight sides on the 950XL.

 

[Poasis]

Yesterday got mine XL. Switched to windows phone from android (Galaxy S3) and I love it definitely!
Yes I miss some apps, but it was worth to switch.

 

[NSA]

I had a Lumia 1520 for a while, and mostly loved it, but the phantom touch issue popped up, then my kid dropped the phone and shattered the screen last December.

I decided to get the Lumia 950 since I have AT&T and could get it discounted on a 2-year contract. It was.. alright? Windows 10 Mobile was clearly not ready for production use. Had the 950 for about a month before I dropped it on Christmas day, cracking the glass and damaging the digitizer At the time there wasn't any place who could fix the 950, so I decided to use an old 920 for a couple months. Eventually decided that it would be the same price to fix the 950 as buying a "like new" 1520. I got another 1520 off eBay, PERFECT condition. Slapped a good case on it and have been using it ever since. Windows 10 Mobile ran great (mostly) on the 1520, but I was always eyeing the 950 XL.

With the prices going down I finally snagged a 950 XL for pretty cheap online. I was pretty worried that I wouldn't like it as much as my 1520.. but I've been very VERY happily surprised. It's amazing!

The size is perfect.. I have big hands, but always felt the 1520 was a little too big.
The battery seems pretty good. Charge lasts all day, seems to charge quick as well.
Haven't noticed any real heating issues, it gets warm from time to time, but nothing bad.
The iris scanner works a LOT better than my 950 did last year.
Apps, menus, etc all work very fast.
Hey Cortana is pretty great now.
Glad I got it after double tap to wake was added, I use it all the time.
Camera seems good, haven't played around with it too much.
Qi charging is awesome! My 1520's didn't have it.


Haven't gotten to try Continuum yet., hope to get the adapter for cheap at some point.

Not limited to the 950 XL, but getting all the Windows 10 apps in sync with my PC is pretty amazing. Using OneDrive to keep all my music/photos/documents/work in order is freaking awesome. I guess you can probably do this with the Microsoft apps on iOS and Android.. but it's really great. Getting messages etc on my PC while I work is great too. It's nice finally seeing what the idea was behind Windows 10 coming into view.

Can't wait to see what they come up with next.

 

[gbobman]

I've had this Lumia 950XL (and free dock!) for a couple of weeks now. Previously with a Lumia 635 (not with 1 GB memory) that I was using with Win10 beta test (worthless on that device) and previous to that a Palm Pre 2. The Pre is the standard-bearer for a smartphone interface and that is why I chose the 635 over all others as a replacement. The Windows phone platform is a fairly good interface and much better than the others IMO.

The 950XL is not without its flaws. Nothing is. AU smoothed out a lot of issues, ruined Glance functionality, and is generally a positive update.

I do like the phone a lot. Touch accuracy seems to be lower than the 635 was though. Not always, but enough to be noticeable that it isn't my own fault and enough to be irritating. This is without using a screen protector (ordering the Nillikin(?) soon though). The screen is worthy as I do like the contrast levels so it makes up for the loss in color fidelity of an IPS screen. Still needs a physical keyboard (see "touch accuracy" above).

I use Continuum every day on a KVM switch here in the office. It allows me to do my own personal things without the worries of corporate policy. Even though it is limited in functionality, it is glorious. I wish you could adjust mouse sensitivity or even just run apps that aren't formatted for the bigger screen in a window/constrained view but the phone is not far away from me anyway.

TL/DR: I am excited by this phone.

 

[Nowe]

I had lumia 930 for 3 years, phone worked fine but the anniversary uppdate ruined the last bit of focus that the camera still had and because of the age the battery life was only halv a day. And since I'm usually on a go from morning to late at night I had just a paper weight on my pocket after ~17.00. I was thinking about I phones, but they cost so much and I have an I pad and its great pice of tech, it works great, but ?t's so dull, could not see me having same operating system in phone also. I was thinking of honor 8, I think it's quite good value for the money, but when I saw it in a shop I was underwhelmed. Then I saw that Lumia 950 xl had dropped to 298€! I decided to give wp10 another change. I pondered that I don't need snap chat or pokemon go (not teen anymore) and allmost all the apps I need are in wp store. (I live in Finland and in here wp had relatively good market share untill 8 months ago or so, so many local apps are found in wp store (not all ofcorse) ) I got white lumia 950 xl on saturday, uppdated it and downloaded all the apps I needed, haven't had no issues with it so far (well the irsis scanner could work littlebit better). I realy like this phone, and what's great about with this is that I can replace my battery after 18 months of use or so and get the same battery life that I'm now enjoying ) I just ordered Mozo lether wallet for this for 29€ and 128 GB SanDisk Extreme sdcard Really happy with this purchase so far The camera is so much better than in l930 (atleast in low light )

 

[BMT001]

I love my 950 XL DS. I got a great deal from B&H Photo I want to say it was $520 for a wite 950 XL DS, Continium dock and 200GB cad plus free 2 day shipping. I did purchase the dock I guess more just to have its simple to just connect wirelessly. I hit the continuum tile on my phone and in about 5 seconds its pair with my tv and I am off and running. This is my second Windows phone the first being a 950 that I got from AT&T the first week it came out. I really wanted a 950 XL but wasn't going to pay $700 for one. I mainly got the 950 just to use as a second phone because my Note 5 was my daily driver plus I have always wanted to try one so I figured I love Windows 10 so much why not finally try Windows 10 mobile. But I wasn't sure I was going to like Windows 10 Mobile enough to be my daily driver. I have used Android for as long as I remember at least 7 years and have always had a Samsung Note usually switching out every few years or so. I can't say I didn't have some problems at first with the 950 it was pretty buggy. But I hung in there. It took a little time for MS to get the bugs worked out plus I was a fast ring insider which on a backup is fine as a daily driver I don't recommend. But I switched to just preview builds and what a difference. I just loved the OS its so familiar and fluid. The only thing I didn't like on the 950 was the size. I am a big guy with big hands and was so use to a bigger phone. So the prices came down and got my 950 XL. It has been my daily driver for a month or so and its great. I have not had one problem with it. No restarts, every app works, battery life is great everything works as its suppose to. Sure there aren't as many apps but it has everyone I need. And if not just pin the webpage to your home screen. I am converted and won't go back to Android unless they stop production and support all together for W10M.

 

[cvdburgh]

I've had my 950XL for two days now. I'm trying it out as a substitute for my business phone, the Blackberry Classic. My personal phone, which I will keep, is a Blackberry Passport Silver Edition. I also use a Surface Pro 4.

My first thoughts:
Pros:
-gorgeous screen. Really.
-light, almost too light (compared to the Passport Silver Edition with its hefty stainless steel frame)
-fast and fluid (compared to the Classic which is slower and on par with the Passport which is also snappy)
-good integration and quick setup and sync with OneDrive, OneNote and Exchange accounts (even faster than on Blackberry)
-nice MS Office suite
-great camera (again, I'm used to Blackberry and the Passport is pretty good but not great)
-nice cursor on the touch screen keyboard

Cons:
-no physical keyboard (duh, it's not a Blackberry and I knew that going in, but still miss it, for typing and shortcuts)
-flow through UI is not optimal, noteably:
-no HUB for unified messaging (again, that's only on Blackberry) so now I need to spend time checking messages separately
-no Peek and Flow as in Blackberry 10, so more tapping icons to get where I want. Not nearly as idiotic as on iOS, but still...
-no swipes/gestures on the keyboard; again Blackberry 10 preference. Passport has touch capability on the physical keys so that I can swipe in predictive text, or erase a word with one flick or change the keyboard layout with one swipe, not ever breaking flow. All touch Blackberry phones suchs as Z30 have the same principle with even more advanced predictive text.
-no quick way to change messaging profiles, and not a very advanced profile setting at all that I've found. REALLY bad, even worse than on iOS. Again, this is a Blackberry10 strong point with customisation options everywhere, even in how I want to toggle between profiles from the pull down menu. 'Pull down, toggle, done'. WP10 has that for the screen brightness, WHY NOT for profiles? Shouldn't be too hard to do, and it really should be there already. Also, no notification LED, which is another thing I miss from my Blackberry.
-shortage of some apps; I'm used to that, but still miss a couple on WP10. Box.com is one, for archiving and cloud (not just uploading photos) and I couldn't find BBM which is strange as it was there earlier. Not that BBM was very refined on WP but now it seems to be gone. Alas, I don't seem to have the option to run apk's so that I can sideload Android Apps, as I've done on Blackberry10 for some things.

So, I'll stick with this 950XL for a week or two to give it a good workout. The OneNote integration may come in handy next week when I'm on a new work project, combining it with my Surface Pro 4 which I use a lot. And while I have managed to work without that hideous WhatsApp for over two years now, that may change next week as I suspect the team I join then will rely on it. So, the 950XL has the potential to see me past 31/12/2016 in that respect, even if I will be kicking and screaming (internally) the whole time I have to use that service.

Anyway, to those of you who are knowledgeable on this system: is it correct that profile settings are so limited and cumbersome? How do I quickly set the phone to silent/vibrate/ring?
And: box.com and BBM, did I overlook those somehow or are they simply not there?

 

[Aneres11]

Wow.
All those cons... you really think the phone is a good purchase for you?

You did know you weren't buying a BlackBerry, right?
Sorry but I can't help but take the majority of these negatives with a pinch of salt seeing as you can't get any of these features you're dissing the Lumia for on anything other than a BlackBerry device.

I am toying with the idea of picking up a 950 XL myself. I have a 7Plus as my personal device, but I recently broke my 950 which was my second device and I'm having major withdrawals from that camera. I love the Windows OS, particularly the tiles, and the camera is the best camera on a mobile device, no question.

I owned a Note 7 before the recall, and ended up with the 7Plus, and have taken several photos with both. Compared to the 950 they don't come close. The Note 7 was great, but still no where near.
Will hopefully be grabbing an XL this week so will post back once I have done.

 

[RobertP1]

I am on the fence with the 950XL. I want to get back into Windows phone and having a great camera is a must. I am rocking a Iphone 7+ and it is a good but boring phone (I liked my 6s+ better). I want a second phone for business needs. I want the simplicity of Windows phone. Call Quality, Emails, Text, light surfing, GPS, Battery life and a great Camera is what I want..Is the 950XL the winner or should I go X3 ???? Such First world problems

 

[cvdburgh]

Yes, I did know I wasn't buying a Blackberry, which is what I stated myself. So I don't really hold it against the Lumia that it hasn't got a physical keyboard, since it's not that kind of a phone. But, MY experience is that I miss that. As I missed it when I was using a Z10 and Z30. So to me, personally, that is a con.

But the other stuff, apart from a notification LED, is software. And I really feel that it could be better, with this kind of solid hardware ready to power that. Unified inbox like a HUB is pure software, anybody could make that if they wanted to. But that is perhaps a difference in vision between Blackberry and MS. Could be that MS considered it but had good reason not to implement.

However, the one thing that amazes me is that whole notification profile thing. That is something that should really just be there. It is something that so many people have to cope with a couple a times a day, every day. And it is already there for screen brightness, so they know how to build the interface, how to make it toggle like that. Take it a small step further and you REALLY improve the experience by a lot. I can't be the only one that feels that way, surely?

So, to answer your first question: no, I am not yet sure if this phone is right for me. Which is why it is an experiment. As I stated quite clearly. So it will have a two week trial period and perhaps I'll sell on the Classic and keep this one, or sell on the Lumia 950 XL and look elsewhere. Priv, perhaps.

Wow.
All those cons... you really think the phone is a good purchase for you?

You did know you weren't buying a BlackBerry, right?
Sorry but I can't help but take the majority of these negatives with a pinch of salt seeing as you can't get any of these features you're dissing the Lumia for on anything other than a BlackBerry device.

I am toying with the idea of picking up a 950 XL myself. I have a 7Plus as my personal device, but I recently broke my 950 which was my second device and I'm having major withdrawals from that camera. I love the Windows OS, particularly the tiles, and the camera is the best camera on a mobile device, no question.

I owned a Note 7 before the recall, and ended up with the 7Plus, and have taken several photos with both. Compared to the 950 they don't come close. The Note 7 was great, but still no where near.
Will hopefully be grabbing an XL this week so will post back once I have done.

 

[Aneres11]

I am on the fence with the 950XL. I want to get back into Windows phone and having a great camera is a must. I am rocking a Iphone 7+ and it is a good but boring phone (I liked my 6s+ better). I want a second phone for business needs. I want the simplicity of Windows phone. Call Quality, Emails, Text, light surfing, GPS, Battery life and a great Camera is what I want..Is the 950XL the winner or should I go X3 ???? Such First world problems

Well from what I've read, the HP does no have a camera anywhere near on par with the Lumias. But not an awful lot does.

I have a 7 Plus myself and I really like it, but the camera is not as good as I expected it to be, and I miss having a second device with another operating system to toy with.

I thought about he Xperia XZ as I need a phone with a good camera, but the reviews of this device are middling to good and I feel like I may get fatigued with it fairly quickly.
I foolishly got rid of my 950 a month ago and regret the day, which is why I'm now looking for an XL to pick up to use alongside my 7 Plus for business purposes.

I also find Windows 10 to have a great operating system which I miss tinkering around with.

 

[RobertP1]

Well from what I've read, the HP does no have a camera anywhere near on par with the Lumias. But not an awful lot does.

I have a 7 Plus myself and I really like it, but the camera is not as good as I expected it to be, and I miss having a second device with another operating system to toy with.

I thought about he Xperia XZ as I need a phone with a good camera, but the reviews of this device are middling to good and I feel like I may get fatigued with it fairly quickly.
I foolishly got rid of my 950 a month ago and regret the day, which is why I'm now looking for an XL to pick up to use alongside my 7 Plus for business purposes.

I also find Windows 10 to have a great operating system which I miss tinkering around with.

You can get a 950XL on Swappa for under $300 and in almost new condition

 

[Aneres11]

I'm in the UK but that is a good deal!!
I'm looking to buy direct from Microsoft as the Display Dock comes with the device from them.

 

[Rasahi]

I have lost my L1520 and initial i was planning to buy L950XL after that. But with the HP Elite X3 coming i thought better to wait for HP Elite X3.

I have wait for about three months now but can't wait again. So if the surface phone is true. I think i better go for L950XL for now and wait for surface phone, rather than spend a lot for HP elite X3. I hope I am making a good decision.

Nice to see positive post on L950XL.:smile:

 

[Rasahi]

I have lost my L1520 and initial i was planning to buy L950XL after that. But with the HP Elite X3 coming i thought better to wait for HP Elite X3.

I have wait for about three months now but can't wait again. So if the surface phone is true. I think i better go for L950XL for now and wait for surface phone, rather than spend a lot for HP elite X3. I hope I am making a good decision.

Nice to see positive post on L950XL.:smile:

After waiting for too long for HP Elite X3. Finally bought L950 XL instead. And wait for Surface Phone if only will exist.

 

[scadaman29325b]

I want to believe! I'm trying real hard!

I had the 920 (I think it was) and loved it. Before that I had a BB Slider, Torch maybe. There was a 2-week period of an iPhone4, that REALLY spass'd me out.

So:
BB?
BB Torch Sprint/Nextel
Iphone4 2 wks ATT
Nokia 920 ATT 2-3 yrs
Iphone6 Verizon 22 mths
And for the last month, a Microsoft Lumia 950XL.

I haven't tried the dock yet, been to darn busy at work.

First impressions are lasting, and they are not good.

It did have a familiar feel of the 929's WP8 OS. And then I noticed a hesitation between changing apps. And then the lack of apps. None that are absolutely needed. But some that I used often.

The biggest things I learned, MS phones is not up to date. And changing OS is a pain!

Here's my notes:

Missing apps:
Dashlane password padlock
Tyler work orders
Work
Inspector
Esri Collector Survey123 Explorer
Color Browser
Life360
Founders Credit Union
Trimble Unity
Amazon movies
Kanban


Buttons are slightly to small, esp w a jelly cover.
I MISS the home button And finger print. (Iris does not work.)
Feels good in my hand
It has a Swipe kybd on w10 phone
I like the email favorites
I can make email Groups now.
Noticeable screen lag

Ttyl, Phil.