Getting rid of my 950xl, anyone else?

[luxnws]

Less than 10 days?

It helps if you look at buying a 950 or 950 XL as enlisting in a hardware version of Windows Insiders. Call it the Lumia Insiders pay-to-play plan. Basically you are paying to be a beta tester. Many video game publishers and video game startups make you pay upfront for beta access. Same thing here. Microsoft marketing genius.

 

[cracgor]

Started this way initially, but will try it again when I get home from work. I'll keep you posted, thanks again for the update!

I've also read you have to hard reset without a backup from scratch. So if one doesn't work, try the other. Its only a couple of hours of your time. I sent my phone back. If it gets worked out soon enough I may buy it again. Otherwise I'm probably going with a Nexus 6P and consider coming back when the OS isn't handicAPPed.

 

[pdch]

Nope. Mine was done twice: First out of the box w/ restore, sucked the battery. Second, hard reset w/ no restore, still sucked. I realize its good to defend an expensive purchase to validate it somehow, but the battery on this thing is horrible, even after the "pray it works and breaks in" charging escapade everyone seems to love to go through.

My battery lasts more than a day on a single charge, and I use the phone quite a bit. Maybe you have something updating or just got a bad battery. I do make sure I actually close programs or web tabs when I am finished with them. Also keep in mind that the first several days cortana and one drive are updating like crazy.

Just as a statistic - I took my phone off of its charger at 7am this morning. I have had around 20 phone calls today, it is constantly connected to my band 2. Numerous text messages have have gone back and forth and I have done quite a bit of email and browsing on it - so it has been used most of the day. I even played wordament for a while which is a known battery hog. It is now 4:30pm and the battery is at 58%.

 

[cracgor]

Less than 10 days?

It helps if you look at buying a 950 or 950 XL as enlisting in a hardware version of Windows Insiders. Call it the Lumia Insiders pay-to-play plan. Basically you are paying to be a beta tester. Many video game publishers and video game startups make you pay upfront for beta access. Same thing here. Microsoft marketing genius.

I agree. But should be like $300-400 to pay to play the beta game. Not more expensive than comparable android phones.

 

[Captpt]

I'm honestly thinking of cancelling my order, a few complaints on a few issues is one thing but reading all the threads here its obvious MS released a unfinished OS, I mean if we were talking issues with the Win10 update sent out for our 8.1 devices that's one thing but the 950XL was designed to run Win10.. Its pretty sad, its like you pay $650 to be a beta tester until a update rolls around which I bet won't be until early 2016.. No Thank you..
Going to sleep on it but chances are I'll be cancelling my 950XL order and stick with my 640XL that runs flawlessly AND gets 2 days out of a full charge and that's with moderate to heavy use..
10-12 hours isn't what I'd call even good battery life, my Note 4 was better then that and I didn't need to shut down services like people are doing here with Hello, Cortana, bluetooth, locations ect to get 12 hours out of their phones.. There's nothing worse then having to be a battery watcher when the late afternoon rolls around, been there with iPhones and early Androids and hated it..

 

[mxzhonkey]

I agree. But should be like $300-400 to pay to play the beta game. Not more expensive than comparable android phones.

PLEASE point me in the direction of a similarly spec'd phone for less money. PLEASE DO IT. Dual Sim Note 5s are $700 on Amazon right now.

Neither the 950 or the XL overpriced, most phones of similar spec are more expensive. Buddy just got a LG G4 which is roughly the same as my 950 (808, 32gb), looked up the price, $615. Not sure how these phones are more expensive then their counterparts in the Android world.

 

[cracgor]

PLEASE point me in the direction of a similarly spec'd phone for less money. PLEASE DO IT. Dual Sim Note 5s are $700 on Amazon right now.

Neither the 950 or the XL overpriced, most phones of similar spec are more expensive. Buddy just got a LG G4 which is roughly the same as my 950 (808, 32gb), looked up the price, $615. Not sure how these phones are more expensive then their counterparts in the Android world.

Clash of the titans: Lumia 950 XL versus Nexus 6P | Windows Central
Starts at $499 for a 32gb model. considering I couldn't use my sd card to install apps upgrading to the 128gb for $650 is a steal.

Also, $650 > $615...mathematics

 

[Dueydoodah]

No frustrations? I have never gotten a phone that did not make me frustrated. They are all subpar in some way or another.

 

[mxzhonkey]

Clash of the titans: Lumia 950 XL versus Nexus 6P | Windows Central
Starts at $499 for a 32gb model. considering I couldn't use my sd card to install apps upgrading to the 128gb for $650 is a steal.

Also, $650 > $615...mathematics

Didn't even think of the 6P, but the 6P is the oddball of comparisons as every other manufacturer isn't even close. It's interesting that the Google store has them cheaper than Amazon, they are close to the 950XL in price there.

Also the $615 was for the comparison of the 950vsG4 not XLvsG4.

 

[Brandon Keenan]

I read somewhere on this forum that it takes a few charge cycles before the battery gets up to speed. If the problem is with the battery, then, its a good thing those are replaceable.

I did about 6 full charge cycles to 'condition' the battery from 100 to ~5%. Didnt seem to help.

 

[Brandon Keenan]

But I'd have to say in this scenario, it's not the OS's fault. It's definitely the screen.

It very may well be but microsoft must have known this internally when testing this phone.

Edit: Did some research on the 1520. Many reviews were giving it around a 10 hour life of regular use. I'm wondering if you're even using your 950 XL and 1520 the same way

Using it the same way with the same apps. Tried first with a restore from my 1520 and from a clean install. Neither made a difference. With my 1520 I could easily take it off my dt-901 in the morning around 8 and come home around 8 and still have around 40-60% battery life.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I'm at 50% battery life after 10 hours. Again, its probably 'low' usage since I've been at work most of the time. But the display is the big eater. That's going to happen on any phone. You can't just say, "oooh, big battery should have more life." no, the big battery is there so that you can still have the same battery life on that giant screen as you can on a smaller phone

Yea bigger battery battery is used to compensate for more performance and such but this is a bit ridiculous. less then half a day of low to moderate use completely negates the point of a portable phone imo. I would rather just use an older phone on a more battery friendly platform (WP8.1) than have to find an outlet just to use it.

 

[phelme]

Clash of the titans: Lumia 950 XL versus Nexus 6P | Windows Central
Starts at $499 for a 32gb model. considering I couldn't use my sd card to install apps upgrading to the 128gb for $650 is a steal.

Yes its cheaper. But I've never considered Nexus pricing as a good yardstick. Google totally subsidizes them and the actual manufacturers make squat. But yep, the 6p and 5x have a good price. (and the HTC One A9 at $399 was too)

 

[Brandon Keenan]

Did you ever solve your emails to load pictures? I just spent hours with customer support trying to resolve this issue as well.. and they didn't have a clue. They were sending around in circles from person to person. They tried having me uninstall Outlook... which is a bit hard to do on Windows 10 Mobile. So they gave me a link to a Win 7 Phone site.

Currently my Lumia Icon loads email images better than my brand new 950 xl.

950 xl:

[url]http://i1305.photobucket.com/albums/s543/ben_schmidt1/169bff08-ce5e-4931-ba19-7e3c057d7215_zpskm0bw2dl.png[/URL]

Icon:

[url]http://i1305.photobucket.com/albums/s543/ben_schmidt1/0e7a2778-7491-4a71-a2b5-2a1899158b05_zpsksyqi8yt.png[/URL]

Same thing was happening to me. No idea why. Tried manually downloading the images and the option to automatically download the full email with images and neither seemed to have an impact.

 

[editguy]

I'm honestly thinking of cancelling my order, a few complaints on a few issues is one thing but reading all the threads here its obvious MS released a unfinished OS, I mean if we were talking issues with the Win10 update sent out for our 8.1 devices that's one thing but the 950XL was designed to run Win10.. Its pretty sad, its like you pay $650 to be a beta tester until a update rolls around which I bet won't be until early 2016.. No Thank you..
Going to sleep on it but chances are I'll be cancelling my 950XL order and stick with my 640XL that runs flawlessly AND gets 2 days out of a full charge and that's with moderate to heavy use..
10-12 hours isn't what I'd call even good battery life, my Note 4 was better then that and I didn't need to shut down services like people are doing here with Hello, Cortana, bluetooth, locations ect to get 12 hours out of their phones.. There's nothing worse then having to be a battery watcher when the late afternoon rolls around, been there with iPhones and early Androids and hated it..

You should do what makes you happy. But, really, I would never base my decision based on forum complaints. It's only natural that people having problems (and some people have problems with every piece of electronic hardware ever manufactured) would be on complaining or looking for answers. I would be on looking for answers, too. But keep in mind that far fewer people who are satisfied will ever get on talking about how satisfied they are. It's just human nature that most of us are more prone to voice complaints than praise.

 

[Brandon Keenan]

10-12 hours isn't what I'd call even good battery life, my Note 4 was better then that and I didn't need to shut down services like people are doing here with Hello, Cortana, bluetooth, locations ect to get 12 hours out of their phones

Exactly! I shouldnt need to disable hallmark features of a phone that make it unique in order to squeak a few more hours out of it.

 

[aitt]

PLEASE point me in the direction of a similarly spec'd phone for less money. PLEASE DO IT. Dual Sim Note 5s are $700 on Amazon right now.

Neither the 950 or the XL overpriced, most phones of similar spec are more expensive. Buddy just got a LG G4 which is roughly the same as my 950 (808, 32gb), looked up the price, $615. Not sure how these phones are more expensive then their counterparts in the Android world.

Blu Pure XL...

Priv screen goes up

 

[VermaEklavya]

It does sound like there is a lot of battery wastage on this phone. It has been a year since my last windows handset, and I was thinking of jumping back in with the 950XL. But reading comments and reviews, it seems like the product is an incomplete release. Significant battery drain on Mobile Data and use of Location seems a little too cumbersome in 2015. More so when most of the services being promoted by Microsoft like Mobile First, cloud integration & syncing, Cortana news & updates, etc require these settings to remain activated while on the go. Say if one has to disable "Hey Cortana" to reduce heavy battery drain, doesn't that defeat the purpose of said feature? Does it justify the odd 3400 mAh battery pack if battery life is still going to suck?

Its either the software is way ahead of its time and something even the current high-end hardware cannot keep up with (hardly), or it is not optimized at release (more likely). Not all apps that drain battery like crazy can be forced shut every now and then. I know zilch about software and hardware development, but I may not be wrong when I say that hardware and apps that take up a chunk of battery, even in the background, need to be taught how to shut down on their own, or hibernate keeping only the necessary features running. Else users should be given a micro level of control to choose which processes they like to run for every app, thus making them solely responsible for their own battery usage.

I guess Microsoft gets bashed more for its shortcomings than its competitors, but then it is only by people who really care about the innovation and progress this company is making. If not us, who will?

 

[elindalyne]

Exactly! I shouldnt need to disable hallmark features of a phone that make it unique in order to squeak a few more hours out of it.

You don't have to... I just spent 10 hours at work. Phone was off the charger the entire time. Used it to listen to Pandora for about 4 hours. Watched a few YT videos, read a few personal emails. My phone is at 70% capacity. All my services are still turned on. Hey Cortana is still on. Windows Hello is still turned on.

I turned off the following apps in Background Apps:
BaconIt
BestBuy
Lumia Creative Studio
Plex
Surfy Browser
Readit
The Guardian
VLC Remote
VLC for Windows

Give the phone a few days to break in. Check your email settings. Check apps that are power hogs (BaconIt I'm looking at you), your battery will be fine.

 

[Captpt]

You should do what makes you happy. But, really, I would never base my decision based on forum complaints. It's only natural that people having problems (and some people have problems with every piece of electronic hardware ever manufactured) would be on complaining or looking for answers. I would be on looking for answers, too. But keep in mind that far fewer people who are satisfied will ever get on talking about how satisfied they are. It's just human nature that most of us are more prone to voice complaints than praise.

True... I was actually thinking members here are more WP savvy and if they're having issues how many non-windows Central consumers are out there who bought one is saying wtf?? lol Point being the actual number of people who bought the XL and are here on our forum is quite small, so if this small percentage of new XL owners here are having so many issues and lousy battery life that can't be a good sign.. I actually just called sales to verify I have 30 days from receiving the phone to receive a full refund.. I'm going to stick it out and keep my fingers crossed that I'm one of the lucky ones who finds the XL performed as I've been hoping.. 2 days from of a full charge I know is already out of the question but a full day (wake to bedtime) I can live with..

 

[Brandon Keenan]

You don't have to... I just spent 10 hours at work. Phone was off the charger the entire time. Used it to listen to Pandora for about 4 hours. Watched a few YT videos, read a few personal emails. My phone is 70% capacity. All my services are still turned on. Hey Cortana is still on. Windows Hello is still turned on.

I turned off the following apps in Background Apps:
BaconIt
BestBuy
Lumia Creative Studio
Plex
Surfy Browser
Readit
The Guardian
VLC Remote
VLC for Windows

Yea it is not required but other users have seen a significant improvement. You apparently were more lucky than with my experience with battery life.