[Rydsmith]

Since Microsoft is offering the Lumia 950/950 XL with a "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. I got my 950 XL and 950 today and decided to make the XL the primary device and list the 950 on eBay. If it sells then I got an XL for ~$150-20, not too bad. Was going to take a weekend challenge and see if this could become my daily driver.

Turned on the phone, logged into my account(s) and upgraded to the latest version. I then started to install and update the apps.
- 6snap
- Facebook update
- NBC Sports (BPL fan)
- Yelp
- Waze
- Fandango
- The list goes on.

I know that there is a rather large app gap (especially with banking apps and games) but the essentials were there: Hulu, Netflix, Uber and even some of my vacation apps like Delta, Hilton, Marriott. But that's where things started to become a problem. I went to the Store and every time I would try and type an app in search, the keyboard would appear then disappear. This happened over and over and I couldn't search for anything. Then the store crashed.

This started to happen a lot...A LOT, but I got the apps installed and customized my home screen to make it my own.

I can deal with a few crashes and thought nothing of it. I finally popped my SIM card in and then things start to go bad...fast. I restart the phone and send myself a test text, nothing. But then I get the "Test" message. Cool, everything is up and running. Then I get another "Test" text to myself, then another, then another, then another and I get the message that there has been a change in my SIM card and I must restart.

I restart the phone and try sending myself another message of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Nothing. I message my friend over Hangouts to text me and nothing comes in. Doing what any normal person would do, I went to Google to see if this is a known issue and I see that I should check the SIM card settings. I go into the Settings, then Phone and the Settings app crashes. I try to go back in and Settings crashes. I go back in and finally get to go to the SIM card area and the phone locks up and surprise Settings crashes.

I cannot make calls, I cannot text, and I have no data and I cannot access the Settings app to ensure everything is correctly using SIM 1 as my primary SIM card or that the settings are correct. (And yes, I turned off iMessage and had a friend with Android text me to ensure it wasn't an iMessage/iPhone issue).

I put the SIM card back into my iPhone and got the "Test" texts twice and the "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" text as well as the texts from my friend.

I read the reviews that there were so issues with the Lumia 950 XL at launch, but this is unacceptable. This is a consumer device that has been on the market for many months and yet it is still unusable. I will give it another try tomorrow when I'm not nearly as frustrated but I cannot make this my daily driver if it can't even do the most basic of what phones do.

[Laura Knotek]

Welcome to Windows Central.

I'm sorry you're getting crashes.

For your SMS, you'll need to disable iMessage. Otherwise you won't get SMS on a Windows Phone or an Android. How to disable and deactivate iMessage on iPhone or iPad | iMore

[Rydsmith]

"(And yes, I turned off iMessage and had a friend with Android text me to ensure it wasn't an iMessage/iPhone issue)."

[Noob1ee]

Seems like you either got a lemon or something went wrong during an upgrade. You should try factory resetting and start fresh again. Good luck.

[hasasimo]

Yeah, I bought two of these deals and set both XLs up for family members... didn't have these issues. Wonder what went wrong. I should note that the two family members are currently out of town, so I haven't popped in their SIM cards yet. But three days in, everything is smooth with the phones so far.

[Corwin_Amber1]

What Build are you on? You can check it under Settings -> System -> Info. Tap 'More information' there.

[R3mis]

That's basically going from iOS to W10M in a nutshell. I had to even go to my computer to write this, because my phone wouldn't cooperate with me (keyboard disappearing). I hope you learned your lesson with this experience. Cheers!

[Corwin_Amber1]

I am so glad that my device is working perfectly fine despite even being on the redstone branch.

Keyboard disappearing was quite an old bub. R3mis, what Build are you on?

[R3mis]

I am so glad that my device is working perfectly fine despite even being on the redstone branch.

Keyboard disappearing was quite an old bub. R3mis, what Build are you on?

Build .218. I am not part of the insider programme. I have more issues than the disappearing keyboard, though. I am dealing mostly with reboots, about two or three reboots a day. Some app crashes along with some other minor bugs. Lumia 930 - beautiful phone, except the system.

Overall, I am not really happy with Windows 10 Mobile. The uniqueness is gone along with ease of use and reliability. Really contemplating going back to WP8.1 and switching back to iOS eventually. :/

[Stephen Vickory]

R3mis,

I just got my 950 XL yesterday i switched from a iphone 6s plus. and I not having any issues. I am using Tmobile sim in Sim1 slot also.

I think you need to go exchange your 950 XL. you appear to have a bad one.

[v535]

I would try WDRT and sometimes it does wonders.

[kaktus1389]

Make sure your OS is up to date, if soft reset doesn't fix the problem then only solution would be a hard reset.
Did it on my 640 XL right after I upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile and have no issues.

[tweedie]

do you have an sd card? I hear that having the wrong type of sd cards can make it a bit unstable.

[Ten Four]

Not really helpful, but I would suggest next time you switch platforms to try it out on an inexpensive device until you decide if things are for you. You could have picked up a Lumia 640 for $30 and checked things out. I'm currently running W10 on mine and not experiencing those problems.

[TheJoester09]

do you have an sd card? I hear that having the wrong type of sd cards can make it a bit unstable.

What would be considered the "right type" of SD card? Is there a list or anything available?

[Corwin_Amber1]

R3mis is using a 930. So no need to exchange his 950XL or do anything about his SD card (which he would have no place to put in his 930). also he is on .218, most current one.
Also WDRT would not help him, as ATM he would get an 8.1 image that way.

R3mis, you can do the hard way:
Make screenshots of apps and settings, do a hard reset and set up from scratch. do NOT use a backup. THIS does indeed work wonders, as you are no longer dragging 8.1 data from a restore with you. It will take some hours, but I am confident that it will be worth it. Also, consider going to the insider *Release Preview* Ring (and only that one). There you can get 10586.242, which is again more polished. This ring is in no way risky or dangerous, as you are getting the same builds that will go out to retail, only earlier. BEWARE of the slow- and Fast Ring, there be Dragons ATM - Redstone.

Please do tell us what you do and how it went - curious. It is such a pitty if people have bad expierences with Windows on mobile, as it still is a beautiful system :)

[Corwin_Amber1]

What would be considered the "right type" of SD card? Is there a list or anything available?

A known brand for a reasonable price. also, a fast one (nothing below Class 10, Better U1 or even U3). Yes, the phone is not going to have the right reader for it. But maybe the next one. And the included USB3 reader will be able to use it. Nothing below 64GB. ATM 64 GB Sandisks with Class 10 (nothing too fast, but perfectly OK) are to have for 16€ at Amazon.

Sandisk, Transcend are my personal first choices.

[TheJoester09]

A known brand for a reasonable price. also, a fast one (nothing below Class 10, Better U1 or even U3). Yes, the phone is not going to have the right reader for it. But maybe the next one. And the included USB3 reader will be able to use it. Nothing below 64GB. ATM 64 GB Sandisks with Class 10 (nothing too fast, but perfectly OK) are to have for 16€ at Amazon.

Sandisk, Transcend are my personal first choices.

Thanks for the info. I have a 64GB class 10 Sandisk, and I still have issues with reboots and apps crashing. Both on .218 and the latest Redstone. Hard resets haven't helped. :(

[Krystianpants]

First thing you do is go to phone update and get it up to date. I would highly suggest going into the insider "production ring". This is the best optimized and most bug free version.

Next when you go into the store go into the updates section and you will see quite a few updates. I would pause them all and look for store. Update that one first and then it will close. Go back in and wait for all updates to finish. You can prioritize them by pausing and doing 1 at a time. Sometimes all the updates occurring at once cause issues.

Once everything is up to date reboot the phone and then go in and start making any configuration changes. Initially the phone may run a little bit erratically during the first day. At least that's what most of us are noticing when doing updates. Something is happening in the background. So you may get some crashes here and there and odd behaviour and possibly a warm phone. Once everything is settled and you are fully up to date you should be good to go.

When inserting a new sim you need to boot up and eventually phone may give you a message to restart. That's because it gets information from the carrier and then populates the necessary settings. You can check in sim settings to see if things are populated.

IF you insert an sd card format it in the phone itself before using it.

[Krystianpants]

What would be considered the "right type" of SD card? Is there a list or anything available?

I run a pretty lousy 32gig one and it is fine. It's not the fastest but I only install music/videos/documents/media on it. Don't install apps onto the sdcard and you should be fine.

Just remember go to storage and format the card right in the phone!

[midnightfrolic]

Since Microsoft is offering the Lumia 950/950 XL with a "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. I got my 950 XL and 950 today and decided to make the XL the primary device and list the 950 on eBay. If it sells then I got an XL for ~$150-20, not too bad. Was going to take a weekend challenge and see if this could become my daily driver.

Turned on the phone, logged into my account(s) and upgraded to the latest version. I then started to install and update the apps.
- 6snap
- Facebook update
- NBC Sports (BPL fan)
- Yelp
- Waze
- Fandango
- The list goes on.

I know that there is a rather large app gap (especially with banking apps and games) but the essentials were there: Hulu, Netflix, Uber and even some of my vacation apps like Delta, Hilton, Marriott. But that's where things started to become a problem. I went to the Store and every time I would try and type an app in search, the keyboard would appear then disappear. This happened over and over and I couldn't search for anything. Then the store crashed.

This started to happen a lot...A LOT, but I got the apps installed and customized my home screen to make it my own.

I can deal with a few crashes and thought nothing of it. I finally popped my SIM card in and then things start to go bad...fast. I restart the phone and send myself a test text, nothing. But then I get the "Test" message. Cool, everything is up and running. Then I get another "Test" text to myself, then another, then another, then another and I get the message that there has been a change in my SIM card and I must restart.

I restart the phone and try sending myself another message of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Nothing. I message my friend over Hangouts to text me and nothing comes in. Doing what any normal person would do, I went to Google to see if this is a known issue and I see that I should check the SIM card settings. I go into the Settings, then Phone and the Settings app crashes. I try to go back in and Settings crashes. I go back in and finally get to go to the SIM card area and the phone locks up and surprise Settings crashes.

I cannot make calls, I cannot text, and I have no data and I cannot access the Settings app to ensure everything is correctly using SIM 1 as my primary SIM card or that the settings are correct. (And yes, I turned off iMessage and had a friend with Android text me to ensure it wasn't an iMessage/iPhone issue).

I put the SIM card back into my iPhone and got the "Test" texts twice and the "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" text as well as the texts from my friend.

I read the reviews that there were so issues with the Lumia 950 XL at launch, but this is unacceptable. This is a consumer device that has been on the market for many months and yet it is still unusable. I will give it another try tomorrow when I'm not nearly as frustrated but I cannot make this my daily driver if it can't even do the most basic of what phones do.

Sorry you had so many issues. Both my cousins had no issues setting up theirs.

You can use Windows Device Recovery Tool to update firmware and software. Then another over the air update to latest build. Then start personalizing it.

[SammyD97]

Hmm. Is your device up to date? I suggest updating to the best public build and if that's no good, hard reset.

[peashooter14]

The first boot up of a Win 10 phone will take you at least 2 days to get stable. There is a tremendous amount of background poo going on. MMS downloading is the worst, and takes 2 days to get the history flushed so that text message actually flow. It will take a day to download all the app updates after a restore.

Make sure you are on Wifi to minimize your pain.

[Thazal]

If you have a Microsoft store near you, you can set up an appointment with a tech who can take you through the process of moving to windows phone. On release I saw a guy at my local store setting up his entire phone.

Usually if an app crashes I've noticed two things, the app is incompatible with wp10 or the app is being updated or needs an update. Also if you fool around with the sim and text messages enough you'll get multiples of the same texts, I just did this with my wife's when I was trying to load texts from her backup to her new phone. If you can get into cellular and sim go to SIM 1 settings select your carrier profile and hit update settings.

Hope this can help you in anyway.

[br8vhrt]

I have been flirting with switching from my iPhone 6S and tried a 950XL last week.

One thing I noticed was that you need to sign out of iMessage with the SIM card still in your iPhone. I initially signed out of iMessage after I moved the SIM over the 950XL and had no end of issues with undelivered texts. I started again, signed in to iMessage again, reset and updated the 950XL, etc then signed out with the SIM card still in my iPhone, gave it 5 mins with both phones off, put the SIM in the 950XL and everything was working perfectly (well, the texts were being sent and received as expected).

It may or may not help but I thought I'd mention it.