First bad review of the 950

[anon(8981967)]

MS literally destroyed nokia's legacy in the lumia line. Im disappointed tbh

You are damn right. Nokia was great hardware producer and also they were able always to provide good software stack above basic OS. MS responsibility was just to provide good OS. It looks that now, when MS bought Nokia they are finding very hard to be good on every level - HW / SW stack / OS.

 

[GSOgymrat]

"Windows 10 Mobile: bugs abound." That is the criticism that concerns me the most with these reviews. I have little patience when devices don't operate the way they should.

 

[Slovenix]

The review is pretty objective..

 

[KimRM]

. MS needed a huge hit here, but clearly didn't do enough to get it.

Well, no. MS have stated times and times over that this device is for the enthusiasts and fans.. I don't think they needed a big hit. I see this device as the beginning. Like the first Surface Pro was the beginning for that device-family.

 

[KimRM]

... and I don't think MS could possible budget or expect that this phones would sell through the roof and demolish Samsung and IPhones markedshare. That was never they dream. I don't expect users that are not experienced with the MS eco to fully enjoy this phones either right away. But for people coming from WP8 devices it certainly is a great device.

 

[dannejanne]

iOS 9 was very buggy also upon release and frankly it still is. I have a iPhone 6S+ next to my Lumia 1520. The bugs in iOS drives me more insane than the bugs in W10M does at the moment. iOS 9 has had a lot of sound bugs, including notifications from ALL apps won't make a sound like every 5'th time or so. Volume goes up & down by itself for different sounds/apps. Took long for them to fix that. The UI still has weird bugs specifically on the homescreen that make animations very choppy from time to time. It's been badly optimized overall. Not until not in iOS 9.2 beta 3 that I use some of the more worse bugs are solved. Still has some UI bugs though.

So WM surely isn't exclusive being released with bugs. Android 5.0 Lollipop had a pretty severe WIFI bug when it was realeased as well as memory leak bug that took them a while to fix.

Point is, today it seems more standard than exception that new mobile phone systems has obvious bugs when released. WM should not be treated differently because of that.

 

[Ogdin]

I think they where referring to the fact that the fingerprint readers in recent phones are a lot faster to unlock than the iris scanner.

Posted via my Moto x

 

[elindalyne]

I'm just going to leave this here....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwTR7z57wVk

 

[LumiaWorld]

You are damn right. Nokia was great hardware producer and also they were able always to provide good software stack above basic OS. MS responsibility was just to provide good OS. It looks that now, when MS bought Nokia they are finding very hard to be good on every level - HW / SW stack / OS.

I agree with this. I was a proud Lumia (note: not Nokia) user during the days of 920,1020,1520, and even 930. Lumias back then were just so beautifully crafted. From the design to its features, everything just screams QUALITY.

I don't know what the hell happened with the 950 and 950 XL.

 

[uselessrobot]

iOS 9 was very buggy also upon release and frankly it still is.

iOS 9's bugs are a far cry from what I'm seeing with Windows 10. Apple has been smart enough to leave the core experience largely untouched. And while they're slipping, the OS still feels polished. Microsoft, however, decided that they needed to overhaul every little thing and in far too many cases, for the worse.

The problems I'm encountering aren't bugs for the most part. It's a widespread of lack of polish and changes that don't improve the experience over what I had in WP 8.1. The OS doesn't even get the basics right. Touch is extremely twitchy, even on the home screen where it occasionally misreads swipes. The difference is glaring compared to my Lumia 920 which offered fluidity and precision comparable to an iPhone.

Sadly, every time I lean towards keeping the phone I encounter a new source of frustration; the latest being Cortana's awful new web search and a ridiculous inability to save images from that search like I could previously.

It seems that Microsoft allowed feature creep to spiral out of control and decided to cut their loses when they realized they weren't going to meet their deadline. I also wonder if Microsoft outsourced the entirety of Windows 10 for mobile. It's got that sense that while everything works to spec but nothing feels quite right.

Perhaps the strategy is to bide time until Surface Phones arrive next year. But in the meantime I don't see how the platform isn't going to do anything but hemorrhage users. And that means that the platform gap is going to persist for the foreseeable future.

It pains me to be no negative because I really want to support the platform. Frustratingly, for a platform that was supposedly intended for the fans it feels more like an insult.

 

[adigawi]

I think that the best move would be to allow unhappy users to revert 950 &950xl to Windows 8.1 and wait for improved w10m version...

 

[Krystianpants]

I think that the best move would be to allow unhappy users to revert 950 &950xl to Windows 8.1 and wait for improved w10m version...

I actually can't stand windows 8.1 after using windows 10. Was using my brothers to back up his stuff and just can't go back to it. My phone doesn't really have any bugs in the latest build (830). I have had runemals crash on me during launch if too many tasks are in the background, closing them fixed the issue. So not a big deal. But I'm hearing way more bugs on the 950. The build is different but just find it odd they released it without at least an initial update during activation to maybe include the bug fixes the latest build has. Either way hope the 950 xl experience is better. Sort of glad it's coming to Canada a bit later as there will be reviews before I pick up my unit. What I'm most curious about is the heating issue. But the benchmarks are also horrible. Keep in mind that if this is a driver/software issue it's not a quick fix to squeeze performance. I understand if it was a bit shy of the others but it gets destroyed.

 

[RoieK]

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Continuum makes it the first flagship for Windows 10 Mobile | PCWorld

PCworld review "...But the performance, at least on the Lumia 950, is otherwise everything you?d expect of a finished OS...."

 

[adigawi]

I watched pocketnow review and they mentioned that during a 20min of simple text reading battery dropped by 10 or 12%? Do you think that this may be truth?
I really can't understand why all the flagships must have QHD battery-hungry displays with a 5 inch screen! For me FHD is more than enough...

 

[MikeSo]

I watched pocketnow review and they mentioned that during a 20min of simple text reading battery dropped by 10 or 12%? Do you think that this may be truth?
I really can't understand why all the flagships must have QHD battery-hungry displays with a 5 inch screen! For me FHD is more than enough...

I agree. I'd happily take a 720p screen (that's what we used to have on TVs!) if it meant a much better battery life.

 

[MikeSo]

It's got that sense that while everything works to spec but nothing feels quite right.

I agree with this. But the thing is, I LIKE the new things in W10M enough that I don't want to go back to WP8.1. It's rough around the edges, but things like the new action center, the new voice dictation keyboard and the new settings are things I use almost every single time I pick up the phone now. They are worth it to me, and I think ready for primetime. I wish the visual flourishes of the OS gave a better "feeling" though. :/

 

[Zachary Boddy]

Tired of all the bad press against Microsoft. Microsoft actually did pretty good with this launch and with Windows 10 Mobile. No it's not perfect but good gosh neither is Android 6.0 Marshmallow or iOS 9. iOS 9 was far more buggy right after it released!
Everything that I've seen suggests the Lumia 950 is a great, solid phone with a fantastic screen, fantastic camera, smooth performance and solid build quality. Some sites just refuse to accept that Microsoft can actually do something right.

 

[madwillow]

I stopped by AT&T yesterday to see the Lumia 950. Impressive screen and a good feel. I've been using a 925 for a couple of years and it worked flawlessly out of the box and continues to do so. I use it as a serious communications device for voice, texting and email. Was truly looking forward to an upgrade, but I can't take a chance on messaging & email crashing when communicating with clients. If I spend $600 for a phone, I expect it to work. I'm encouraged that so many in these forums feel that Microsoft is already hard at work fixing these "little glitches". I hope you're right. I would love to have a 950. I'll keep checking these forums and later reviews. Maybe things will get better.

 

[ntice_521]

And really we're in 2015 and no other platform vendor provides an elegant screen projection solution let alone working over it. Tbh, continuum is one of those "simplest ideas are usually the best ones." We will see who's laughing in the end.

I wouldn't call it elegant, but you can mirror android on your TV via Chromcast. And use keyboard and mouse (USB or bluetooth). This all works on a $50 android tablet...

 

[scanper]

iOS 9's bugs are a far cry from what I'm seeing with Windows 10. Apple has been smart enough to leave the core experience largely untouched. And while they're slipping, the OS still feels polished. Microsoft, however, decided that they needed to overhaul every little thing and in far too many cases, for the worse.

The problems I'm encountering aren't bugs for the most part. It's a widespread of lack of polish and changes that don't improve the experience over what I had in WP 8.1. The OS doesn't even get the basics right. Touch is extremely twitchy, even on the home screen where it occasionally misreads swipes. The difference is glaring compared to my Lumia 920 which offered fluidity and precision comparable to an iPhone.

Sadly, every time I lean towards keeping the phone I encounter a new source of frustration; the latest being Cortana's awful new web search and a ridiculous inability to save images from that search like I could previously.

It seems that Microsoft allowed feature creep to spiral out of control and decided to cut their loses when they realized they weren't going to meet their deadline. I also wonder if Microsoft outsourced the entirety of Windows 10 for mobile. It's got that sense that while everything works to spec but nothing feels quite right.

Perhaps the strategy is to bide time until Surface Phones arrive next year. But in the meantime I don't see how the platform isn't going to do anything but hemorrhage users. And that means that the platform gap is going to persist for the foreseeable future.

It pains me to be no negative because I really want to support the platform. Frustratingly, for a platform that was supposedly intended for the fans it feels more like an insult.

Windows 10 was a massive target. MS were focusing on desktop and XBOX and IOT and Hololens. Mobile looks like it was last on the list.

Not forgetting MS laid off about the half the phones team (again) in the last few months.