Returning my 950 tomorrow :(

[ashram]

Holy...will you guys drop this liquid cooling thing? It's been stated a thousand times that only the XL has it because 808 does not get that warm.

i don't think people ever will.... it will be asked over and over again, because of the way MS announced it.

 

[uselessrobot]

I'm on the 5th day with my Lumia 950. All-in-all, it's not a bad phone. Unlike most, I like the design and the OS hasn't really giving me major problems. It's mostly just the ongoing stream of annoyances, and occasional issues. Nevertheless, the entire time I've been wrestling with the idea of returning the phone; the Nexus 5X being the likely replacement.

I realized that, had I never owned a Windows Phone I'd probably think the 950 and Windows 10 is pretty good. Assuming, of course, you approach the platform with an open mind and ignore the app store situation.

The catch is that I've stuck with the OS for 3 years and I'm aware of the history prior to that. Microsoft is starting over for the third time in 5 years. While I realize that it's not a true reset, from the perspective of consumers and developers it nearly is. In that time both Android and iOS have seen mostly incremental updates. Those updates haven't brought about upheaval, relatively speaking, and have allowed Google and Apple to focus on refinement. Not that they're perfect, by any stretch, but they're a lot further along and offer more robustness in a few key areas.

So I can't escape the feeling that I'm back in 2012 with my Lumia 920. While I'm confident that Microsoft will work to improve Windows 10 I don't want to be stuck in the same situation a year or two from now. It's very tough, because I still believe that the OS than the competition in many ways. The competition, however, has become increasingly alluring.

 

[feereless]

I'm on the 5th day with my Lumia 950. All-in-all, it's not a bad phone. Unlike most, I like the design and the OS hasn't really giving me major problems. It's mostly just the ongoing stream of annoyances, and occasional issues. Nevertheless, the entire time I've been wrestling with the idea of returning the phone; the Nexus 5X being the likely replacement.

I realized that, had I never owned a Windows Phone I'd probably think the 950 and Windows 10 is pretty good. Assuming, of course, you approach the platform with an open mind and ignore the app store situation.

The catch is that I've stuck with the OS for 3 years and I'm aware of the history prior to that. Microsoft is starting over for the third time in 5 years. While I realize that it's not a true reset, from the perspective of consumers and developers it nearly is. In that time both Android and iOS have seen mostly incremental updates. Those updates haven't brought about upheaval, relatively speaking, and have allowed Google and Apple to focus on refinement. Not that they're perfect, by any stretch, but they're a lot further along and offer more robustness in a few key areas.

So I can't escape the feeling that I'm back in 2012 with my Lumia 920. While I'm confident that Microsoft will work to improve Windows 10 I don't want to be stuck in the same situation a year or two from now. It's very tough, because I still believe that the OS than the competition in many ways. The competition, however, has become increasingly alluring.

the only thing i can tell you is that the hardware is there. its the software thats the current issue... Software is easily fixable, hardware is not. i give it 2 months for msft to get it in gear

 

[EMINENT 1]

The competition, however, has become increasingly alluring.

Maybe if you're using a mashup of different devices and stores. Probably more so for some than others. However, not to me as i'm happy they've achieved this task of one core os i've been waiting on for years. This is the same vision they've had since 8, but it just took them forever.

The only alluring thing for the other camps are apps. Apps I don't need or use. The benefits of one os and ecosystem on my pc/phone and Surface FAR outweigh any pretty little metal on a phone and some silly disappearing message app. W10 will be on 1 billion devices one day and that number alone should be enough for devs to concede into a bit of coding for a mobile counterpart.

Those facts alone are enough for me to consider the others a non-starter. I have no intention of using a separate laptop/tablet when I can have one, so why bother with that money draining uselessness on a phone that has no ties to my pc/tablet?

 

[jeffaz76]

My 950 was getting hot the first few days. It seems to have cooled off. Turning the screen brightness down helped. There might also be an issue with 5ghz wifi. Switching to my 2.4ghz may have helped. Hard to tell though, because might just be the device settling down. I had some negative thoughts at first and returning it crossed my mind because of heat and other things. Might as well give it as much time as you are given to return it, unless it is unbearable. There is enough good going on with the 950 that it is worth seeing if the issues work themselves out in a few days. It's gotten better every day and now I'm very positive about the device the more I use it.

 

[elindalyne]

Nothing is going to come remotely close to the heat produced by my 920 with GPS on... You could burn your hand with that thing.

 

[William Sanderson]

It's not an issue, my 920 and 830 do this. The screen shuts off if it detects something close, like the side of your head, but also if you cover the front sensors. It's by design.

Yap, that is a feature of the Proximity Sensor that turns the screen of so you don't hit a button while it's up to your ear.

 

[Jazmac]

Are you exchanging it OP?

 

[mariusmuntean]

Guys, so many workarounds for the heat issue...what other phones have these problems??? I've never heard of such silly things: let it settle for a few days, 5GHz wifi band causing the heat, etc etc. NO other has such problems, and it's not the phone here, the device itself is ok, the OS is a total failure because it's not even close to being polished! what on earth does the email syncing interval has to do with heat?? or phone being slow?? I've had on my 930 running 8.1 two push email accounts, skype active in background, facebook messenger and whatsapp also and there were no problems at all!! Stop judging the device itself because the only culprit here is the buggy OS! and the fact that those who flashed the windows image on the devices are probably amateurs or using cheap stuff! Isn't there a way yet to reflash the windows 10 image on the 950? by windows phone recovery tool? or latest NCS even if the 950 is no longer Nokia.
Flashing manually the ROM on the phone using a good usb cable and NOT windows 10 on the desktop could solve a lot of issues...well part of them. If the OS itself is still buggy there is nothing much you can do, but at least flashing the firmware could solve some troubles.

 

[jeffaz76]

I take back suggesting the 5ghz WiFi was causing heat issues. It is working fine on my 5ghz band. Any device can get hot for awhile. It's certainly not specific to Windows 10 mobile. My 950 is running cool now. Is 10 perfect? No, but neither is the first new version of android or ios. They always have issues too that get addressed with patches. Does that mean total failure? No and neither is 10. It is a suitable release but could use some polish.

 

[willboyce]

It doesn't

Posted via the Blackberry Priv

 

[William Sanderson]

I take back suggesting the 5ghz WiFi was causing heat issues. It is working fine on my 5ghz band. Any device can get hot for awhile. It's certainly not specific to Windows 10 mobile. My 950 is running cool now. Is 10 perfect? No, but neither is the first new version of android or ios. They always have issues too that get addressed with patches. Does that mean total failure? No and neither is 10. It is a suitable release but could use some polish.

Sounds 'like you're keeping your 950 and worked through the burn in stage(kind if a pun) with it. Look for an update to the OS before long!
My bad Jeffaz that was meant for the op.

 

[pdch]

The heating issue for the first few days is most likely from Cortana "learning" about you. It is much more prevalent with WM10 than it was with WM8.1. When I first upgraded to an icon on 8.1 (went straight to Cortana enabled 8.1), I didn't really notice the phone doing any of the initial background stuff. I later upgraded to wm10 - and then had to get a new icon a couple of months ago after my first one took a nasty tumble and cracked the screen. When the new phone came in, I initially thought it was defective because it was almost uncomfortable to hold from the heat. It was also extremely laggy. I have a friend with some dev tools who hooked it up and we saw a TON of background process continually downloading info and updating (could definitely see Cortana services popping up). After about two days, the process stopped, Cortana had a lot more info on me and my surrounding area, and the phone hasn't gotten hot since.

 

[uselessrobot]

Guys, so many workarounds for the heat issue...what other phones have these problems???

Nearly all phones on the market have issues with warming up; I've seen complaints about it on everything from Samsung Galaxies to iPhones. Back when I first noticed my Lumia 920 running hot while gaming I learned that the problem was also present on Android phones running the same hardware. Snapdragon processors simply seem prone to running hot.

Hell, it's the whole reason why the 950XL has liquid cooling. For the past year there have been widespread complaints of the Snapdragon 810 in that phone throttling performance because of excessive heat. The new cooling feature is Microsoft's attempt to address that problem.

As I've pointed in other threads, my Lumia is no longer getting hot like it did on the first couple of days. It still warms up with some apps and games in particularly, but nothing I'd ever consider excessive. And it's nothing like I experienced with my old 920.

Critically, we don't even know what part of the phone is warming up. For me the heat always seemed concentrated around the battery which leads me to speculate it was related to break in.

 

[Skyway]

Critically, we don't even know what part of the phone is warming up. For me the heat always seemed concentrated around the battery which leads me to speculate it was related to break in.

Yes we do. It's the 6 core processor. You can't have that many cores and have it not heat up. The CPU is located along the left edge of the phone (if you are looking at the back of the phone). I've seen the FCC pictures and it's right next to the battery.

 

[ChrisG_MS]

The OS will keep getting better. I love the phone and I'm hoping they deal with all the issues you mentioned in the coming months...

 

[Skyway]

Guys, so many workarounds for the heat issue...what other phones have these problems??? I've never heard of such silly things: let it settle for a few days, 5GHz wifi band causing the heat, etc etc. NO other has such problems, and it's not the phone here, the device itself is ok, the OS is a total failure because it's not even close to being polished!

Not true. My girlfriend's LG V10, with the same processor, gets just as warm if not warmer under similar use.

 

[phelme]

Not true. My girlfriend's LG V10, with the same processor, gets just as warm if not warmer under similar use.

Michael Fisher at Pocketnow says every 808 based phone he's used gets warm, if not hot. Enough so that he's thinking of doing a piece on it.

 

[rich4A1]

I don't know how much of it is by design, but my experience with buying a phone from a Microsoft Store is also far from ideal. The rep was reasonably nice, to the point that I decided to buy a phone. Once that happened there was no support whatsoever. They didn't attempt to help me on anything. When I asked about changing my SIM card, they asked me to go to T-Mobile to get it done. On the other hand when I bought a Surface RT years ago, they were so nice to help me set it up and teach me all the new gestures, while I was actually in a rush.

 

[RTGent]

If real, I'm glad you feel better now. If real, you got a bad 950 issue; and at a bad store, or with a bad associate, or both. I bought mine on Friday and had a very different experience as I've reported on other threads. My associate worked with MSFT to activate it and ATT to change over the SIM from my 1020. He personally read the 950 tiny numbers to ATT, waited for MSFT and ATT to text security codes to my 1020, and until ATT called me back on the 950. He also advised me that I have 30 days to enjoy and try out the 950, and encouraged me to return for an exchange for a 950XL or unlocked device if I decide I want to try or opt for one of those which they expected this Friday.

My 950 gets barely warm on heavy usage, and only got truly warm the second day when >6000 tracks downloaded automatically to my SD card on Saturday. I'm expecting a couple of cases to arrive tomorrow, so that I won't even notice barely warm. Not warm AT ALL listening to music, and ZERO blackouts, pauses, or other nonsense.

On this 5th day of ownership, I expect the 1020 to become a dedicated 8.1 photo device, and the 950 to become my daily device in 2016 and beyond.

Best device knowledge and good fortune to all.