Experiences with Lumia 950 almost 2 years later?

[FryderykChopin]

Hey guys,

I was wondering about returning to Windows Phone. Initially I thought I'd fix my old 920, but then I checked on aliexpress that they have a 950 with a quite interesting 200$ price tag.

So I was wondering if any of the owners could share their experiences after several months of use. I'm looking for these informations:

1) How long have you had the phone (approximately)
2) How's the battery life compared to when you bought the phone
3) How's the phone's 'swiftness' compared to X months ago (I currently own a samsung device which gets progressively slower due to what I strongly believe is a part of planned obsolence. I'm curious how hard are windows devices on that one)
4) How's the Windows 10 generally? I've watched some older video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMNgfEVk8oo) which said Windows 10 is a complete mess. Did they fix the known issues? Is the W10 already usable at this point?
5) Any other difficulties you've encountered after long use?

Thank you in advance for your experiences.

 

[CraigCole]

Hello! It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want a nearly two-year-old smartphone, one that was completely lackluster when new, but to each their own. Here’s my perhaps extreme take on your questions…

1) I’ve had my – or rather a – Lumia 950 for nearly two years. The first one was swapped out with an AT&T refurbished unit because of problems.

2) Battery life is better than early on because Windows 10 Mobile has been updated. This OS was unfathomably bad when initially released, riddled with defects. In fact, it was infuriatingly poor. My phone would randomly restart three or four times a day, plus it would get hot for no reason (Thanks, Qualcomm!), which destroyed battery life. Battery life has also been improved slightly because I bought a replacement battery from Amazon, though it’s still hardly praiseworthy. It chews through battery capacity at a frightening pace doing even the simplest tasks, basically anytime the screen is on the battery is plummeting. Standby battery life also seems bad.

3) Fortunately, the OS has not gotten slower over time, though it’s always been sluggish. Jittery animations, boot times that can be measured with a calendar, apps that take for-effing-ever to open (Hello, Facebook!), laughably slow photo processing, all of this is still ready and accounted for, even on the latest software.

4) Others will surely disagree, but in my opinion Windows 10 Mobile is still crap. Do yourself a favor and stay far, far away. Sure, these woes I’ve dealt with may be hardware related but still, every time I go to do something with my 950 – every day, without fail – it lets me down in some capacity. Last week for instance I tried to take a short video of something but the recorded file was blurry and somehow split in the middle with the top and bottom halves out of sync. Wi-Fi constantly drops out, Bluetooth connectivity is flakier than a fresh croissant (THEY STILL CAN’T GET THIS RIGHT?!), the GPS system is horribly inaccurate (It directed coworkers and me to walk in the wrong direction while heading to a restaurant. It was off by 180 degrees; it LITERALLY could not have been more inaccurate. Fortunately, someone else’s iPhone got us going the right way), voice quality during calls can poor, ditto for cell service, app availability is almost nil and the ones that are offered are inevitably atrocious. The list goes on…

5) W10M and the Lumia 950 are a combination that’s worst in class at everything. Several times each week I need to resist the overwhelming urge to smash my handset or burn it with fire. In my opinion, $200 for one of these is about $199.50 too much. THANK GOD new iPhones come out soon… I’ll be picking mine up next Friday.

 

[Stephen Pedersen1]

1) I've had the phone for about one year.
2)The battery died on me 10 months in so I bought a new battery that cost $30 with shipping on amazon. It really never got bad until it just died on me. Now the battery life is back to fantastic. I've been using it all day since 11am and its 5pm now and at 56%. My battery has never drained unless I leave I never unplug it and still, then, in the morning it will be at something like 15%. Not bad.
3)The swiftness of the phone has only gotten better. It's launch was a failure of epic proportions because Nadella thought it was okay to release a buggy phone. Nadella, who first hand crushed the lumia line can go to hell. Over time, it's gotten smooth, extremely smooth. It is a very rare, very rare indeed with it crashes doing any task, unless your using a crappy 3rd party app.
4)Windows 10 Mobile is great except for the massive app gap and it having absolutely no future things to MS's Nadella who burned it to the ground.
5)This phone can perform all tasks I need very smoothly and efficiently. Whether it's audiobooks, podcasts, music, MS Word, checking News, Twitter, Facebook or otherwise, it does it all for me. I have had difficulties with Spotify though because Spotify no longer has an official app. I've tried a 3rd party app called Spoticast but it's really "spotty". It's not great at all. If your going to listen to music I would say get a MS Groove Music subscription. Seriously consider this. It's about 10 bucks a month. Also, the youtube app sucks, the best thing I can find is a Mytube app which does everything I ask of it. Facebook and Facebook messenger load very slowly... extremely slowly, like 15 seconds slow. Also, I've noticed that MS Windows 10Mobile apps are smaller (megabyte wise) when compared to iOS and Android conterparts. Much of the time MS's own brand name apps are more complex with more features on other platforms.

Final word: MS Will no longer support Windows 10 Mobile in 2018. As it gets updated by MS on a month to month basis this means that the dead app market will have more and more bugs because they never get updated because they know W10M's future is dead. For a $200 I would still buy it though. I would even put an SD card in it and put all your audiobooks and music you can on it. Get a good case too like a tudia. I've dropped my phone countless times and it still chugs along because of it. It's still sexier than iOS and Android.

 

[Elky64]

We do like WM but the negatives for me still outweigh the positives. Front and centre these days has been the limits imposed on what we can achieve, once that happened really makes one question it's usefulness.

1) Into the 9 month of ownership

2) Battery life has been around average and can't say it's any worse, if at all, than many of the other phones I own now. Did recently replace battery as I felt we had some heating issues, think it helped somewhat w/slight improvements in longevity.

3) The phone I'm sure is somewhat better than when we first got it yet would say not like night and day. Strongly feel the 950s speed vs specs don't match, in other words, it is capable of being far better but the OS is its Achilles heel. Have the LG G4 that's very similarly spec'd with the difference between the two being very obvious. Own three Droids (G4 oldest @ 2+ years), consistency (no slowdowns), predictability and fluidity have been their strong suites for me, something I wish WM had but lost hope it ever will.

4) Windows Mobile does feel somewhat better stability wise yet still struggles more often than not, task dependant. Not sure I'd put it in the "complete mess" category but it is definitely lacking, of course that will dependant on your needs and wants as to whether what degree that holds true. For me that is true since the app-gap has become real, and in general many tasks lack that zip and fluidity I'm used to on our Droids.

5) Hate the App Store with a passions due to its inconsistency, slowness and the fact it lacks certain info one would expect to be there. Personally feel OS updates are too frequent and it's a pain going through the process, takes way too long to complete. Have run into instance where Edge, or any WM browser I've tried, has greeted me with "unsupported browser or OS". When you have hit that point, and there's no supporting app, tis the end of the road for you - never experienced such on another device, ever, unless site was down for various other reasons. Apps like FB, Messenger, WC etc don't perform at all the same as those on my Droids. Cortana has done little to impress me, probably due to my country of origin who knows. Phone can have a tendency to heat up under certain condition, my G4 has never gotten as hot and they are both running the 808.

What I like...
* Display
* Camera
* Tiles/live tiles
* Removable battery
* Dedicated camera button

 

[CraigCole]

3) The phone I'm sure is somewhat better than when we first got it yet would say not like night and day. Strongly feel the 950s speed vs specs don't match, in other words, it is capable of being far better but the OS is its Achilles heel. Have the LG G4 that's very similarly spec'd with the difference between the two being very obvious. Own three Droids (G4 oldest @ 2+ years), consistency (no slowdowns), predictability and fluidity have been their strong suites for me, something I wish WM had but lost hope it ever will.

5) Hate the App Store with a passions due to its inconsistency, slowness and the fact it lacks certain info one would expect to be there. Personally feel OS updates are too frequent and it's a pain going through the process, takes way too long to complete. Have run into instance where Edge, or any WM browser I've tried, has greeted me with "unsupported browser or OS". When you have hit that point, and there's no supporting app, tis the end of the road for you - never experienced such on another device, ever, unless site was down for various other reasons. Apps like FB, Messenger, WC etc don't perform at all the same as those on my Droids. Cortana has done little to impress me, probably due to my country of origin who knows. Phone can have a tendency to heat up under certain condition, my G4 has never gotten as hot and they are both running the 808.

What I like...
* Display
* Camera
* Tiles/live tiles
* Removable battery
* Dedicated camera button

Did I write this post, LOL? The points you make are eerily similar to my experience.

W10M should FLY with a six-core processor and three gigs of ram, yet it still randomly chokes doing the most basic of tasks. I can't count how many times my 950's popped up a "Resuming" message when returning to the start menu, like, seriously? All the magic and fluidity of Windows Phone has been killed, replaced with janky animations and questionable performance.

It's the same story with the app store. Searching is horrible. In my experience, if you don't type an app's name in EXACTLY it never shows up. Go look for "Whats," "WhatsA" or even "WhatsAp" and WhatsApp doesn't even show up in the final results... search is useless, from the company that OWNS A MAJOR SEARCH ENGINE! How is this possible?

On the plus side, the 950s camera is very good (if slow), the live tiles are beautiful, a removable battery is super handy (especially when the phone locks up) and I love the convenience of a dedicated camera button.

 

[Elky64]

Did I write this post, LOL? The points you make are eerily similar to my experience.

W10M should FLY with a six-core processor and three gigs of ram, yet it still randomly chokes doing the most basic of tasks. I can't count how many times my 950's popped up a "Resuming" message when returning to the start menu, like, seriously? All the magic and fluidity of Windows Phone has been killed, replaced with janky animations and questionable performance.

It's the same story with the app store. Searching is horrible. In my experience, if you don't type an app's name in EXACTLY it never shows up. Go look for "Whats," "WhatsA" or even "WhatsAp" and WhatsApp doesn't even show up in the final results... search is useless, from the company that OWNS A MAJOR SEARCH ENGINE! How is this possible?

On the plus side, the 950s camera is very good (if slow), the live tiles are beautiful, a removable battery is super handy (especially when the phone locks up) and I love the convenience of a dedicated camera button.

LOL... Twins maybe :winktongue:

Yes it should fly but that is what happens when you have a poorly implemented OS, my G4 showcases what the CPU/GPU and 3GB of ram are capable of when the OS is well refined. Was actually just toying with my 950 this weekend contemplating taking it for another spin. After a few hours of use, and while waiting on web pages or emails to load (usually 3-4 times what it should be), the joys of using it became short lived.

As for the store, simply put "a joke". Could almost write a book on how pathetic and amateurish I think it is so not really worth my while doing it here.

Lost all hope the 950 will be "that" phone when I factor in - where it was, where it is, the amount of updates it has received, and the timeline - just too late in the game to expect it'll get much better in the way of performance/fluidity.

 

[mattiasnyc]

1) How long have you had the phone (approximately)

14 months

2) How's the battery life compared to when you bought the phone

About the same. I don't perceive a difference. It varies greatly on what I do with the phone. Running the screen at 75% and browsing a lot of Edge on T-Mobile LTE in new York will drain it pretty quickly. Setting it to about 35-40% and making sure apps are closed when not used etc makes it last a full work day easily (which obviously means less browsing except for the commute, and more email etc).

3) How's the phone's 'swiftness' compared to X months ago (I currently own a samsung device which gets progressively slower due to what I strongly believe is a part of planned obsolence. I'm curious how hard are windows devices on that one)

To me the experience has improved gradually. It wasn't bad to begin with for me, and it's gotten better. I'd say it's very fluid and responsive today.

4) How's the Windows 10 generally? I've watched some older video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMNgfEVk8oo) which said Windows 10 is a complete mess. Did they fix the known issues? Is the W10 already usable at this point?

It's totally usable. Just two days ago I was with two of my friends who both had the iPhone 6s. One of them had his browser completely freeze repeatedly and hated both that, the unreliability and the ecosystem. He's probably getting an Android next.

When I showed the other guy my phone, since he'd never seen Windows 10 Mobile (despite being in tech) he was pretty impressed at first. He liked the responsiveness of the start screen. He thought the tiles were "ok" at first, but once I showed him that I could pin anything I wanted, including email folders, have live tiles, combine tiles in folders, resize the folders and tiles, put tiles wherever I wanted, change the transparency etc, he was pretty darn impressed. "Where are the apps though?" Swipe left and there's the list. Alphabetically. Click a letter to get the shortcut or search. Now he's more impressed.

I then tell him I use my Bank Of America app and Microsoft Wallet all the time. I unlock with the iris sensor and then pay. And I open the door to my ATMs. "What?" he said, and started browsing his iPhone intensively. Turns out he's got the same bank, but his version of iPhone doesn't allow what mine allows. And for the record, I've now begin using my phone almost exclusively instead of my debit card, including getting money at the ATM.

I told him that obviously there are far fewer apps for my phone, but we both agreed that most people stick to the same roughly 7 apps per day, maybe 10-12 per week. That's it. Email, sms, browser, weather and so on. The basics. Win10M does those things very well in my opinion.

And then add OneDrive and syncing with it, easy access to files and folders on the device, easy hookup tand everything else it does (including Continuum) and I really have to say it's a pretty great experience.

The one thing I would say though is maybe there's something missing that I'm unaware of, and that if I was aware of it I would miss it. Say specific apps for specific businesses or vendors. But right now I'm very happy with the phone and the OS. Not to mention the camera which takes really nice pictures.

I'm keeping my eyes open and if I stumble upon a 950, 950XL, Alcatel or HP X3 at a great price I might get another as a backup since there aren't new ones made. I honestly dread the day I can't run Windows 10 Mobile any longer, that's how much I like the GUI and that's how much I dislike Android / iOS.

5) Any other difficulties you've encountered after long use?

I'd say one thing that I gave up on was Cortana. For some reason my phone doesn't respond to "hey cortana" very well. If I open cortana/search first then it responds, so it seems like a software issue, though it could certainly be a problem with my device.

Also, I found the swipe keyboard to be worse than Android's. I think it may have improved a bit, but there are definitely situations where you have two words that are almost exactly the same, so your swipe motion is almost exactly the same except for like one letter, and yet it gets one word correct all the time but never the other. I've learned to live with it, and I think it's gotten better, but still not perfect for sure. It might be how I do things also, who knows...

 

[farhanaxiq]

1) How long have you had the phone (approximately)

almost 2 years, bought in 2016, manufactured in septemberish 2015 (based on the battery)

2) How's the battery life compared to when you bought the phone

the original battery that came with the phone last 8 hrs until the battery start to die (lasted 8 mths), when it start to die, phone get really slow and throttle down on performance and has an abysmal battery life from 4 hours to 1 hours, replacing the battery give the phone to its original battery life of 8-9 hrs.

3) How's the phone's 'swiftness' compared to X months ago (I currently own a samsung device which gets progressively slower due to what I strongly believe is a part of planned obsolence. I'm curious how hard are windows devices on that one)

the software that came with the phone ootb was buggy, after updating to anniversary and creators update, things get a lot smoother compared to the software it came with.

4) How's the Windows 10 generally? I've watched some older video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMNgfEVk8oo) which said Windows 10 is a complete mess. Did they fix the known issues? Is the W10 already usable at this point?

Most of them has been fixed, but some like edge is terribly buggy like tab straight up vanish, scaling issue. but other than that its all fine

they are quite usable, if you know to get through it like installing 3rd party clients and such.

5) Any other difficulties you've encountered after long use?

The lack of apps is one thing, my bank app has never been updated since 2012 , and stop working and will never get updated.

facebook and instagram are badly optimized

battery issue that i mentioned on the above point

 

[sporosarcina]

I've had mine since launch day. The battery is still good, lasts for a decent fraction of the day, but I also have a wireless charger in my office so I just lay it on there while I am in there. I find W10 to be quick on it, though it can lag a little in Continuum. The back gets warm under load, but that was an issue with all SD808/810 chips. I really don't have any big complaints and still use it as my daily driver.

 

[moru]

I still have a Lumia 950 DS in my pocket as a daily phone.
I've buyed the phone 2 years ago. After one and a half year I've changed the battery on warranty because the battery was started to drop from 30-40% to 0.
The battery lasts for about 6-7 hours, with heavy use, or 12 hours with normal use. Still, the charging is very fast and the battery life is no problem for me.
The phone gets very hot when using it or charging, but it is this way from the first day I've buyed it.
I still have all the apps I need for my daily activityes, but with delay on updates.
The phone is still solid and working good, despite the haotic charging and heavy usage of the phone. I'm not planing to change the phone, and probably I'll will keep the Lumia 950 as long as it work's.

 

[Elky64]

Bought my 950 approx 19+ months ago. Replaced battery in late 2017 and still seems decent.

When I first saw the 950 (in photos) we thought it was fuggly, once in-hand though its appearance and form factor grew on me. Sadly it has never lived up to my expectations due to the OS so hasn't really seen heavy use, think the longest period we've used it as our daily driver in one go may have been three weeks. As of late its been experiencing above normal warmth during light tasks, nothing too extreme yet considering that's over a time period of like say maybe 30-45 minutes it has become disconcerting - a refresh might help (w/heat) but in all likelihood not, just not too interested taking on that task at the moment.

When it comes to performance I'd say it has improved somewhat over the period I have owned it (definitely nothing massive) but then that depends on what area that is being directed at (consistency, speed, web browsing, reliability etc). Looking at it today I'd say some areas have actually gotten worse (latest update).

Now my 950 has just become a toy we take out once in a while to play with, and a conversation piece for those who have never experienced a Windows Phone before.

 

[RTGent]

Hey guys,

I was wondering about returning to Windows Phone. Initially I thought I'd fix my old 920, but then I checked on aliexpress that they have a 950 with a quite interesting 200$ price tag.

So I was wondering if any of the owners could share their experiences after several months of use. I'm looking for these informations:

1) How long have you had the phone (approximately)
2) How's the battery life compared to when you bought the phone
3) How's the phone's 'swiftness' compared to X months ago (I currently own a samsung device which gets progressively slower due to what I strongly believe is a part of planned obsolence. I'm curious how hard are windows devices on that one)
4) How's the Windows 10 generally? I've watched some older video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMNgfEVk8oo) which said Windows 10 is a complete mess. Did they fix the known issues? Is the W10 already usable at this point?
5) Any other difficulties you've encountered after long use?

Thank you in advance for your experiences.

I'm on my 4th 950 and have been using one almost continuously since I got an att one on release date at a Microsoft Store. Last year, I got ripped off by ebay seller onlybargains2011 who sold me what was advertised and packaged as a new, unlocked device that turned out to be neither. Subsequently I bought my current 950 from a WC member here at the marketplace. I have a Sony XZ1 Compact as a backup, though I mostly only use as a music device to connect to my aptX-equipped integrated amp. That lovely phone also has a dedicated camera button -in the same/standard position, and a 3.5mm jack. No replaceable battery either, though.

The presumably-original battery on my current 950 started to weaken about a month ago and I replaced it with one from my other versions, and that is working fine lasting all day. The replaceable battery was a big attraction of the 950, in replacing the 1020, which was the first smartphone I'd ever had without that feature, Yet, because the 950 batteries have worked so well, I never felt a need for a second battery since day one. With prior phones, I had always purchased and carried a spare. I still haven't gotten one, although I'm going to take inventory to see if I do still have another one as a backup.

The reason I still tote a 950 is because it works beautifully and reliably for me. The only app/usability I miss is a music finder like shazam or soundhound --although I always used the built-in Bing function when that was available. I miss that big-time, but it's not enough to move to my Sony. As sweet a device as that is (especially because of the available Microsoft Launcher), it is still not the Windows tiles that fulfill my aesthetic tastes and functionality/ease-of-use expectations. I also tried the LG V30 last year because of its music and camera features, but I couldn't adapt to that at all. I also didn't like the Alcatel Idol either, BTW. I'm not the hit of the party with my Bing music finder anymore, but I'm still the most satisfied smartphone user in my circles.

Bottom line: 950 rocks on, super reliably, still.

P.S.: It's been closer to 3 years since it's 20 Nov 2015 release. And note that I replaced the first two issues because I dropped or crashed them only. I still have the bike-spill one as another backup and a reminder to ride less recklessly. The first one didn't survive at all, although it had survived a toilet bowl dunk.