Got my X3 Today, shipping back tomorrow - Why YOU should stick to your 950 (XL)

[Laura Knotek]

I didn't know there was one for webOS - kinda lost track of it after HP. Who has it now, LG?

Also, it isn't on par with the other MoNa sites, very empty-looking

WebOS is dead as a smartphone platform. There aren't any new devices, just whatever used devices are still out there. LG is using webOS for its TVs.

 

[Lumious]

Hey guys and gals. I want to tell you a little about my experience with this new overpriced, half baked disgrace. Ok, I exagerrate, but just slightly so... This is my experience and you may or may not agree, but hopefully some will take a small thing away from this post.

I bought it 4 days ago from HP.COM, paid the $40 shipping fee for overnight lightning speed shipping and got it this morning! Ahmm, $890 shipped to my door OMG!

First, the box... It is entirely too big and simply obnoxious. The presentation is awful. It felt as if though they reused old boxes from a larger device like a printer, made some cardboard cut-outs to for the phone and accessories and threw the cables and the supporting documentation underneath in no particular order. The phone was on the left, with its cables and documentation underneath. The charger had 'protective' wrapping that seemed like it was melted into the charger with a heat gun and took some work to get off.

The middle of the flat screen tv box had a decently packed dock, and underneath, in the pocket below, a bunch of oversized cables and bent paperwork. I think it was thrown in there by monkeys.

The right side hid a nice flap, with a pocket equally as large as the other, and once opened, revealed... emptiness. Nothing there except dead empty space mocking you.

I turned the phone on and waited for it to boot up. Before I did anything else, I updated the software to redstone 2. (Apparently AU will be available on the 13th). Once updated, I did a hard reset and began from scratch. I played with the phone and coming from a 950XL it instantly felt familiar.

For the positives:

1. The screen is incredible. The colors, sharpness, and overall quality, to me, seemed just a tad bit nicer than the 950 XL's screen. The screen does no exhibit that weird greenish/bluish hue when tilted at an angle away or toward your eyes, and it did not exhibit that annoying white letters turning brown when scrolling against a black background. The phone was 'as fast' as the 950 XL. Not any faster or slower.

2. Speakers sound nice, but stereo isn't quite balanced properly, with the bottom speaker louder than the top... just felt awkward.

3. Once upgraded to insider stable, fingerprint works great. Not instant like an iPhone or Nexus 6, but completely acceptible, and very accurate... but read the 2nd part to this below in my negatives.

Negatives:

1. Camera - regardless of what others may tell you, the picture quality is not on par with the 950 or XL. Detail is nowhere near, and dark scenes look plain bad.

2. Build quality - the bottom plastic speaker grill may have looked great in promotional videos, but in reality, it looks like it was an after thought. It does not sit flush, isn't perfectly straight across, and looks as plasticky as it feels. Worst part of all, when you run your fingers between the silver grill and the screen, you can feel the sharp edges making it feel 'cheap'. This, in my view, is unacceptable for a $800 device.

3. Fingerprint doesn't work (but we knew that), so I did an insider trick and got the most recent insider public release installed. This made the fingerprint work quite well (read above in positives) but sadly, the update killed my camera app. It made it sluggish to pan around and restarted the phone as soon as you snapped a pic; front or back cam.

4. Slippage - in my many years with just about every single flagship from all the Android boys, Blackberries, as well as Windows phones, I've dropped my phones, without lying probably 5-7 times.

I managed to drop this within the first few hours, being very careful. It just slipped right out of my hands and hit my wood floor. The body took the hit very well and showed NO marks whatsoever. If you get this phone, get a non-slip case.

5. Screen protection. GET A PROTECTOR. I applied a skinomi type wet apply self healing screen protector (because of curves) but only after 2 hours of use. Guess what? I wore my business work shirt, the type I wear on a daily basis, and put the phone in my front shirt pocket for about 2 hours prior to applying the protector. What did I find when I went to apply the screen protector? 3 scratches. I don't mean micro scratches, I mean scratches as if though i scraped sand on it. The coating is TERRIBLE and will not protect your screen from daily use, not even light daily use.

I will stop here, as I dont want to depress you any more and I already packed it up and am applying for a refund (minus my $40 crazy must have now fee).

These are my final findings:

If you have a 950/XL, KEEP IT. There is absolutely NO reason to 'upgrade' to this thing. If you don't have one and are thinking about which phone to get, buy a 950/XL NOW, since they're $499 and offer a free dock. When you weigh the price, build quality, removable battery, performance and general OS stability and usability, it is a no brainer choice.

Personally, my ride with the 950 series is over as of next week as I will be buying the iPhone 7 Plus on day one. That doesn't mean that I hate Windows, in fact I think the 950 is FINALLY usable after the AU update and a great phone at a great price, however, I must move on as I always do, but will be getting the surface phone IF it ever surfaces, lol.

I will also be getting the new MacBook Pro when that comes out and selling my Surface Book, on which I wrote this tonight (the surface book, by the way, is the most solid piece of computing equipment I have ever used, and right up there with a macbook pro in terms of build quality).

Hope some of you can take some things away from this, and if you have questions, I will gladly answer them.

Thanks for reading!

I'm glad i didn't waste $800 on this thing. I am so happy with my 650. It is the best phone i have ever owned, my 950 (XL) is sitting in a drawer and i haven't looked back since.

Plus i save $650 bucks with this beautiful sexy white thing only costing $150 on Amazon brand new/.

 

[ttsoldier]

I'm glad i didn't waste $800 on this thing. I am so happy with my 650. It is the best phone i have ever owned, my 950 (XL) is sitting in a drawer and i haven't looked back since.

Plus i save $650 bucks with this beautiful sexy white thing only costing $150 on Amazon brand new/.

Ok...

1) Didn't know it was 150 on amazon. Thanks for that!
2) Why do you prefer the 650 over your 950(xl)? I don't understand...

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I'm glad i didn't waste $800 on this thing. I am so happy with my 650. It is the best phone i have ever owned, my 950 (XL) is sitting in a drawer and i haven't looked back since.

Plus i save $650 bucks with this beautiful sexy white thing only costing $150 on Amazon brand new/.

and what are you doing with the 950xl? :smile:

 

[MDK22]

What he ^^^ said, what's wrong w your 950XL?

 

[Lumious]

and what are you doing with the 950xl? :smile:

using it here and there for Continuum and thats baout it. I will probably through the sim back in the phone in a few months when (if) i get tired with the 650

 

[Lumious]

What he ^^^ said, what's wrong w your 950XL?

Nothing i just prefer the 650 over the 950 for a lot of reasons.

 

[Lumious]

Ok...

1) Didn't know it was 150 on amazon. Thanks for that!
2) Why do you prefer the 650 over your 950(xl)? I don't understand...

Yep i think it was like 153 with no tax. Just go to Amazon and search Lumia 650 and it will be one of the first 5 results. Black is cheapier around 149.

I prefer the 650 over the 950 for these reasons...

• It is the only lumia to have a white front facing screen. Which i think looks sexy as hell like and i phone.
• It has aluminum trim to make it feel more premium with chamfered edges.
• It is much thinner and lighter than the 950 xl is and i think it is the lightest lumia ever produced at 122g. I don't even know of any Android phone that is that light.
• It is nicer and easier to hold in the hand the 950 XL. Even though i like the screen size on the XL holding and using the device is akward but with this 650 for some reason its very easy and i can reach all parts of the screen something i couldnt do even with the 929.
• And lastly for some reason it has great battery life even with that small 2000mah batter. Probably due to the 720P display but you would never know it with the OLED technology, and it looks a milion times better than my 822. 1440P is nice but it is hardly noticably different than the 650s 720P screen. I found the battery life to be much better on the 650 compared to my XL.

Thats all i can think of for now.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Without pictures of the scratches, I'm not going to believe the claim that a shirt pocket left deep scratches in the glass. That's just illogical, and given you'd already said you dropped the thing, it doesn't seem like I'm going to buy that claim.

Also, if you're going to knock the build quality of the HP, then I think it's fair to note the creaking chassis of the Lumia 950 family, it's horrendous. The buttons on them aren't very good, and the placement on the XL can also be a bit odd. Overall, my 950's build quality is probably a 4/10, maybe worse, and the XL isn't majorly different, beyond the buttons placement, so IDK how you could sell its build quality as anything better.

 

[Player Piano]

Without pictures of the scratches, I'm not going to believe the claim that a shirt pocket left deep scratches in the glass. That's just illogical, and given you'd already said you dropped the thing, it doesn't seem like I'm going to buy that claim.

Also, if you're going to knock the build quality of the HP, then I think it's fair to note the creaking chassis of the Lumia 950 family, it's horrendous. The buttons on them aren't very good, and the placement on the XL can also be a bit odd. Overall, my 950's build quality is probably a 4/10, maybe worse, and the XL isn't majorly different, beyond the buttons placement, so IDK how you could sell its build quality as anything better.

In all fairness it is quite easy to stop the creaky back on the 950. I took an old Lumia back cover and peeled off the spongy sticker thing that helps keep the battery in place and strategically cut it and placed it near the bottom of the cover where the creaky comes. Done, problem solved and now couldn't be happier with the 950 build quality. I had to ruin an old cover but saved me a ton of mental anguish.

 

[Danobe]

LOL, as if Apple's quality is particular good. People just convince themselves that it is, regardless of plugs becoming loose, batteries becoming "pregnant" (i.e. bulging), and so on.

Anyway, it doesn't sound like you actually using your computer and phone for work, but rather as fashion accessories. You ditch your Surface for a MacBook.
To me, it sounds like you were looking for an excuse to move on to another fashion accessory. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't get why anyone would buy the X3 and expect a camera as good as the 950/XL, when it's obvious it won't be. And now you're moving on to an iPhone 7 because the X3 didn't meet your requirements - something you could have seen by perusing the spec sheet.

I guess you will be happy in Apple-land and find all sorts of excuses for their product's shortcomings. No minijack? "Nah, it's okay, you can buy an adaptor for your headphones". 12MP camera? "Nah, it's better than the Lumia". low resolution? "You don't need resolution on your phone" and so on.

But a product from a third party manufacturer where the speaker grill has a sharp corner? "Let's drop the entire OS and ecosystem, and while I'm at it, I will buy into Apple's ecosystem and buy one of their laptops aimed squarely at consumers of media".
Sounds like a plan. As if you hadn't bought into the myth of Apple ownership already and had made your mind up.

 

[alodar101]

Thank you. I appreciate your feedback. However, nothing in your feedback will keep me from buying the device. Your feedback seems focused on the boxes and location of the cables. The device description describes every single device released in the last few years. many of us have not lost sight of the listed scope of this device. I have a 950xl, an iPhone 6s Plus, and a Galaxy 6 Edge. I'm keenly aware of the differences between devices and the individual nuances of each.

l look forward to receiving this device, hopefully this week. I even look forward to the box.

PS

 

[rafepurnell]

How did continuum perform?

 

[Jcmg62]

3 paragraphs I know I spent too long on the boxing, but in reality, it IS the first thing we look at and open in our excitement for the device itself. I know, I know, don't judge a book by its cover... but in reality most do, hence the proverb!

I absolutely agree with this, packaging and presentation is everything when it comes to technology.

The "user experience" starts with the unboxing. Apple nail this part of thier overall marketing strategy. Unboxing an Apple device is incredibly exciting.....and I say this as someone who has no interest in Apple products at all.

Why HP would ignore something as reasonably straightforward as good packaging? That's just laziness on their part.

They need this sort of feedback.

 

[winboy]

Thanks for your review but I'm still planning on replacing my 950 XL with this HP Elite this fall.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I absolutely agree with this, packaging and presentation is everything when it comes to technology.

The "user experience" starts with the unboxing. Apple nail this part of thier overall marketing strategy. Unboxing an Apple device is incredibly exciting.....and I say this as someone who has no interest in Apple products at all.

Why HP would ignore something as reasonably straightforward as good packaging? That's just laziness on their part.

They need this sort of feedback.

have you seen the packaging for their laptops? It's nothing to be excited about. If packaging and presentation wow you more than the actual device, then I don't know what to say :grincry:

 

[Danobe]

The only thing about the packaging that I worry about is whether or not the device I have was protected well during transport. That's it.

Some people, though, save their packaging, watch unboxing videos, and even have their packaging on their shelves. It's ridiculous.

If I go to a supermarket and buy food, of course packaging plays a part to "entice" me. Be it bright colours, "eco" colours or whatever. Of course, they're playing a psychology game there, and it works. But on tech? Seriously, the moment the tech is set up and I can see it working, the boxes are thrown out (because it's easier to return in its original packaging if it's a lemon).

 

[Jcmg62]

have you seen the packaging for their laptops? It's nothing to be excited about. If packaging and presentation wow you more than the actual device, then I don't know what to say :grincry:

Will have to agree to disagree with you on this. There's a reason why company's like BMW, Mercedes and Tesla put so much thought into designing their showrooms.

It's for the same reason that Breitling, Tag Hauer and Rolex sweat over their packaging.

It's for the same reason that Apple spend millions of Dollars and many months planning their packaging (Branding in Packaging: Lessons from Apple's Master Marketers)

Packaging is a huge part of branding and sends a very, very clear marketing message.

Product satisfaction starts from the very second that the customer picks up the box.

This is branding 101. And actually, it's one of the easier parts of the customer experience to get right. HP will be aware of this.

To sell an expensive device and then wrap it in something cheap and tacky is a waste of a good branding opportunity

 

[Skippy07]

Speaking of WebOs and headphone jacks (or the lack there of), I had forgotten that the Palm Pixi didn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack until Derrick Kessler mentioned it on Twitter yesterday.

I'm not sure why Derrick would say that. I'm looking at a Palm Pixi now and it does have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Even plugged in a pair of headphones to make sure it actually is 3.5mm.

-Skippy

 

[sinime]

I'm not sure why Derrick would say that. I'm looking at a Palm Pixi now and it does have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Even plugged in a pair of headphones to make sure it actually is 3.5mm.

-Skippy

Ah, I got it wrong, it was the Veer that he posted a picture of... it had a proprietary magnetic connector for charging and audio.