Lumia 950

[bluenotesmiley]

I've had enough of my 950. I'm having some of the same issues as you guys on here. BT audio quality dropping to extremely poor if using the phone, even if just the screen is on sometimes. Taking ages for the first photo to take. Not liking more than a few photos to be taken before it says 'saving' (though I'm wondering if that is the SD card). Battery life is abysmal after only 18 months, it has been since owning it for about 8-10 months. Apps slowly leaving as well as MS ditching it. On a positive, it takes good photos and the live tiles are amazing and work properly on mine, although they haven't always.

 

[Sh4veD4ve]

I noticed the writing on the wall, and the fact that WoA was on much higher end processors, and got rid of my 950 in April for an iPhone 7. The 950 was far superior for email (all of my work and personal accounts worked (well) on the same app, with different live tiles for 1) work, 2) combined primary gmail & outlook.com, and 3) junk gmail - but other than that the app ecosystem is what did it in. EnPass was the only real password manager I could use - but it didn't work as well as 1Password on my PCs - my primary usage - so I stopped using it, leaving me with no access to most online accounts when on my mobile. I never thought I'd say it, but the iPhone is a far superior experience. It took some doing to get my mail setup the same way (Outlook app for work, built-in mail client for primary gmail/outlook.com, and gmail app for junk gmail), but it didn't require gmailifying my outlook.com account like Android (gmailifying is a really crappy experience that isn't IMAP - it leaves EVERYTHING on the actual mail server, & just downloads copies to gmail - so to truly delete an email, it takes multiple efforts). Anyway, long story short, I'm a lot more productive while on the go with the iPhone, and the things that WP did way better are more than replaced by an actual app ecosystem that works well. Even if MS comes out with a Surface Phone, I probably won't go back unless there is good UWP app support for everything I need.

 

[Witness]

Have the phone and used it for over a year - love the camera. Then about two months ago, I went back to my iPhone 6.

I put up with the camera crashing the phone - extremely frustrating and embarrassing during social moments. The straw that broke it was that the last update caused text notifications alerts to stop working. Phone rings and other notifications seem to be fine, but text notifications didn't and that's the most important one of them all.

Went back to the iPhone 6 which runs slow over the last couple of updates (expected) so that I would eventually hard reset the 950XL. Not sure I'll be doing it anytime soon. Very frustrating to be a fan.

 

[mymarcio]

Love:
- Outlook Mail & Calendar
- Tiles and Customization
- Background
- Notification Center
- Camera Quality
- Fluidity and speed (for the apps that are optimized)
- Cortana and reminders
- Camera dedicated button


Gripes:
- Photos App

- Camera Roll (applying enhancements to photo, photos usually look better before)

- Accessing Photos & Screenshots (always takes several seconds or hours before these show up on camera roll/photos)

- Messaging (sending texts sometimes freezes, app crashes or has a delay before I can type a new message)

- Restarts when using the camera and loosing the last 3 pictures (assuming what causes this is the applying fixes)

- Lack of apps sometimes (not directly MS fault, but their marketing and support do us no favors)

- Accessing Photos fro Instagram/facebook for example takes for ever to load the photos

- Spotify sometimes loads and plays music, sometimes loads but doesn't play music, sometimes the app crashes on the start up screen and requires a restart

- People app sometimes crashes when opening (requires restart)

- Phone app sometimes crashes when opening (requires restart)

- Rarely the SD card states being corrupted and needs to do a scan and fix (losing pictures)

Whether i'm on the fast ring or release ring a lot of the gripes are the same, so not really sure what other people experience. I have the 950XL. I've been contemplating on changing phones but other than iOS having more apps and android -- there isn't a really great feature on other phones that makes me want to spend the money to switch.

Regarding the rumored Surface phone -- i'm not even holding my breath. Samsung's foldable phone looks interesting and given the price point I might even consider it since I love bigger screens when consuming.

 

[user-774]

Coming from Lumia 900, 925 and 930, I finally own an after market 950 dual SIM. So far, I'm really happy! Picture quality is astounding, the OS is quick and responsive. I'm on slow insider ring, and I'll keep it there, even if it's only bugfixes on all rings from now on.

Because of W10M's design, the keyboard, the easy file transfers, the easy start from backup, password sync and other things, I could never switch the platform. One-click iPhone?? D'uh. Messy Ad-droid? Please no!

That's why I'm hanging in there until an over priced, super niche, overly powerful, silly foldable fluke in the device market pops up...

 

[A B10]

It's a love/hate relationship. I love the UI of Windows 10 Mobile far better than iOS or Android. It's just so much more customizable than either iOS or Android and looks far better as well. I was such a fan that I purchased the 950 the day it came out and even signed up for a GSM carrier to be able to use it, while i kept the family on Verizon. So i was paying $45 extra a month just to have this phone. I finally gave up on it and purchased the Samsung S8 when that came out this year. Why? Because while I loved everything about the hardware of the 950 (added a Mozo back) and the UI, Windows 10 Mobile is just so bug laden and MS just doesn't seem to be able to fix it. I would read the synopsis of what changed from insider build to insider build and MS would fix these arcane bugs that never affected me instead of the awful camera lag (missed tons of shots simply because the camera button press to first shot could take 10-30 seconds depending on the day. As a whole, it just wasn't very responsive. Iris was hit or miss. Battery life was also pretty bad. It would drop low signal calls all the time. I think Windows 10 Mobile is just doing too many things in the background to be responsive.

Then there is the app gap. I didn't realize how much I missed apps like my home security system, wemo, Philips hue, banking and the list goes on and on. MS had a great idea with Astoria to allow running Android apps, but that didn't last long. They gave that up in favor of the supposed bridge to iOS apps and that hasn't moved the needle one bit in terms of adding mainstream apps. If Nadella actually had a brain, the 950 would have been on Verizon and MS would have paid their own programmers to bring the top 100 or so apps to the Win 10 platform. Without apps, Win 10 Mobile will always be a fringe player.

If MS could ever fix the responsiveness of the OS, I would give my Samsung S8 up in a heartbeat for a fluid responsive Win 10 Mobile, but that looks like it will never happen.

So here is my next best solution. Microsoft should build a launcher for Android that can mimic the UI of Win 10 Mobile. I tried to get my Nova Launcher to do it, but it can't scroll a screen and it doesn't have the ability to size the icons like Win 10 Mobile.

 

[hans-martijn]

Using my second 950xl as a daily driver, on production os, since I got tired of resetting my phone to make it work again. I still like windows 10 better than iOS or android, but I don't think I'll be using it for much longer. App support gets worse every day; even the windows central app is better on non-microsoft platforms. Several appliances in my home have apps, but not on windows. Since MS is not supporting their platform themselves, I can hardly blame any developers that they don't support the platform. I'm not sure whether I'd go for a surface phone, because that could be another whim from Microsoft. For some marketing I do I need social media apps. They're either not available or half baked on windows, just like mobile edge. I will try to work with this phone for a while, because I love win10, but MS makes it nearly impossible.

 

[CraigCole]

I feel like Lumia 950/950xl are actually phones that were designed for excellency but were developed poorly, released too early(undercooked both fw,sw and hardware wise) and then abandoned quickly by their creators.

THIS. They should have never been released (at least the way they were) and in my opinion did more to harm Microsoft's mobile efforts than help. They did a great job alienating the most loyal Windows Phone fans.

 

[microsoft111]

I love Hello but, the Iris scanner doesn't work for me since I wear glasses except in a dark room. I would love for it use facial recognition like by using the camera Galaxy has this feature) in addition to speed up and make it work.

Otherwise I look the removable plastic back I've replaced several times since own the phone.

 

[Hooman Purkhosrow]

Dear friends,
I've got my Lumia 950 xl a year a go and It might be helpful to share my experiences. Although there are differences in 950 and 950xl hardware, I think we are mostly suffering from software deficiencies.

The device was slow and it had to think a few second before opening a new application. It sometimes took a long time to wake up and restarted suddenly. The camera crashed after taking some photos and It was totally disappointing.
After a few months I did a hard reset and installed the latest version of windows phone 10 by my laptop. So many problems have been solved and it worked much faster and smoother although I had some problems like battery drainage and crash in some applications again.
Finally I joined to insiders six months a go and amazingly my lumia works very well. I really haven't faced any heat, crash, lag or battery drainage since I installed insider app. However being insider means a lot of Os and App updates that might be annoying for some users which can be solved by set the Lumia to update at quiet hours.
Consequently, Installing new updates may help you to experience a better performance.

 

[Drael646464]

I've had no such issue. Found it to be a lovely phone, running insiders preview.

Occasionally I get, an easily resolvable resume bug, with certain apps. And double tap to wake can be sometimes a bit sluggish. But that's it. I wouldn't mind those being fixed, but they aren't frequent or annoying. Oh, and groove doesn't like Bluetooth disconnections - for this next player is better.

Games well, takes photos well (slow shutter but meh, I don't action shot), battery life is fine (could be bigger but its fine for light use, and I have chargers everywhere anyway), screen is beautiful. From my POV, the much hated feature2, is really something that should have been done sooner - the focus on bugfixes (well there's one feature now) has been very positive for the experience.

I'm the sort of user that browses, uses social networking, navigation, phone/text, plays music and games - very consumption orientated. I've got about a dozen great games on my 950 (games seems to be a strong area considering the size of the app platform - and being most of them are UWP, they can be essentially used "play anywhere style" on other devices), ready to deal with boredom at a moments notice. I've got some photo filtering apps, but I actually prefer to do photo edits on my desktop, seeing as they auto upload to onedrive.

Generally a great phone for the way I use my phone, and I think on insiders preview would probably be great for anyone without niche app uses (like smarthome/smartdevice enthusiast, business travellers, heavy bankers etc). The camera is simply boss, especially for the price of a 950. And performance is very fluid too for the price.

Handy to have continuum too, if for nothing else than portable media playing/netflix

 

[eddydu]

Tried the lumia 950, had a lot of bugs, but was an awesome looking phone. Screen was amazing, camera was off the charts!!! Coming from a 1520 it was definitely a different experience. Unfortunately even until the fall creators update it was very buggy. I switched to alcatel idol 4s and I thought that was a better phone - camera.

 

[anon(50597)]

There seems to be multiple different experiences on Windows updates, which is not a good thing.

 

[Luke Beales]

I got my 950 on launch day with an xbox one and display dock thrown in. The phone has been brilliant hardware wise, but the OS stability just isn't there. Rotating the screen often produces buggy results, and oddly is also the way to solve some bugs. The ecosystems of google and apple are surging ahead, which is a shame as Microsoft has a great grand vision - it's just my confidence in ever seeing it happening is dropping rapidly. I feel if they can pull off the continuum/tablet/phone in one device properly and soon, then they will lead the space once again. I still find windows mobile the most logical to use.

So at this time nearing the end of my 2 years with the 950, I'm undecided whether to wait it out because the hardware is great and there's nothing overly wrong with it, or sell it and go for a cheap vanilla android (nokia?) to take advantage of the ecosystem google provides. I feel like this is where a lot of people sit at the moment. Bring it home, Microsoft!

 

[Michael Bromley]

Have really enjoyed my 950 and profited enormously from it's utility as a business tool fully integrated into my Office 365 systems. The camera has been great, and I love the instant OneDrive integration so that I can take a shot then manage it rather immediately from one of my computers. Other thoughts, pro & con:
- The OS interface is unbeatable.
- The native Podcast app is a bit troublesome w/ all too frequent need to reboot to get it to play a podcast
- Wifi to cellular handoff is a problem, as it clings to wiif while can't stream so I have to turn off wifi which annoying. Wish it would turn off wifi when the signal is too weak to be useful. HEADS UP HERE MS!!
- the audio jack has trouble connecting to external speakers (but never an issue w/ ear buds), cutting or skipping, which is only corrected w/ a reboot.

Overall, I love this phone. Despite some frustrations, as I watch my wife get angry at her iPhone and my kids always have problem w/ their gurgle phones,. I realize that there is no prefect system. Would love a little less imperfect from MS...

 

[vEEP pEEP]

i love my Nokia 930!

Oops...wrong thread....

 

[techiedude007]

Wow, um, I finally found my thread. Everything that users are typing/saying I've been putting up with since almost the first/second update. I've had the 950xl since launch day and it worked perfectly until the first or second update was installed. Now the camera crashes the phone, almost regularly. Bluetooth audio is hampered when you try to do *anything* else with the phone. The battery inexplicably drained out the other morning after only a few hours of use (texting, Groove and OneNote at the gym). The poor performance had me pining for my 1020. Then the strangest thing happened: my 950xl introduced itself to a tile floor, corner first, now it won't boot. So I dug out my 1020, and what do you know. After a new SIM, a charge, and it just works. What a concept for a phone. It freaking works! I forgot how much better the predictive and Swype texting was on the 1020 vs the 950xl. Like **light years** better. Ironically enough, while going through the old pictures on my new old phone, I found a picture of the receipt for my 950xl, and guess what...i bought an extended warranty for it. I don't know if I'll get a replacement or see if they'll still honor a refund. For me the phone is almost that bad. So bad that I'm willing to use a four year old phone with an OS the mfr just stopped supporting last week. I still wish they had released a 1520 with a 1020 camera, I would have bought multiples of that in case one broke. Now instead I've got a phone that was sold to me in working condition, and practically bricked by OS and firmware updates which makes it as physically unusable as when it fell on a tile floor.

 

[youcef_40]

Lumia is like the Alfa Romeo of smartphones it's very personal for me very emotional and it has a lot of wrong things going on with it but it's definitely my best smartphone of all time that I can't recommend to a friend

 

[depirate]

Screen cracks at the drop of a hat.
Have owned two 950XLs and a 950, all have cracked screens from minimal trauma.

 

[mary beth hale]

i love my Nokia 930!

Oops...wrong thread....