My trip from iOS (iPhone 6s) to Windows 10 (Lumia 950 XL).

[midnightfrolic]

Since Microsoft is offering the Lumia 950/950 XL with a "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. I got my 950 XL and 950 today and decided to make the XL the primary device and list the 950 on eBay. If it sells then I got an XL for ~$150-20, not too bad. Was going to take a weekend challenge and see if this could become my daily driver.

Turned on the phone, logged into my account(s) and upgraded to the latest version. I then started to install and update the apps.
- 6snap
- Facebook update
- NBC Sports (BPL fan)
- Yelp
- Waze
- Fandango
- The list goes on.

I know that there is a rather large app gap (especially with banking apps and games) but the essentials were there: Hulu, Netflix, Uber and even some of my vacation apps like Delta, Hilton, Marriott. But that's where things started to become a problem. I went to the Store and every time I would try and type an app in search, the keyboard would appear then disappear. This happened over and over and I couldn't search for anything. Then the store crashed.

This started to happen a lot...A LOT, but I got the apps installed and customized my home screen to make it my own.

I can deal with a few crashes and thought nothing of it. I finally popped my SIM card in and then things start to go bad...fast. I restart the phone and send myself a test text, nothing. But then I get the "Test" message. Cool, everything is up and running. Then I get another "Test" text to myself, then another, then another, then another and I get the message that there has been a change in my SIM card and I must restart.

I restart the phone and try sending myself another message of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Nothing. I message my friend over Hangouts to text me and nothing comes in. Doing what any normal person would do, I went to Google to see if this is a known issue and I see that I should check the SIM card settings. I go into the Settings, then Phone and the Settings app crashes. I try to go back in and Settings crashes. I go back in and finally get to go to the SIM card area and the phone locks up and surprise Settings crashes.

I cannot make calls, I cannot text, and I have no data and I cannot access the Settings app to ensure everything is correctly using SIM 1 as my primary SIM card or that the settings are correct. (And yes, I turned off iMessage and had a friend with Android text me to ensure it wasn't an iMessage/iPhone issue).

I put the SIM card back into my iPhone and got the "Test" texts twice and the "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" text as well as the texts from my friend.

I read the reviews that there were so issues with the Lumia 950 XL at launch, but this is unacceptable. This is a consumer device that has been on the market for many months and yet it is still unusable. I will give it another try tomorrow when I'm not nearly as frustrated but I cannot make this my daily driver if it can't even do the most basic of what phones do.

Sorry you had so many issues. Both my cousins had no issues setting up theirs.

You can use Windows Device Recovery Tool to update firmware and software. Then another over the air update to latest build. Then start personalizing it.

 

[SammyD97]

Hmm. Is your device up to date? I suggest updating to the best public build and if that's no good, hard reset.

 

[peashooter14]

The first boot up of a Win 10 phone will take you at least 2 days to get stable. There is a tremendous amount of background poo going on. MMS downloading is the worst, and takes 2 days to get the history flushed so that text message actually flow. It will take a day to download all the app updates after a restore.

Make sure you are on Wifi to minimize your pain.

 

[Thazal]

If you have a Microsoft store near you, you can set up an appointment with a tech who can take you through the process of moving to windows phone. On release I saw a guy at my local store setting up his entire phone.

Usually if an app crashes I've noticed two things, the app is incompatible with wp10 or the app is being updated or needs an update. Also if you fool around with the sim and text messages enough you'll get multiples of the same texts, I just did this with my wife's when I was trying to load texts from her backup to her new phone. If you can get into cellular and sim go to SIM 1 settings select your carrier profile and hit update settings.

Hope this can help you in anyway.

 

[br8vhrt]

I have been flirting with switching from my iPhone 6S and tried a 950XL last week.

One thing I noticed was that you need to sign out of iMessage with the SIM card still in your iPhone. I initially signed out of iMessage after I moved the SIM over the 950XL and had no end of issues with undelivered texts. I started again, signed in to iMessage again, reset and updated the 950XL, etc then signed out with the SIM card still in my iPhone, gave it 5 mins with both phones off, put the SIM in the 950XL and everything was working perfectly (well, the texts were being sent and received as expected).

It may or may not help but I thought I'd mention it.

 

[slooksterpsv]

Ryd, I'm sorry you're experiencing so many issues. I would verify that the SMS, MMS, and APN settings are correctly being identified on the phone. For my Alcatel, it picks up TMobile just fine, on my Blu, where it's unlocked, it asks what carrier and shows carriers I've never seen! So that's something to look into.

The one person said about being sure to unsubscribe with the SIM in the iPhone. You probably already did that, but just to double check. I know you said you unsubscribed it, but with the SIM still in the iPhone? Where you have no data or voice services, this tells me that the SIM card either isn't being read or has invalid settings. No offense, but Apple may have their own "special" addresses for this information (wouldn't surprise me).

Finally, I would consider a release preview or slow build ring. On my Alcatel 14332 runs great! On my Blu... store crashes... phone restarts, etc. On 14328 - battery drain on alcatel, 14327 - battery drain on alcatel. The system does need to get settled, but you should always have voice and data services.

Hope some of this helps,
--SB

 

[realwarder]

Installed 6snap ? Really? Is that available again?

 

[xandros9]

Installed 6snap ? Really? Is that available again?

I believe 10 lets you download once unavailable applications.

However, it's worth noting that 6snap is still ban bait though.

 

[Ryujingt3]

Came here to read about utter failure at this experiment.

Wasn't disappointed.

In all seriousness though, as others have said, may be worth getting into the Insider Program and updating to a newer build? I have never had the keyboard issue on my 950XL on the main production build either so it may be a hardware thing. It's a shame because, whilst there definitely is an app gap between iOS and Windows Mobile, I prefer the overall UI and user experience on Windows Mobile to that of any other platform which is why I have stuck with Windows Phone through the brief good times and the long, arduous and currently tumultuous times.

 

[realwarder]

I believe 10 lets you download once unavailable applications.

However, it's worth noting that 6snap is still ban bait though.

You're right. There are some old apps I can install that are not available anymore. Did not know that!

 

[KimRM]

If you got the device today, I suggest you wait a couple of days. It needs some time to "settle in". Yes I know this is weird, but it's a fact. Message syncing, people app and lots of other things acts a little crazy before all account data is synced. Also the OS is doing some jobs in the background after a big upgrade like that (from .0 to .218). Apps may crash before all is set up. When I first got my 950 it too was acting crazy the first days. I even considered sending it back. But now I'm absolutely in love with this thing.

 

[ScrubbyXD]

I have avoided W10 on phones and instead elected to stick to 8.1. This thread confirms my decision. Thank you.

 

[Michael Crehan]

If I remember correctly there was a problem if you setup the phone without a sim installed. I would do a hard reset with the sim installed before setting up the phone

 

[Iain_S]

I don't understand these problems you guys keep getting. I have no issues with my 950XL since buying it the day it was released. I constantly switch sim cards between phones, 950XL, IPhone, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S7, Icon, 650, 1520 and never have had any issues what you are talking about in this post.

 

[Ben Hanchett]

@Rydsmith Sorry about your issues with the the phone. I would advise you to do a hard reset on your phone. I've been on Wp/WM since 2010. Unfortunately, I've find that doing a hard reset after purchase and updates fixes most of my issues. Next thing, I also have the 950 xl which ATT doesn't carry. I had to put my SiM card in phone first and then power it on for the phone to acquire the correct settings. Wouldn't work after phone was on.

 

[DigitalDK]

You're right. There are some old apps I can install that are not available anymore. Did not know that!

Found it in my library on my 950XL but it just has an exclamation point next to it. How did you get it to install?

 

[David Carrera]

I have a day 1 950XL, and haven't had any problems other than earlier builds that had bugs in them, now on RS1 332 build and it works great, no apparent bugs, runs faster the TH2.

 

[anon(5335899)]

Did you try a new SIM card?

 

[hasasimo]

If I remember correctly there was a problem if you setup the phone without a sim installed. I would do a hard reset with the sim installed before setting up the phone

Set-up two 950 XLs without SIM cards this week. So far so good. Are you saying the problems will begin once I insert the SIMs?

 

[CONQUEST_CS koyo]

I am so glad that my device is working perfectly fine despite even being on the redstone branch.

Keyboard disappearing was quite an old bub. R3mis, what Build are you on?

Yup. Recently, I accidentally screwed over my Android device and am now stuck with my brand new Lumia 640. I have no problems with it being my daily driver. All of the Android apps seem to have replacements that are just as good, if not better (PerfectTube > Youtube Android app, MyTwitch > Twitch Android App)