One Man's Perspective On The Next Flagship

[Marcin Dabrowsky]

I don't normally write long winded posts anywhere, but I feel this has to be thrown out there into cyberspace to make me feel better. I woke up this morning, grabbed my special edition red blackberry passport and checked the time, mail and messages. Holding the square masterpiece I suddenly longed for my now gone Lumia 1520.
My journey with phones begun in 1998 when I got my first Nokia bar phone in high school. Back then phones were a huge no no in schools. Years passed and then I found myself running a US Cellular store with feature phones galore. My favorite being an LG flip phone that had an awesome color screen that would make most puke now.

Anyway there's a few memorable phones for me. My BlackBerry 7100i was awesome in 2006.

This was followed by a few attempts at touch screens by LG, Motorola and Sammy (before android).

I was never an iPhone person and never will be so all those don't do a thing for me.

My first android love was my HTC EVO. Terrible battery life and a bulky brick but it was awesome.

Other favorites were my Nexus 5, LG G2 and HTC M8.

I've had every other flagship put out in the states since 2012 including notes 2,3,4 sammys s4,5 and LGs G series, HTCs M7 and 8 and Motos Xs and newest Nexus. All those phones are boring.

What I miss most is the Windows interface. I bought my first windows phone last year, the 1520. I followed that up with the m8. Actually I think I had 5 or 6 1520s until I found one that was (mostly) issue free.

I am a flagship buyer. I cannot wait more than a year for a flagship device to be released.

I want to believe that after waiting 2 years for a new flagship from windows, MS will release THE perfect phone.

I feel that most loyal MS phone buyers waiting for a new flagship expect the same. If you're going to make us wait that long you better deliver the ultimate phone. I fear that even the smallest, imperfection such as a bad camera (best feature of my 1520) will completely turn off your old loyal fans.

By the way your ad campaign featuring whatever flagship you bring better be the most massive thing in cellular history or the entire division will fail. Most people simply don't even know ms phones even exist anymore.

Last month I have given up on android. Everything is the same. All phones blend together and I simply don't trust Google anymore with my data or privacy. I deleted my Google everything and haven't looked back. A phone that makes it so hard (for the average person) to find their way through all the settings to turn off location tracking is a giant invasion of privacy in my view. Make one button. Turn off data and location tracking. Done.

Until a new Windows flagship comes out I will continue using my awesome Passport.

Don't fail me MS. The LAST thing I want to do is get bored of blackberry, not have a windows flagship soon, and turn to the fruity side.

Rant Over.

 

[3earnhardt3]

Well look at the iPhone 6/+, put android/WP on it and no one would call it a Flagship. I think the spec wars have come to a halt as we have hit the limit in price/performance for today's needs. Does a Galaxy 6 run Facebook any faster than a Moto X? Marginally at best. Microsoft WILL release a surface phone some day, but only when there is a NEED for it. Releasing a top-end WP when they are still desperately trying to finish the merging of two OS would be a failure. The 640/XL is the right strategy, even if that means losing the small number of flagship users they have left.

 

[RumoredNow]

Moved to appropriate forum...

 

[Visa Declined]

Well look at the iPhone 6/+, put android/WP on it and no one would call it a Flagship.

Yes, they would. The iPhone does a lot of things extremely well, I own the 6+ and the 1080p display on it is beautiful, and almost perfectly calibrated. Touch ID is a great feature to have, and my phone unlocks perfectly every time. The camera is awesome, and the cpu benchmarks higher then most phones available today. CPU Performance - The iPhone 6 Review

I understand that everyone here thinks that the iPhone sucks, but Apple got a lot of things right when they made this phone.

 

[xandros9]

Yes, they would. The iPhone does a lot of things extremely well, I own the 6+ and the 1080p display on it is beautiful, and almost perfectly calibrated. Touch ID is a great feature to have, and my phone unlocks perfectly every time. The camera is awesome, and the cpu benchmarks higher then most phones available today. CPU Performance - The iPhone 6 Review

I understand that everyone here thinks that the iPhone sucks, but Apple got a lot of things right when they made this phone.

It's a terrific phone, but people might not consider it a flagship because it "only" has 1 GB of RAM, or this, or some random metric.
People don't consider the 930 a worthy successor because of Glance. A clock, essentially.

 

[Visa Declined]

People don't consider the 930 a worthy successor because of Glance. A clock, essentially.

It's hard to choose a device that doesn't have Glance, once you own a device that does. I wouldn't ever let that stop me from buying the 930 though, especially since WP flagships are slim pickings.

 

[RumoredNow]

...Glance. A clock, essentially.

You take that back!

 

[fatclue_98]

You take that back!

I don't get the whole Glance deal, it's the first thing I disabled on the Green Monster. In fact, I disabled Exhibition on my Pre+ (MetaDoctored of course), 2 and 3. My Treo Pro had that soft glowing clock and I took a reg edit to that too. :angry:

 

[RumoredNow]

It is far more than just a clock.

It shows me all this:

1. The Time (of course)
2. Day of the week
3. Date
4. Alarm Icon if there is a pending alarm
5. Most current Calendar entry
6. Charging icon when applicable
7. Phone notification
8. Messenger notification
9. Primary email notification
10. Secondary email notification
11. Battery %

Note that the last 5 are selectable from a long list and are basically the 5 you choose for Lock Screen.

I could have more, but the Weather App I use does not forward from Lock to Glance and I'd rather the Weather was on my Lock Screen than other options.

Also, when I'm bicycling or walking and have GPS workout engaged in Health and Fitness, it forwards current info to Glance.

Glance tells me what I want to know on demand and saves me unlocking my phone umpteen times a day each and every day.

 

[KhawarNadeem]

It's a terrific phone, but people might not consider it a flagship because it "only" has 1 GB of RAM, or this, or some random metric.
People don't consider the 930 a worthy successor because of Glance. A clock, essentially.

For some reason, the spec war doesn't apply to the iPhones. Apple has made a name for themselves in consistency. In design and software. The iPhone 6 is most certainly a flagship phone (factoring out the price, and looking at solely what's on offer). The chipset is incredible, literally. I am amazed year after year how the Apple A-series processors destroy the competition. Check out the S6 review by AT. All the benchmarks show that despite the iPhone 6 not having an edge in terms of hardware, most of the benchmarks tie it with the S6. Even though the iPhone 6 was launched over 6 months ago, Android OEMs still are unable to beat it in performance.

The Snapdragon 810 is a disaster and while WP might be smoother than Android, putting it on a chipset that throttles all the time is just asking for trouble. But even the Exynos used in the S6 hardly beats the iPhone 6's chipset, even in things like camera focus speeds and storage speed. But the Exynos does crush the S810, which means the WP flagship that will come six months after S6 will be DOA since Android manufacturers will be moving on to newer hardware, Apple will have a new chipset out, and WP will, once again, be stuck on either old or crappy, horrible-performing hardware.

Apple secret is, I suppose, putting the absolute best quality hardware in there instead of the hardware with the most MPs/PPIs/GHz. And that is why I think Microsoft should really aspire to make something like the iPhone instead of aspiring to take on the rather ambitious (and generally useless) spec war started by Android OEMs.

 

[Marcin Dabrowsky]

I am just wrapping up the live event, 4 months after posting the original post and I am satisfied in every way with this phone. The only thing that is missing is a fingerprint scanner. I am getting the 950xl as soon as it becomes available.

 

[Marcin Dabrowsky]

It has now been over a month since the launch event and I am sitting here wondering when the hell this thing will be available to purchase. BIG WTF.