[Quick Impressions] Who Has Gotten The Lumia 950?

[treeflip7]

One thing that mitigates the battery issue is how fast the thing charges. It's ridiculous. However, the standby drain is worrying. Could be due to hey Cortana and glance however.

Either way, I'm sure ms will make improvements in battery life over the next year.

 

[RumoredNow]

Users are reporting much improved battery life without Hello enabled...

 

[Jeff Merritt1]

I'm still holding on the purchase, but most likely will within the next week unless something bad surfaces.

Battery usage and heat issues are my only concerns, as there are negative reports on both. Specs look good enough for me for a flagship (reason why i didn't buy the L830) , and Windows 10 mobile can only get better from here. I hope the big banks release UWA apps for Win10, but other than that I'm not concern about the app gap as much.

Hope that people who have owned it since launch day could chime in with a follow up re: improving battery life/heat. Still rocking my L920 for 3 years now. Having Glance off is not an option for me. Except for the fact that the bezel of the L950 is bigger than the 920 (footprint wise), this one seems like the real true successor.

The battery life is a killer for me. I have to charge it multiple times a day with the fast charger. I put it on an old Nokia Wireless Charging Pad overnight, I usually get up around 7AM and by 9:30 I'm already at 70%...I am not doing anything crazy with it, and I have "Windows Hello" off now. The standby drain is pretty ridiculous. It also gets pretty warm/very warm. This isn't the final release of Win 10 Mobile, so I'm holding out hope for battery life that won't burn and die by noon. So we shall see...also Bluetooth connecting issues with my car audio. Other than that after a week, I am extremely happy.

 

[RumoredNow]

The battery life is a killer for me. I have to charge it multiple times a day with the fast charger. I put it on an old Nokia Wireless Charging Pad overnight, I usually get up around 7AM and by 9:30 I'm already at 70%...I am not doing anything crazy with it, and I have "Windows Hello" off now. The standby drain is pretty ridiculous. It also gets pretty warm/very warm. This isn't the final release of Win 10 Mobile, so I'm holding out hope for battery life that won't burn and die by noon. So we shall see...also Bluetooth connecting issues with my car audio. Other than that after a week, I am extremely happy.

My apologies, Jeff... This thread and indeed this entire forum have gotten so unwieldy so fast I can't search easily to find out...

Have you tried a Factory Reset? It may smooth things out for you.

 

[nyrnd]

I have mine set up and working. First impressions are 4 out of 5 stars. AT&T could have done a bit better with the packaging on this. No issues yet. Minor things: appearance is mediocre, Skype is not easy to get after taking a photo i have to wait a bit to see the finished product and also have to go to another screen to see photos.
Set up was simple and i was up and running in 15 minutes including porting my number over. Its fast, good resolution, great pictures, windows hello works great, windows 10 is a nice improvement.
More detailed review in another thread.

 

[Jeff Merritt1]

My apologies, Jeff... This thread and indeed this entire forum have gotten so unwieldy so fast I can't search easily to find out...

Have you tried a Factory Reset? It may smooth things out for you.

I haven't. Maybe that would help. The phone is smooth and working like a champ. It's the battery. I pulled it off the plug at 11:30 this morning and by 6 tonight it was dead. Not a good thing. I've tried tinkering with the settings and it hasn't made a difference. Maybe I'll give it a reset on my next day off. Or perhaps the RTM software next month will solve everything.

 

[Keith Wallace]

I just picked up my 950 from AT&T. Man, it was a nightmare. Getting the phone was super easy, but it wouldn't connect to the AT&T WiFi, so I couldn't run the backup restore. I got home, and hard to do a factory reset to try again. Then, it wouldn't let me sign into my MS account. I had to do ANOTHER factory reset, and it FINALLY did the backup restore. It took forever and was a pain.

I've barely gotten to mess with the phone. I just hooked up my USB 3.0 on my computer case, so I can get those speeds on the data transfer.

One thing I want to ask, how do I do a sync to my phone on W10? Is there no Windows Phone app like with WP8? Do I just do drag-and-drop in the File Explorer?

 

[tangledW]

I just picked up my 950 from AT&T. Man, it was a nightmare. Getting the phone was super easy, but it wouldn't connect to the AT&T WiFi, so I couldn't run the backup restore. I got home, and hard to do a factory reset to try again. Then, it wouldn't let me sign into my MS account. I had to do ANOTHER factory reset, and it FINALLY did the backup restore. It took forever and was a pain.

I've barely gotten to mess with the phone. I just hooked up my USB 3.0 on my computer case, so I can get those speeds on the data transfer.

One thing I want to ask, how do I do a sync to my phone on W10? Is there no Windows Phone app like with WP8? Do I just do drag-and-drop in the File Explorer?

Drag & drop does seem to be best.

What are you trying to sync exactly?

There's a phone companion app available on W10.

Sucks you had such issues setting the phone up, the only one I had was that it didn't find my last backup at restore.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Drag & drop does seem to be best.

What are you trying to sync exactly?

There's a phone companion app available on W10.

Sucks you had such issues setting the phone up, the only one I had was that it didn't find my last backup at restore.

I'm syncing music. Drag-and-drop is a really bad manner for this. For example, I wanted to send over some playlists. In the old app, I could choose to sync playlists, and it would grab the music from those playlists, sending the whole thing over to my phone. Now, it's telling me that my phone might not play the playlist file type (can't remember the extension, whatever Windows used by default), and that means I'm forced to either:

A. Sync an entire artist, even if I only want some of the content, or
B. Painstakingly go through each album in my library (over 600) and manually choose each song I want to send, one album at a time (as opposed to just grabbing whole artists with the old playlist sync option).

The companion app seems to only offer photo/video sync options, telling you to drag-and-drop everything else. I liked the old app that let you choose music syncing as well.

 

[William Sanderson]

DUDE, where is the call and sms filter or block and filter option in the Lumia 950?? I cant find them??

Long press either the contact in call history or the message sender and a menu will popup with the block option.

 

[WPUser5678309]

I like my 950 but have complaints. Not cheap feeling to me, or I just don't care if it is. Cortana just sucks now, what the hell happened?

Continuum is nothing like I thought it would be, huge disappointment though I can see what they are going for.

Camera works faster and seems to focus well at distance vs my 1020 which was slow, couldn't focus distance

I don't have that battery issue but when you go into settings and check out what uses the battery, on my 1020 the messaging app was totally killing it with this same build, skype being turned on and integrated seemed to be the problem for me.

This OS needs a lot of refinement. Long press vs ... menus vs swipes, I mean they are all over the place. Had bigger hopes for this phone and build, waiting too long for the same old features we lost in WinMo6.5 to come back, but they never do.

 

[rollindice]

I like my 950 but have complaints. Not cheap feeling to me, or I just don't care if it is. Cortana just sucks now, what the hell happened?

Continuum is nothing like I thought it would be, huge disappointment though I can see what they are going for.

.

What exactly is a huge disappointment for you in Continuum? You saw what its capable of in videos and know its only universal apps that would work in it when docked

 

[WPUser5678309]

What exactly is a huge disappointment for you in Continuum? You saw what its capable of in videos and know its only universal apps that would work in it when docked

Did not know phone and messaging apps were not universal, and that to answer calls or texts I needed to use the phone itself. I did see that in the video but I thought they were showing it as an either or, not a must. Also thought that continuum would bring a function long lost that would somehow enable me to use a PC and screencast the phone while using keyboard and mouse. Similar to mymobiler and Activesync back in the day. I do see what they are going for and in time it may be really great but for me, at this moment, I want remote control of my phone while at my work/battlestation, which like you pointed out, was not what Continuum was about, so I echo back to my sentiment that the OS itself is not ready.

 

[InsGadget]

Did not know phone and messaging apps were not universal, and that to answer calls or texts I needed to use the phone itself. I did see that in the video but I thought they were showing it as an either or, not a must. Also thought that continuum would bring a function long lost that would somehow enable me to use a PC and screencast the phone while using keyboard and mouse. Similar to mymobiler and Activesync back in the day. I do see what they are going for and in time it may be really great but for me, at this moment, I want remote control of my phone while at my work/battlestation, which like you pointed out, was not what Continuum was about, so I echo back to my sentiment that the OS itself is not ready.

Hopefully more apps become usable in Continuum mode. As for just straight screencasting, you can do it, but it's somewhat buried in the settings. After you have Continuum on and working, go to (from memory) Settings->System->Display, choose the Connected Monitor, then Advance Options, then choose mirror screen instead of Continuum.

 

[WPUser5678309]

Hopefully more apps become usable in Continuum mode. As for just straight screencasting, you can do it, but it's somewhat buried in the settings. After you have Continuum on and working, go to (from memory) Settings->System->Display, choose the Connected Monitor, then Advance Options, then choose mirror screen instead of Continuum.

Thanks for that but one question, mirror screen is just that function right? I still can't use my PC's keyboard and mouse for full control over the phone in mirror mode right?

 

[InsGadget]

Thanks for that but one question, mirror screen is just that function right? I still can't use my PC's keyboard and mouse for full control over the phone in mirror mode right?

Haven't tried it myself, but I have read that BT mice and keyboards work out of the box with Win10Mobile. I will try it out tomorrow if I can.

 

[InsGadget]

Thanks for that but one question, mirror screen is just that function right? I still can't use my PC's keyboard and mouse for full control over the phone in mirror mode right?

Okay, tested it out, works 100% perfectly with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse OOTB, even without a second display. Did not try with Continuum/mirror, but I imagine it works great there too.

 

[Jordan Rieck]

I got mine over the weekend. Got everything set up just fine.

Windows Hello isn't 100% reliable but is reliable enough to be useful and not annoying. Also, it figures it out pretty quick if it doesn't work and gets you to enter the pin.

Glance screen is awesome especially with the background displayed (had glance back when I had the Lumia 620 with no background). This is a feature that doesn't get enough attention. So much better than the flashing led light on android and nothing to compare it to on iPhone.

Continuum is really sweet. (I bought the wireless display adapter with it and not using the display dock). Can't wait for more universal apps. I don't have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard so only used it with the phone as the touchpad and keyboard which made it slower than I would like but I am going to get a mouse and keyboard shortly which will make it much better.

There isn't one app that I am missing from what I had on android, and I do so love the tiles much more than the grid of icons.

Last thing, "Hey Cortana" is great but not 100% reliable which stinks. May try to change it back to "Anyone" rather than trying to hear my voice. That might get better reliability,

 

[krisguy]

I have the 950 and the 650 XL with the insider builds. The hexacore processor and the extra ram makes a huge difference.

 

[Jeff Merritt1]

My apologies, Jeff... This thread and indeed this entire forum have gotten so unwieldy so fast I can't search easily to find out...

Have you tried a Factory Reset? It may smooth things out for you.

I did it. It seems like battery life is longer...took it off the charger around 7pm still at 78%...sooo...22% down in 4-4 1/2 hours...Music, Bluetooth, Web, Talk, Text...