[Quick Impressions] Who Has Gotten The Lumia 950?

[RumoredNow]

Need more reports on battery life! If the battery life isn't good for 2 days with moderate usage, I'm running out of excuses to purchase this phone. Maybe the XL if it has better battery life...

The initial break in period with a new-in-hand device, when users typically spike their activities through the roof, is not the best time to gauge day to day battery life. It is more appropriately gauged over a longer period than the initial 48 hours.

 

[sperry1625]

Received my 950 yesterday. I was so excited and my anticipation was high waiting for this since the announcement. I have to say, I am disappointed. I have listed some items below:

1. Battery Life so far is poor (Had to charge 3 times today)
2. Windows Update, after setting up Windows Insider, does not work.
3. Video Playback from recorded videos are very choppy. Audio plays but video stops for long periods.
4. Have had settings app just crash (close) with no error
5. Store has crashed several times.
6. Windows Hello is slow and often does not work. Need to be inches from the phone for it to work.
7. Performance is not as good as I was expecting but that is just my current perspective.
8. XBox can't login
9. Groove needed an update to login
10. Lumia Creative crashes

Need to work with it for a few more days but so far, not impressed.
:unhappy:

 

[Zachary Boddy]

Most definitely, if you have a good ear. If you don't know what to listen for, then you might not.

Well it also depends on the headphones you're using. If you're listening on a pair of iPhone earbuds then probably not but if you have a good set of Audio-Technica's (my favorites) or Sennheiser's then yeah the difference is audible.

 

[Hector Cantu]

FINALLY!!! a unboxing video! thanks :grin:

 

[Skyway]

Received my 950 yesterday. I was so excited and my anticipation was high waiting for this since the announcement. I have to say, I am disappointed. I have listed some items below:

1. Battery Life so far is poor (Had to charge 3 times today)
2. Windows Update, after setting up Windows Insider, does not work.
3. Video Playback from recorded videos are very choppy. Audio plays but video stops for long periods.
4. Have had settings app just crash (close) with no error
5. Store has crashed several times.
6. Windows Hello is slow and often does not work. Need to be inches from the phone for it to work.
7. Performance is not as good as I was expecting but that is just my current perspective.
8. XBox can't login
9. Groove needed an update to login
10. Lumia Creative crashes

Need to work with it for a few more days but so far, not impressed.
:unhappy:

You have 14 days to return it if you want, but I have a feeling all of these issues will be addressed. The battery drain is not uncommon on a brand new device. Sometimes it can take a week or two to settle in.

Give it a week and then see how the battery life is. Who knows, by then they may have updates to fix all these issues.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[kingkoopa09]

Besides a few random app crashes ive enjoyed it, build is solid despite plastic and light, but makes it seem more Durable. Windows hello is nice seems to get better ith time as in distance. Battery gets warms but nothing like any of the past and that's o my because I'm downloading my entire music collection and hundreds of apps so no final Verdict but great so far..

Oh yea quick charging is great too so Battery issue won't last long oncs things are running normal

 

[Zachary Boddy]

Could be it's a hardware support feature, and thats why the options arent showing up? Maybe the L950/XL screens are not actively listening for input when the screens are off.

It's not like the Glance Screen where you need specific hardware. Theoretically, any device could support double-tap-to-wake. The Nokia Lumia 520 has double-tap-to-wake.

 

[CrazyLCD]

Lumia 950 - Day1 THoughts/Bugs List

Was able to order my 950 through ATT online on Monday night (11/16) around 9pm and it was shipped to me next day and I got it Wednesday.

Unboxing, Assembly, & Setup

Quite frankly as a long time Windows Phone User since the inception of Windows Phone 7 was I disappointed at how difficult it was for everything to be setup. The battery came outside of the phone, there were no instruction on how to assemble the device nor was there anything labeling the Nano Sim card slot; It took me forever to find it and to a new user switching from iOS or android or just a novice phone user in general that was a huge problem. After finally turning on the phone the setup process was really simple and what you would expect with any other Windows Phone. However there was no option to setup Windows Hello on device bootup and had to be done by going into the settings manually. Once you finally get to the home screen is where the fun begins.

Software - W10 Mobile

I enjoy the slick look and feel of the software although it is still a little choppy at times and the animations are not as crisp and smooth as 8.1 was. I've found a few quality of life bugs so far and a lot of them are quite annoying to people because of how small the issues they are. For starters the auto brightness always defaults back to 100% when you turn on the phone screen on and off instead of going back to what you set it as previously. This was a huge inconvenience for me because I love to use my phone at night before I go to bed in the dark and having a giant 100% brightness is really bad. There is no option for deleting mass emails, nor an option to keep the black background for the actual mail client when writing emails it turns to default white even though that is not your default.

The biggest issue for me when this build is the lack of double tap to turn on the screen and the settings to remove the navigation bar for certain apps. While I found no setting like in 8.1 to hide the nav bar, I did find that scrolling down while on the home screen got rid of it, but just come right back when opening an app which can make watching a video like Hulu or Netflix a huge issue taking up so much screen real estate; and for a new user might be a really big turnoff. Also where is the option to run audio apps in the background? Pandora does it but for Edge, and other browsers it does not allow continued use of the video audio in the background like iOS.

I also had a weird glitch where I restart my phone and my home screen wouldn't load...it would just continue to say Loading... and never doing anything resulting in me having to hard reset.

App Store

Windows Phone has always been well behind the quality apps of Android and iOS and as someone who has used all three platforms I still prefer Windows Phone. I was using an iPhone 6S for about 6 months before the 950 came out and I will admit having 100% updates on all the main stream apps was really nice and anyone who is considering switching to WP should really think about what they need on a daily basis for apps. Major third party apps are still missing like WWE Network, Hearthstone, PVZ2, Bank Apps Like Chase, or if the app is there, it hasn't been updated in months or even years.

You would think for a brand new flagship device and software launch all of the main stream apps like facebook, Twitter, Hulu, Instagram, Fandago, and Netflix would be updated to universal apps, but sadly that isn't the case. Most of the apps are still the old non-updated versions from 8.1 and some even not updated since Windows Phone 7 like the Blizzard Battle.net authenticator app(but still works). Even when apps did have updates the app store would install the old versions instead thus creating more headaches for new users all together.

Overall

This is a big moment for Microsoft to finally get people to Switch to Windows Mobile and so far with everything I've mentioned I'm sure most users wouldn't not have a very enjoyable experience. In my opinion as much as I love WP it would not have killed them to wait a couple more months to polish this stuff because once people have a bad taste in their mouth it's really hard to get rid of it.

Overall I do like where this is going but if Microsoft doesn't start pushing developers to get those major apps over and keep them updated they are going to continue having the same problems. No matter how good the hardware or platform is, the apps have to be there. For hardcore WP users I say get it now because it's a nice change but for users thinking of switching over from iOS or Android I would say wait a few months, plus the price will go down as well.

 

[Krystianpants]

Quick question. Those having double tap issues, have you tried disabling windows hello first? Maybe it can't be triggered with double tap so gets disabled

 

[B1zzle]

Coming from at 1020 it definitely feels a little less solid. Due to the removable back design, but it doesnt feel horrible, but it doesn't seem as premium as the 1020.


Live images when you take photos are weird, sometimes when youre watching, the live part ends up looks better than the final photo.

Having a little microphone on everything when keyboard is up is nice tho..im talking right now to make this post

Few random crashes from menu settings

Focusing with camera is strange now to me,it just auto does it all the time

Iris works fine, you can let it learn your face more after initial set up, which i did and it hasn't had an problems

Def doesn't feel as premium as our single body Lumia 1020 &friends but it's not bad

 

[Bradleykinz]

Where'd you land this deal?

That deal was for the lg v10, which has expired.

 

[kingkoopa09]

Anybody got the double tap to work yet

 

[mark233]

Got a bit confused reading posts about the LG V10 in a Lumia 950 Quick Impressions thread rly:

 

[Matthew Heinselman]

I just set mine up, and I'm transfering my number etc over!

First impression is it feels and looks like it's from the future, lol. It weighs a lot less than my iPhone5, and it's a LOT bigger! The screen looks fantastic, text looks amazing. Added my MS account and everything transferred over like magic, thanks to RumoredNow's awesome post giving me all the information I needed to prep my iPhone to have everything migrate seamlessly.

I'll give more detailed opinions after I get a chance to use it for a bit.

View attachment 116653

What post do you refer to? I too am coming from an iPhone 6S- previous to that was a Samsung Focus -and would like to know what I can do to make it more streamlined.

 

[jdballard]

Who all is looking forward to buying new USB-C cables???

You know it's bad when monoprice.com's prices are high. The USB-A to USB-C is $8.99 for 1.5ft. The 1.5ft USB-A to Micro-B is $0.72. :angry:

 

[Achike Da]

The problem (as I understand) is that the settings to enable double tap isn't even available on the 950. I think it's an omission that MSFT will rectify in the coming weeks

 

[Lyndon Sanche]

How's Flipboard on the 950?

 

[Achike Da]

How's Flipboard on the 950?

Quick question about Flipboard. How do you the tiles to show (any) information. On my phone, L930, the tile is just blank...red...no info

 

[Bay 13]

Received my 950 yesterday. I was so excited and my anticipation was high waiting for this since the announcement. I have to say, I am disappointed. I have listed some items below:

1. Battery Life so far is poor (Had to charge 3 times today)
2. Windows Update, after setting up Windows Insider, does not work.
3. Video Playback from recorded videos are very choppy. Audio plays but video stops for long periods.
4. Have had settings app just crash (close) with no error
5. Store has crashed several times.
6. Windows Hello is slow and often does not work. Need to be inches from the phone for it to work.
7. Performance is not as good as I was expecting but that is just my current perspective.
8. XBox can't login
9. Groove needed an update to login
10. Lumia Creative crashes

Need to work with it for a few more days but so far, not impressed.
:unhappy:

Yea, disappointing to hear. I am waiting to see how things are in a couple weeks. I have a Blackberry Z30 and I have no battery issues. 2 days moderate usage. Hopefully MS can release some updates to help with the issues.

 

[Jazmac]

I don't own 950, but why does it matter? If you are going to say you can direct sound towards me then yes you can, but speaker is where camera module is so that would be very uncomfortable to use. Whatever people say will not change my mind on how badly speaker is paced on this phone, but that one future does not cause me to abandon idea of buying 950 xl

Most people wear blue tooth or wired headphones when using a smart phone so the placement of the speaker is secondary and almost a non issue.