Speed comparison L640 vs. L950

[adigawi]

Hi, I know it may sounds a bit silly, but I have a questions to those who had a chance to own both of above! I'm using L640 LTE and thinking about switching to L950. In general my l640 runs pretty well, but one thing which makes me angry when using is EDGE, and its speed (or lack of speed!) Waiting for the websites to open or switching between different sites always takes much much much more time than on other platforms (ios, android). So my question is- how it looks with L950? is it snappy when browsing, are there any lags, etc? I know that it has much better hardware than l640 but I also noticed that things get worse only after upgrading to w10m, before (win8.1) my Lumia was very fast even when surfing the web....

 

[abhishek singh21]

windows 10 mobile is still miles away being optimized as windows phone 8.1 . The issue with you is hugely because of the optimization that windows 10 mobile demands. I do not own a lumia 950 , but considering the hardware it should work fine . lets wait for some answers from lumia 950 users.

 

[adigawi]

Yeah the hardware difference is noticeable but like I said before (and you mentioned) I worry much more about w10m itself... 950' users- please say something

 

[agaskew]

I have both: 640 and 950. The 950 is definitely snappier than the 640. Its slightly thinner, and the display is a little larger. It is faster at rendering pages in edge than the 640, and multitasking in general. The real draws (for me) of the 950 are the much better display, and wireless charging.

 

[adigawi]

I have both: 640 and 950. The 950 is definitely snappier than the 640. Its slightly thinner, and the display is a little larger. It is faster at rendering pages in edge than the 640, and multitasking in general. The real draws (for me) of the 950 are the much better display, and wireless charging.

Thanks for your opinion, that's what I need. Display is a big pros in l950, but for me even 640 is OK, it's my business phone so don't need too many pixels on screen.

One more question ( because you have both phones at the same time)- batter life!? Could you please compare those two? I use phone mainly for emails, web browsing, phone calls...

 

[CraigCole]

I have both: 640 and 950. The 950 is definitely snappier than the 640. Its slightly thinner, and the display is a little larger. It is faster at rendering pages in edge than the 640, and multitasking in general. The real draws (for me) of the 950 are the much better display, and wireless charging.

I agree, the screen is pretty excellent. However, when it comes to raw performance a friend's iPhone 6 runs circles around my Lumia 950. It's appalling how poorly this device and/or W10M compare, or, rather, don't compare, LOL.

 

[mweflen]

I have a 640 on the Insider Fast Ring, and a 950 on the Release Preview Ring. The 950 is way faster. There are almost no "resuming..." screens when switching apps, whereas the 640 has them on basically all of them.

I'm not bagging on the 640, though. It's an incredible phone for the price ($30?) and it runs W10M at a very acceptable "daily driver" level. It also gets better battery life and runs cooler, and it has a removable battery and expandable storage just like the 950. But the 950 crushes it in terms of performance speed and camera.

 

[realwarder]

I have a 640 on the Insider Fast Ring, and a 950 on the Release Preview Ring. The 950 is way faster. There are almost no "resuming..." screens when switching apps, whereas the 640 has them on basically all of them.

I'm not bagging on the 640, though. It's an incredible phone for the price ($30?) and it runs W10M at a very acceptable "daily driver" level. It also gets better battery life and runs cooler, and it has a removable battery and expandable storage just like the 950. But the 950 crushes it in terms of performance speed and camera.

Totally agree. I have both and while 640 is 'good', 950 is how Windows 10 should be. The extra memory means you rarely see any resuming or waiting and everything just works much smoother.

 

[adigawi]

Every your post makes me closer to buy l950. This is the phone that I always wanted! I still have iPhone SE as my second one, and I like its size mainly, but I was always big fan of all windows phones

 

[Ariel Takom]

Totally agree. I have both and while 640 is 'good', 950 is how Windows 10 should be. The extra memory means you rarely see any resuming or waiting and everything just works much smoother.

Just wanna add to the "everything just works much smoother". This is not true with regards to apps. Why?

Because some of the apps HAS NOT been optimized for W10M, and this translates to poor usage of the 950's resources. Believe it or not, my 950 could run the official, iOS ported FB, Messenger, and Instagram app much, much better than my previous Lumia 830 ever will, and yet my 950 still shows the 'Resuming' screen when using WhatsApp beta (still based on old WP8.1 a.k.a. Silverlight app).

To me, 950 does make using the apps feel smoother in general, and you can open more apps in background compared to the 640, which has similar internals to the 830, but of course this performance boost is bottlenecked by how much of optimization has been done to the app to utilize fully the 950's powerful internals. So far, out of all the major apps that I'm using, Twitter has got to be the best in performance. After the updates, I could clearly see the difference between my old 830 and my new 950. Fast and smooth, just the way I like it.

 

[TechFreak1]

To be honest, you only see clear visible differences when playing graphically intensive games.

Browsing depends on several factors such as you Internet signal, your download/upload speed, Wifi disturbances from neighbours, if your in a heavily congested area with a high contention ratio, the browser itself etc etc.

In terms of page rendering the difference will also depend on the website you are viewing.

Apps also depends on how the app has been written and optimised.

The key to all this really is firmware and the only visible metric the average laymen will see is the impact on battery life. If the o/s, apps aren't optimised and require extra cpu cycles for instance to do a task overall it will have a detrimental effect on battery life. On the flip side if both the apps and o/s are lean and do not use extra cpus to do tasks then that will translate in a longer battery life as the CPU will be spending most of it's time in a low power state.

 

[Bobvfr]

Couple of things no one has mentioned in the 950's favour, camera and Continuum.

I don't have a 950, but I just ordered one for the wife's birthday, I run a 950XL and it's the best phone I have ever owned and that includes the 1520.

 

[adigawi]

950xl looks also great and I suppose that in terms of battery it's even better than 950, but for me 5inch screen is already big.

And how is the heating up in 950? I read a lot about heating issues when using this phone, but fortunately many people admits that the latest AU update fixed this problem and that the phone runs quite cool + has better battery life! Can anyone here confirm this?

 

[mweflen]

It gets warm under heavy load (by which I mean stuff like photo editing), but I wouldn't say it's awful. Normal browsing doesn't heat it up too much. Certainly warmer than the 640. I have a 1020 also and that got warm, too, though the 950 is a bit warmer.

I've made peace with it. It's just the nature of the CPU they used. It's a drawback but not a deal breaker in my opinion.

I can't confirm any difference because I updated to AU right after purchase.

 

[adigawi]

I don't know what to think about the overheating issue and if the latest update solved this but I couldn't wait any longer and just bought l950.... directly from Microsoft... it should arrive within next two or three days... keep your fingers crossed

 

[Bobvfr]

My wife's new 950 arrived today, a full day before I expected it based on past MS deliveries, unfortunately no one was in, so my lad will be going for a walk tomorrow to collect it.

 

[adigawi]

As soon as you have it and load the latest update let us know your first impression... and are you going to join the insider builds or stay with official rom? Good luck

 

[Bobvfr]

Not the wife's birthday for a couple of weeks yet, her 830 is on release preview (So I could get the Skype SMS which now doesn't work) so I will probably do that on this as well.

The idea is the get it set up the same so she hardly notices (She ain't that good with tech), then when I get a spare monitor I can introduce her to Continuum :devil:

I will let you all know how it compares to my 950XL (Superb phone), my old 1520 and her 830.

 

[worldspy99]

I have the 640 and the 950 and the XL. The higher end versions are faster. Cameras are better and so are the screens. However, the 640 screen is no slouch, probably one of the better calibrated LCD screens (Anandtech said that last year) and battery life on the latest WM10 official build is as good as the WP8.1.1 version.

I can post some more items later. I plan to use the display dock with both the 950 and XL and will report back.

 

[greedo_greedy]

All valid, I'm gravitating towards the 950 XL hopefully I can get one this holiday.
The camera quality is a no contest.

Besides all that has been said, I'm getting one because this is pretty much the end of the road for the Lumia line.