Lumia 950/950 xl... 8.1 possible?

[Tejas Javery]

The Lumias 950 and 950xl are in the news... Two of the best windows phones ever.
They come with windows 10, 586 version which is available for the insiders.

I was just wondering, is it possible to use the recovery tool, and put 8.1 in those phones? I mean, windows 10 is awesome, but lets face it, it is yet to be finished. So, if windows 8.1 could be installed in such a beast, wouldn't it be just amazing!
Has anyone tried it? Does it work? Can windows 8.1 be installed in 950 and xl using recovery tool or something like that? And if yes, then has someone tried it? How's it?
Please let me know.

 

[inffy]

lol

definately NO

 

[Musicman247]

The Recovery Tool will flash your device with the latest official image for that device. The 950/xl have only ever had W10m, so that's what they would receive from the tool if it recognized the devices.

 

[Patrik Sopko]

I think it would be possible with unofficial tools for flashing, but I'm sure you will have better experience with W10M on Lumia 950

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I think it would be possible with unofficial tools for flashing, but I'm sure you will have better experience with W10M on Lumia 950

Agree but would LOVE to hear from anyone who does it.

 

[TheBadGuy_88]

I don't think wp8.1 has support for that screen resolution. But why though? The latest release with all of the app updates literally is just as good As 8.1 and I'll totally stand by that statement. After I installed 10586.11 and got about 35 app updates I can officially say it's as responsive and as reliable as 8.1 if not better.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I don't think wp8.1 has support for that screen resolution. But why though? The latest release with all of the app updates literally is just as good As 8.1

Huh? You are saying that all the bugs in that release that still plague previous phones are magically cured in the 950?

Hey Cortana works? Gestures work? It doesn't keep asking if you want a text read to you even after you have opened the text to read it? The open app display via the back button never displays your lock screen picture or something else as the thumbnail instead of an actual app? The list is miles long.

Having a 950XL on order, I hope you are right. But I very much doubt it.

 

[TheBadGuy_88]

What phone do you use? I don't have those issues? Now I don't use "hey Cortona", or "gestures", my app switcher screen works perfectly fine. I literally have no problems in my day to day use of a green 1520 with 10586.11 on it. I can't even tell you the last time I reset my phone. (Well after the update we got this past Tuesday actually, and that was voluntary) so I still stick by my statement of 10586.11 being as good as if not better than 8.1 right now

 

[HoosierDaddy]

What phone do you use? I don't have those issues? Now I don't use "hey Cortona", or "gestures", my app switcher screen works perfectly fine. I literally have no problems in my day to day use of a green 1520 with 10586.11 on it. I can't even tell you the last time I reset my phone. (Well after the update we got this past Tuesday actually, and that was voluntary) so I still stick by my statement of 10586.11 being as good as if not better than 8.1 right now

I use a 1520.3. I am pointing out that the latest WM10 release is riddled with bugs. The fewer features someone uses the fewer they will notice but they are there and very real.

 

[xandros9]

There is no way the 950s will be able to get 8.1.

No iPhone 4 can run iOS 3, no Lumia 635 can run Windows Phone 8.0...

Not gonna happen. If it were Android, I'd be more open to the possibility, but still, no.

Say we manage to flash it to 8.1, got around the safeguards and other technical roadblocks. 8.1 may not even know how to handle the hardware properly.

 

[TexasLabRat]

Huh? You are saying that all the bugs in that release that still plague previous phones are magically cured in the 950?

Hey Cortana works?

Don't have Hey Cortana to test unfortunately.

Gestures work?

Can you give a specific example to test?

It doesn't keep asking if you want a text read to you even after you have opened the text to read it?

Nope

The open app display via the back button never displays your lock screen picture or something else as the thumbnail instead of an actual app?

Nope

The list is miles long.

Having a 950XL on order, I hope you are right. But I very much doubt it.

Your mile-long list is at least 50% not a universal issue with the latest windows since I'm not experiencing those items I noted above. It might be just your phone needs a hard reset to clear out cruft from the upgrade cycle? 830 RM-985 here.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Your mile-long list is at least 50% not a universal issue with the latest windows since I'm not experiencing those items I noted above. It might be just your phone needs a hard reset to clear out cruft from the upgrade cycle? 830 RM-985 here.

Resets don't help. Daniel posted that he couldn't get Hey Cortana to work. The Gestures app says it's not compatible and won't run. Others are hit and miss. The reason I posted was that it was bad advice to tell someone that there aren't problems when all you know is that you don't see some of them and haven't even tried others. Just like I would never tell someone they will have this or that problem or not have this or that problem because I have only used a few out of millions of phones and only 3 or 4 insider builds.

 

[TexasLabRat]

Resets don't help. Daniel posted that he couldn't get Hey Cortana to work. The Gestures app says it's not compatible and won't run. Others are hit and miss. The reason I posted was that it was bad advice to tell someone that there aren't problems when all you know is that you don't see some of them and haven't even tried others. Just like I would never tell someone they will have this or that problem or not have this or that problem because I have only used a few out of millions of phones and only 3 or 4 insider builds.

Fair enough..

I don't doubt you're having issues, just that some of your issues aren't a universal windows 10 thing and might be device-specific (either your phone individually or perhaps your particular model since they all have slightly differing firmware under the hood). So yeah, it's not only possible but likely that many of these issues will be "magically" fixed by moving to new hardware that had firmware designed specifically with windows 10 in mind.

That said, back to the OP...I wouldn't hold my breath on being able to run 8.1 on it without some sort of hack since the recovery tool won't have an "official" image available for the 950/950XL prior to win10.

 

[ericloewe]

With no 8.1 drivers available for these phones (for obvious reasons), there is no chance in hell of this crazy idea being doable.

 

[TheBadGuy_88]

I use a 1520.3. I am pointing out that the latest WM10 release is riddled with bugs. The fewer features someone uses the fewer they will notice but they are there and very real.

I have to disagree with choice of words like "riddled". There's some w10m bugs but riddled is what the first builds were. Then you have factor that these are generic builds that haven't been tailored to a specific hardware builds. Remember there is no firmware to correspond with these releases. Hey Cortana came to the 1520 through a firmware update. Denim. Remember?

 

[Marlon Bu]

Only Microsoft can give the 950 Users the change to roll-back to WP 8.1. At the time of Windows 8, they gave the users of new PCs the change to go back to Windows 7.

 

[Tejas Javery]

My bad. Thank you everyone for telling me how it works.

 

[MAHAD93]

i have to disagree with choice of words like "riddled". There's some w10m bugs but riddled is what the first builds were. Then you have factor that these are generic builds that haven't been tailored to a specific hardware builds. Remember there is no firmware to correspond with these releases. Hey cortana came to the 1520 through a firmware update. Denim. Remember?

E.x.a.c.t.l.y.

 

[Kram Sacul]

A 950 running a stable version of 8.1 would actually make me consider buying it. The hardware is great but the OS is questionable at best. A hacked version of W10M that looks like 8.1 would probably be a better thing to wish for at this point.

 

[JCMaedl]

My HTC one M8 got smashed and I "upgraded" to a 950. To say WM10 is riddled with bugs is being kind at best. Crashes. Oh so many crashes. Failure to resume Bluetooth playing after being read a text, sometimes because Groove has crashed. Crashing while trying to select ringtones/alert sounds. Crashing out of messaging app when inserting pictures. Freezing on "resuming" when trying to move between apps. Live tile update failures. Incorrect treatment of apps installed on SD cards, including sporadic loss of app icons which cannot be retrieved without reinstalling and in some cases having go format the SD card. Allowance of installation of apps to SD cards that are not allowed to be installed on SD cards, which of course causes crashes. Failure to format SD card during reset despite being asked if I wanted to do so, which results in a message stating there are apps on the card from another system. Settings not being retained. I've had several cases of video that seems to be recorded OK but when you view it, it has frozen during recording in various parts, leading to useless video. Calendar snooze never reminds you again. Cortana reminders happen "kinda close" to the target time but not on time (almost got a parking ticket because of that.) I'm not sure how you can use 10 and not see this stuff. And as for the "not ready for all equipment" argument, this is MSFT's flagship product, so of all the devices out there, this one should aboslutely work.

Because the screen resolution is ridiculously high on this phone, everything is so small it is hard to even use. I have perfect close vision, and it is a strain to see what the heck everything says. Hardware is not an OS problem obviously, but how the OS handles it is. Try to use some of the scaling options; display scaling, maybe Ease of Access? Forget it. Fonts don't scale across apps consistently, or even the OS itself; some items become huge while some remain tiny. The dialog boxes and buttons don't draw correctly, fonts spill out and are cut off. In some cases button icons are completely missing (like when inserting pictures into messaging - you only see a circle with an X "placeholder" for both the "Checkmark" and "cancel" buttons.

I don't want to start a debate about how the UI of 10 is a billion steps backwards from 8.1. But just taking into account simple things like no longer being able to use the phone with one hand because of the hamburgers, coupled with these other problems, make this phone unusable. I actually thought I got a defective one and returned it for an exchange; the new one is exactly the same. I've had to reset this thing 4 times and I've only had it a week and a half. Which also doesn't always work because it can't disable reset protection. Forget about restoring as well, it has never done it successfully; I have to delete it from my device list each time to get it to set up correctly.

I've been with WP since 7.5. This is my 4th WP device (6th if you count my wife's), but if it was my first, I would never have gotten another. This is a flagship phone. Unacceptable. WM 10 is a disaster. Everything that made me love WP, and made my friends with iOS and Android jealous of it, is now gone. I'll be returning this POS and trying to find a surplus or used WP 8.1 device.:unhappy: