One Week with a 950xl full time

[Mad Cabbie]

Some on here may know, we run a couple of these in our taxi firm. I recently got one for my own needs and it's safer to play with previews!

Righty ho. It is running .107. My other 5.7" device is a note 3 running note 4 lollipop with S6 features. Over a week I have been, somewhat non scientifically, comparing the two.

The 950xl has NOT rebooted once. It has not got warm / hot. It has been relatively bug free. No app crashes. Bluetooth working perfectly. Continuum ok as well. Battery has been good, going a day and a half before I show it to the charger.

Admittedly, the note is an older device, running a rom cooked by me, and based around the Samsung stock rom, tested by a few XDA bods. The note was also reset to bare bones. For the first couple of days, it ran very well and I wondered why I stopped using it. As the week progressed, it was noticeably slower than the 950xl. On both devices I left apps Idle so I could just jump back to them. The 950xl was pretty darn quick at hold back arrow, select app. The note was a bit behind. I had the office suite on the note as well, and these apps made the old girl 'really' warm! After 5 days the note 3 was appearing really sluggish. The 950 was still bounding along. I ended up rebooting the 3 and she was up to speed again. After another couple of days I installed Clean Master on the Note. There was nearly 1gig of junk sitting there, that didn't need to be there. The cache was loaded as well. It's still a very capable device, but to see it slow down at such a rate, and to retain so much junk, unknowingly, was surprising.

There are many threads putting the xl down, that on paper, seem unfounded. I may not have had a personal xl for long, but the same goes for our company ones. They haven't caused any real issues.

Right, I'm off to get the latest firmware

 

[halflifecrysis]

Thanks for sharing

 

[teiva]

I agree. I've only had mine for a couple of weeks and it's running really well on the latest firmware and redstone release. No complaints so far. My HTC M9 rebooted on multiple occasions using the latest android OS. The only thing I miss is a good Google+ app, but if Google won't provide a universal app for it then I might as well not use G+.

 

[Mad Cabbie]

I agree. I've only had mine for a couple of weeks and it's running really well on the latest firmware and redstone release. No complaints so far. My HTC M9 rebooted on multiple occasions using the latest android OS. The only thing I miss is a good Google+ app, but if Google won't provide a universal app for it then I might as well not use G+.

Yeah. I didnt realise how deeply entrenched with the G apps I was, until I jumped a year ago. Google Now could have been so much more. The 'google' voice system was a crap shoot for me. The others, ie, maps etc were great.

My biggest issue with the new OS we have now, is that, in my view, Cortana is a car crash. It will not track flights, give updates on flights or football scores in UK. The live tile isn't live for long etc. Annoying, but not really a deal breaker as I can control all the other stuff I like.

I loved my old note 3, but NEVER used the pen! I have just flashed a stock rom, so I will see where we go with that one v the 950xl

 

[realwarder]

My biggest issue with the new OS we have now, is that, in my view, Cortana is a car crash. It will not track flights, give updates on flights or football scores in UK. The live tile isn't live for long etc. Annoying, but not really a deal breaker as I can control all the other stuff I like.

The odd thing is that Cortana in Windows 10 appears a lot less useful than Cortana in WP8.1. Very odd. It doesn't do flights, meeting travel reminders. Things it always did fine on. Doesn't track parcels and should. Well randomly it does. Pretty flaky. Hopefully they'll work out the kinks and make it useful again. Still great voice recognition, but it should be so much more.

 

[Jazmac]

Some on here may know, we run a couple of these in our taxi firm. I recently got one for my own needs and it's safer to play with previews!

Righty ho. It is running .107. My other 5.7" device is a note 3 running note 4 lollipop with S6 features. Over a week I have been, somewhat non scientifically, comparing the two.

The 950xl has NOT rebooted once. It has not got warm / hot. It has been relatively bug free. No app crashes. Bluetooth working perfectly. Continuum ok as well. Battery has been good, going a day and a half before I show it to the charger.

Admittedly, the note is an older device, running a rom cooked by me, and based around the Samsung stock rom, tested by a few XDA bods. The note was also reset to bare bones. For the first couple of days, it ran very well and I wondered why I stopped using it. As the week progressed, it was noticeably slower than the 950xl. On both devices I left apps Idle so I could just jump back to them. The 950xl was pretty darn quick at hold back arrow, select app. The note was a bit behind. I had the office suite on the note as well, and these apps made the old girl 'really' warm! After 5 days the note 3 was appearing really sluggish. The 950 was still bounding along. I ended up rebooting the 3 and she was up to speed again. After another couple of days I installed Clean Master on the Note. There was nearly 1gig of junk sitting there, that didn't need to be there. The cache was loaded as well. It's still a very capable device, but to see it slow down at such a rate, and to retain so much junk, unknowingly, was surprising.

There are many threads putting the xl down, that on paper, seem unfounded. I may not have had a personal xl for long, but the same goes for our company ones. They haven't caused any real issues.

Right, I'm off to get the latest firmware

You make me proud. Thanks for the review.

 

[gordonfink]

It will not ..... give updates on ....football scores in UK.

Wait - they play football in the UK? :wink:

 

[beman39]

no offence, no one would like to hear the 950XL kicking *** more than I, but comparing the note 3 to the 950XL isn't really a good comparison/contender because it is 2 years behind in technology.... had you compared the note 5 or even 6 than I would have been impressed... not hating just keeping it real LOL :wink:

 

[Mad Cabbie]

I did say it wasn't a 'scientific' comparison. I had intended to highlight the issues with android, compared to win 10m, even in it's unfinished state. I compared my 930 with it as well, and the differences were pretty much on a par. The Note 3 was a great device that, like so many other Samsung devices, got support dropped after 12 months. The reason we were given was that it wouldn't run anything above 5.0.1. The real reason was the Note 4. Imagine our surprise when we heard whispers about a certain tech company weren't happy about us bods on XDA. The 3, like the 930, are more than capable of running next gen OS. FFS, we used a stock rom, tweaked for performance, and even included a large chunk of S6 rom in there. Mmm, I wonder, if MS release a rom for android devices, what would the note series be like on W10M?? Now, there's a plan......

Maybe it wasn't an accurate comparison, maybe I could have worded it differently. I can't compare it to the 5 or 6, as I fell out with that brand when they wouldn't do a warranty job on a dodgy headphone socket because my device had had non stock software, thereby 'blowing' the Knox fuse, and no longer being eligible! Eh?? Took four months for them to decide that a headphone socket isn't affected by the OS.
Hence, my severe dislike if them.

I managed to see / fondle (?) an s7 today at my friends store. Lovely device, well nailed together, felt premium and MSFT could learn a lot design/style wise. Then I turned it on.....yuk. Same old Android, same old bloat same old fashion statement, still does the same as the previous generations, and to top it off, the store literature for the display is, "rethink the mobile phone" or something similar. Yes Samsung, take note of your own hype and offer something different other than a rehash of a previous device! How about something other than a gimmicky edge screen. How about, maybe, continuum. Now there is a feature that has made me rethink my phone!

Oops, sorry about the rant. Them buggers really upset me. Roll on the court case about Samsung's lack of support of future OS releases for previous generation devices.

Android? Open source? My arse!!!!

 

[gordonfink]

madcabbie - my wife has an S4, and she is pining for an Edge device something fierce. I might ask her to read your review before I throw away $700. But then, I'll have to delete this post prior......

 

[Ryujingt3]

Thanks for this. An interesting read.

I tried to reply to this using my 950XL with latest preview build but the app crashed. Ironic.

I really enjoy my 950XL, even if it does randomly reboot and run hot to the touch enough to drain the battery within 6 hours of full use off a full charge.

I believe things will improve.

 

[teiva]

I find it interesting Google refuse to write any real software for the Windows 10 platform. As stated previously I do miss using Google Plus on my HTC M9. Do I miss Android? Absolutely not. I really like Win10 mobile and if Google are too afraid to develop their apps for W10 then I'll simply stop using Google Plus. Kudos to Microsoft for releasing their software for iOS and android

 

[William Stovall]

I find it interesting Google refuse to write any real software for the Windows 10 platform. As stated previously I do miss using Google Plus on my HTC M9. Do I miss Android? Absolutely not. I really like Win10 mobile and if Google are too afraid to develop their apps for W10 then I'll simply stop using Google Plus. Kudos to Microsoft for releasing their software for iOS and android

The google+ web site has improved a lot.

 

[teiva]

I wish the Google Plus website through edge wasn't so clunky. Every time I click on a +1 box it scrolls back to the top with a screen refresh. This makes it useless for me. I've no doubt Google have done this intentionally. I'm just going to not use G+ any more, plain and simple.