You may think Windows Phone is dead, drowning in a sea of disappointing budget handsets.
However, don’t switch off. Because Microsoft (the new owners of Nokia’s Devices division)
has done something of a u-turn in the last few months, presenting the Lumia 950 and 950
XL, a couple of genuinely competitive flagship phones and neither runs Windows Phone.
In fact, the 950 and 950 XL run Windows 10 Mobile. What Microsoft has done over the last
couple of years is to unify phone, tablet and desktop/, so that they all run the same
operating system and, to a large extent, the same ‘universal’ applications. And, thankfully,
Windows Phone 8.1 is binary compatible with the new OS, so it’s not a total reboot in
terms of applications.
So there are lots of Lumia owners from 2013 to 2015, all of whom stand to experience a
significant leap in functionality in upgrading to a Lumia 950 or 950 XL. They’re not flashy
and shiny like recent Huawei, Apple, and Samsung flagships, but they do well in terms of sheer
flexibility and functionality.
It’s true that Windows 10 Mobile still lacks what some would consider ‘essential’ first
applications - mainly social hits like Tindr and Snapchat, plus all the Google services
- but there are many third party applications to take their place if anyone’s prepared
to give the platform a real ‘go’.
But it’s the hardware that’s the star here, of course, the Lumia 950 and the slightly
larger and slightly higher specced Lumia 950 XL. I’m a big fan of hardware that allows
the battery to be swapped - so many people hit issues with under-performing batteries
after a couple of years. Being able to simply buy a new battery and pop it in is, quite
simply, perfect. Add in the potential flexibility to keep a charged spare in the car glove box
or briefcase and your smartphone effectively gets a new lease of life. And so the whole
back section of the 950 or 950 XL pops off, showing the battery slotting in neatly and,
thankfully, a microSD slot, again a flexible facility that often slips out of fashion in
today’s style-led phone world. So you don’t have to choose a specific memory capacity
ahead of time - just buy a card with the capacity of your choice and slide it in.
All of which is a way of explaining the plastic sides and back of the two new Lumias - they
make the aforementioned flexibility possible. And don’t worry if you really want other
materials - Clove sells replacement backs for the 950 and 950 XL, including real leather.
The Lumia 950 and 950 XL are mobile computers, effectively, as you’d expect with ‘Windows
10 Mobile’ under the hood. Complete with a file system, USB on the go (you can hook
up hard drives, memory sticks, and so on), Microsoft Office, Outlook, and evolutions
of some Nokia favourites from the past, including Windows 10 Maps with the 100% offline worldwide
navigation.
Plus ‘Continuum’. Given that your new Lumia 950 or 950 XL runs the same Windows
10 as on any desktop or laptop, why not plug in a large-screened monitor as a secondary
display via the optional Microsoft Display Dock, hook up a mouse and keyboard (also wired
directly or via Bluetooth) and any universal applications are able to take over the extra
display as if you were using a traditional Intel-powered processor inside a PC case.
You can alt-tab between running universal applications (Office, Outlook, etc.) and,
in theory, leave your laptop or tablet or hybrid at home and travel with just the Lumia.
Find a HDMI-capable (or Miracast-compatible) display and you’re in business. Anywhere.
Will Continuum take off? Hard to say, but it’s certainly a unique selling point.
The Lumia 950 camera (the XL has the identical unit) manages to stand out even over the best
of Android, in the shape of a triple-LED flash, of which more in a moment, plus PureView oversampling,
using the underlying 20MP sensor in a creative way, at capture time, to produce ‘purer’
8MP photos. It works well, plus there’s the familiar PureView ‘zoom’, effectively
smart cropping into the sensor resolution, but maintaining the full 8MP detail.
Every smartphone flagship seems to have its manufacturer’s favourite image processing/multi-shot
trick, and Microsoft’s is ‘Rich Capture’, with up to three shots being taken at once,
at different exposures and with or without flash, and then - after the fact - at your
leisure, sitting on the sofa, you can edit the shot (using an on-screen slider) to change
the blend of the different shots taken. So you might increase the HDR effect, or perhaps
change the degree of flash used.
Rich Capture works brilliantly when it’s available, and with the Lumia 950 range, Microsoft
has added intelligence so that it doesn’t kick in if the algorithms in Camera don’t
think you’ll get any benefit from the feature. This makes more efficient use of the phone’s
storage and other resources.
The triple LED flash is not just there to add brightness, the LEDs are each tuned to
different colour and so the flash produces the perfect flash ‘colour’ to light up
any evening shot and get the colour balance right. Apple started this trend with ‘true
tone’ dual LED flash, but Microsoft have taken it one step further and it works really
well, with the caveat that there are issues with ‘red eye’, blinking and so on. Or
just shoot without flash - the camera’s usually up to it.
Video capture’s at 4K, of course, and the ‘capture stills’ function works brilliantly
to extract 8MP shots. Brilliant for sports events and birthday parties - just relax and
shoot the action in 4K video and then go back later, while relaxing, and pluck out any frame
you like as a high resolution photo.
Any would-be upgrader with an old Lumia 930 might yawn a little at this imaging talk,
but what’s important here is the use of a f/1.9 lens and a genuine 2015 sensor, streets
ahead of the old 930 in terms of sensitivity and noise levels, plus ‘fifth gen OIS’
and a much faster chipset. Meaning faster shot to shot times and better results.
So - we have the use of Windows 10, swappable batteries, Continuum and best-in-class
imaging, as four possible attractions to the Lumia 950 range in a very competitive world.
Match these with genuinely competitive internals - a Snapdragon 810 processor (with liquid
cooling) on the Lumia 950 XL and a Snapdragon 808 on the Lumia 950, 3GB of RAM, 32GB internal
storage plus that microSD capability. Then add in Qi wireless charging and compatibility
with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 (via USB Type C), and it’s hard not to be impressed
by the scale of the tech that Microsoft has thrown at the 950 and 950 XL.
One area which may prove controversial is that Microsoft has chosen to go with iris
recognition rather than fingerprint scanning for the on-board biometrics. The ‘Windows
Hello’ system does work - you power up the lockscreen and, a second later, your iris(es)
have been scanned and you’re ‘in’, bypassing the need to enter a PIN.
However, in real life use, Windows Hello takes much longer to work than the fingerprint scanners
on competing phones and I do think Microsoft should have gone with the fingerprint system.
Or even had both on board, to give the user options.
Smartphones now saturate the phone market and almost everyone considering the 950 range
will be coming from a smartphone of some kind. The two devices are perfect upgrades for most
owners of older Lumias, though it’s hard to see many Android or iOS fans switching
platforms and ecosystems overnight, however appealing the Windows 10 attractions here.
The 950 range comes with my recommendation overall - but do investigate after-market
replacement backs for it - I doubt anyone can live with just white or black plastic
365 days a year!