It's been a long time since we've seen a high end Lumia phone. More than a year, in fact. While Microsoft and Nokia focused on the low and midrange market, hoping for high volume in markets like India, halo smartphones (high end, aspirational devices) tended to capture mindshare and thus market share.
Thus, Windows Phone didn't gain a lot of ground. So Microsoft, who bought Nokia's phone business, is back with the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. The XL is the 5.7" model with the Snapdragon 810 CPU while the 950 is the 5.2" model with the slightly slower Snapdragon 808 CPU. The Microsoft Lumia 950 is available unlocked for GSM networks direct from Microsoft for $550 and from AT&T for $600. It has a colorful and outdoor viewable QHD 2560 x 1440 AMOLED display, a removable battery and an excellent 20MP rear camera plus 5MP front camera. The usual dual band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and 4G LTE are on board. Perhaps most interesting is that it's the first phone to ship with Windows 10 for phones.
Design and Ergonomics
The Lumia 950 looks like a less classy version of the likeable Nokia Lumia Icon (Lumia 930 overseas). While the Icon had metal sides and a polycarbonate back that felt like a quality piece, the 950 has a wrap-around plastic back not unlike the most affordable Lumia phones. The finish (available in your choice of matte black or matte white) doesn't have the same elegant look and feel as the Icon's or other higher end Lumia phones. It's also not available in the wildly playful selection of colors we've come to expect from the Lumia line. Since the back is removable, third party makers can sell backs--and in fact there are already a pair of really nice leather backs on the market. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will later sell back cover kits in colors. Looks aren't a deal breaker for everyone, but looks do count when folks are perusing offerings at the store and associating a phone's look with its price tag. And Lumia once set a high bar for design: nobody has done polycarbonate like Nokia with the Lumia line--complex curves, elegant designs and finishes that inspired Apple to copy them with the iPhone 5c.
Calling and Data
Nokia made excellent voice phones and that continues under the Microsoft brand. Our AT&T review unit had full and clear incoming and outgoing voice. The speaker is decent enough to carry on a call with the phone on a desk a few feet away, and the mics picked up our voice nicely from that distance. Data speeds were typical of AT&T's network in our area, which is to say good. Since LTE chipsets are standardized as are carrier requirements, we don't usually see significant speed variations between coeval phones.
Performance and Horsepower
The Microsoft Lumia 950 has the fastest Windows phone CPU to date. The 1.8 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core CPU with Adreno 418 graphics is in many of today's phones, including the LG G4, LG V10 and Moto X Pure Edition. It's one step down from the top of the line 8 core Snapdragon 810 that's in the Lumia 950 XL. It's plenty powerful and the phone played games like Asphalt 8 nicely (3D games are more demanding than most apps). The Lumia 950 has 3 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of internal storage. The microSD card slot is compatible with cards up to 200 gigs, and you can store programs, movies and music, among other things, on the card.
We tested the release AT&T model and found it performed smoothly and didn't lag. Windows phones are generally responsive since Microsoft works to optimize the OS for currently available and approved chipsets.
Windows 10 for Phones and Continuum
For those upgrading from Windows Phone 8 or 8.1, Windows 10 for phones will look comfortingly familiar. The Live Tile interface and straightforward list of all installed apps is still there, and Microsoft has simply refined graphics and features. As ever, if you have carrier bloatware preinstalled, removing it is as easy as pressing and holding the app in the list of all apps and selecting "uninstall". Magical. The People hub, PIM apps' ability to sync not just with Exchange but Google and other services is still here, as are updated mobile versions of Outlook, Word, OneNote, Excel and PowerPoint. The web browser is Microsoft Edge now, just as with Windows 10 desktops. This isn't the same exact browser as the desktop version (there's no Adobe Flash for example), but it does a much better job of formatting and presenting websites than the old IE mobile. It has a reading list feature for mobile-friendly reading too.
On the one hand, I really (really!) like the Lumia 950's camera. It takes natural and three dimensional photos that look more like a dedicated point and shoot than a camera phone. On the other hand, the same can be said of the LG V10 and even the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Note 5 family of phones. When Nokia made Lumias with high end PureView cameras, they pushed the envelope and did things no one had done before--like 40MP sensors and DNG RAW formats. There's nothing so innovating or daring here. This camera takes excellent photos and very good video in 1080p @ 30 fps and 4K @ 30 fps with OIS and a fast f/1.9 Carl Zeiss lens. But those specs sound much like the competition's, other than the boost to 20MP from 16MP. That 4MP really doesn't matter much--the sensor, image processing and software are more important rather than a small resolution bump.
Battery Life
The Lumia 950 is one of those increasingly rare phones that still has a removable battery. It's a fairly large capacity battery for a phone with a 5.2" display, but the high resolution and fairly powerful CPU are power hungry. The battery lasted us a day (8am to 10pm) on a charge with light to moderate use. Email, 10 minutes of phone calls, web, social networking, background music playback and a few short YouTube streaming videos constitute our light-moderate test scenario. That's decent but not stellar battery life. The 950 supports Qi wireless charging, though our review unit wouldn't play nicely with our two Qi charging plates.
Conclusion
We like everything about the Microsoft Lumia 950 except its looks, but that can be remedied with a third party back. Still, it doesn't make the striking first impression of prior Lumia phones in this price range, and that's likely to hurt in the window shopping competition. The usual caveats about the Windows Store having a fraction of the apps available for the iPhone and Android still applies, so if you're an app junkie, keep that in mind. The AMOLED high resolution display, manageable size, removable battery, microSD card slot and excellent camera speak in the Lumia's favor. We also like Windows phone--it's intuitive, attractive and easy to use. Continuum is exciting and future-thinking; I'm excited to see where Microsoft goes with this fledgling (even after several years) platform.
