Gadgetory

this episode of TechnoBuffalo is brought to you by domain.com hello it's me Ron Purita here normally I'm behind the camera shooting editing and cutting a lot of the videos you guys see on the channel but when Microsoft announced the Lumia 950 I was really excited to check it out because of continuum and a couple other features so for about a week and a half I completely sacrificed my dignity threw it out the window strapped this GoPro to my head and my chest walked around looking like a fool so I could bring you guys this review from a first-person real usage perspective so first things first build and design this phone looks and feels fine I've personally always been a fan of plastic phones I know some people are not I don't really have an issue with it feels great in the hand looks great looks simple pretty much like any other smartphone nothing really to it my thing with Windows 10 has always been that it has a ton of potential black tiles I think are great I think it is one of the most gorgeous you eyes we have but I don't think it's really been executed very well for example live tiles not all apps have live tiles and even apps that do don't really optimize it in my opinion Instagram would be amazing if you could have a feed of playing in your live tile if you actually had a live feed that you could scroll through on the tile and that brings one to the next issue which is app support as we've always known Windows Phone and now Windows 10 have always had a big lack of app support and that's a huge huge turnoff here we don't have a full version of Instagram and we don't have any version of snapchat there's not even an app for YouTube which is really strange the app you download just forces you to go through the browser which is kind of man the camera on the Lumia 950 was awesome not much to say here images looked great super sharp contrast ratios were good but one of my favorite features of the camera was actually the shutter button it's a two-stage shutter button and I know we've seen this on tons of other phones but it's just something small that we don't see on every phone that I really really appreciate having a two-stage shutter button makes us feel more like a real camera and really lend itself to making you take more pictures on a regular basis it was a real pleasure to use sometimes the camera would be a little slow to react but it's nothing you can't overcome or deal with and so now moving on to one of the big features I was looking forward to on this phone continuum as of late we've seen Microsoft move towards a convergence of products across their line from the surface pro for the surface book and was the Lumia 950 continuum for those who don't know is a dock that connects via HDMI or DisplayPort into an external TV or monitor that essentially allows you to use your phone on sort of fullscreen closer to a desktop type configuration that being said it is not a full desktop OS it's more so a skin for mobile Windows 10 it was pretty damn good it wasn't obviously as fast as a laptop you can't really go in with those expectations we're just not there yet with the processing power you can browse the web you can walk YouTube videos you can check your email now there were some problems for example I couldn't set up an account through Outlook but I could get through messaging and certain apps weren't supported and again this tends to go with a theme of this phone and a lot of Microsoft products for that matter great thesis I love the direction they're going but unfortunately it just wasn't executed very well that being said I thought continuum was a great feature for people who are Lite PC users people who just checking email just watch videos online don't expect that much from their phone it's a very very feasible thing for them one of my gripes with Windows 10 of software was the loading screens I literally felt like I was playing my ps1 all over again I was just loading screen after loading screen hoping Spotify I had a loading screen I was like what is the deal here 2,000 years later the phone isn't slow the Snapdragon 808 is great but three gigs of ram are great it functions perfectly but the OS itself bogs down the experience you spend so much time looking at loading screen and those three to four dots just circling and moving it it gets kind of ridiculous one of the other neat features with Windows 10 is supposed to be Windows hello it's me the idea is that the front-facing camera scans your retina to unlock the phone rather than using something like a fingerprint reader or a pin it works really well and one of the cool things is that actually if you continuously scan in your retina in different Lighting's and locations and different perspectives it gets better and better I found that to be true it definitely improves it definitely works it's really good I don't know how much better it is than using a fingerprint reader but it is a cool feature and maybe it's the future maybe it's the future of not having to touch your phone at all to unlock it so even though Windows 10 doesn't have the greatest app support right now it is Windows 10 different from Windows Phone so now their desktop and their mobile platform is built on name architecture so the hope is that building apps will be easier with a couple added lines of code you can take a desktop app turn it into a mobile app so it is a possibility that we see better app support moving to the future but there's no guarantees and I wouldn't really hold out for it but fingers crossed there's not much to say about battery life other than it was good one charge would last me about one day phone does charge via USB C and charges pretty quickly as well so those are pretty much my thoughts on the Lumia 950 I think it's a great phone and I really respect Microsoft for trying to do something new and paved the way with merging devices like laptops and tablets and that phone with four pcs with continuum I think it's a really cool effort but I don't think they quite hit the nail on the head with execution unfortunately for most people I have to give this one and don't buy your switching from Android or iOS the app support just isn't there but if you are using Windows Phone give this a good look so maybe you noticed I'm kind of a crazy Adele fan probably the only one in the office unfortunately but if you are like me you can go ahead and register crazy Adele fans club at domain.com and in fact I have a coupon code for you use TechnoBuffalo at checkout you can save 20% on that awesome domain name when you're thinking domain names think domain.com