Gadgetory

what do you call beautiful interface design and capable Hardware marred by unfinished software you call it a Windows 10 mobile phone I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and I can't recommend this phone to almost anyone this is the lumia 950xl we got this review device as a loaner from clove folks so if you want a 950xl of your own and there are a few reasons why you might you should pay them a visit at clove code at UK and tell them PocketNow sent you so why would you want a 950xl some reasons are straightforward with a big user replaceable battery and wireless charging a Snapdragon 810 processor backed up by expandable memory a big beautiful quad HD display and a big beautiful 20 megapixel camera there's a lot to love here echos of Nokia's former dominance remain little details like the 2 stage camera button and the 4 microphone rich audio recording and futuristic novelties like Windows hello a feature that lets you scan into the phone with your iris instead of a thumb and the 950xl works just like the 950 when it comes to continuum plug it into the display dock or stream over miracast to turn your TV or monitor into an approximation of Windows 10 the XL still has all the shortcomings of the 950 despite its beefier processor like sluggish browsing and pretty anemic app compatibility but that doesn't make its potential any less compelling those features almost make up for the 950 XL s fit and finish which is generic at best and chintzy at worst with a tinny rear firing speaker and a back cover that creaks and pops with even light handling there are even reasons to want this phone on the software side Windows 10 mobile is very slick looking with a very flexible homescreen design we've been through a few iterations of Start screen and we've finally settled on something that gives us a lot of info at a glance without feeling too cluttered if you disagree you can make Windows 10 mobile look pretty much like anything you want and thanks to Universal interface concepts like hamburger menus the top mounted action center and the reach ability clone it's pretty easy to get used to windows on the phone if you're coming from iOS or Android though we still miss the more elegant more innovative interface paradigm of earlier versions of Windows Phone and when you fire up that big camera on the back you get the same sweet rich capture mode is on the 950 there's a lot of wow factor here you can take a photo with the new triple tone LED flash and then decide after the fact how much of that flash you want in there which is just amazing or if you want bust out the manual controls to define ISO exposure and focus levels with sliders this is a better camera if you have a little time to set up the shot but the camera is still one of the best assets this phone has in this respect the 950 XL does the Lumia line proud with all the excels got going for it why the negative tone at the top because Windows 10 mobile is a hot mess people like to make excuses for this platform for a few reasons first as I said before it's beautiful and its UI often makes the competition look downright unsophisticated second it's very futuristic with assets like continuum and hello the third Microsoft's long game is very seductive if there are over a hundred million Windows 10 devices out there and a common code base across mobile and desktop so yeah it's easy to imagine a future where developers bring their apps to mobile because it's so easy to do and fourth people like to say that Windows 10 mobile is in beta so it's bugs can be forgiven guys we can give you the first three points because they're valid but you need to stop saying Windows 10 mobile is in beta it's not the 950xl isn't part of a demo program or a pre-release device it's on sale to real people right now and nowhere does Microsoft even intimate that its mobile platform might be lacking but it is nowhere is this more plain than in the Windows Store which is basically broken you can't download apps more than half the time can't really download apps in the background on top of that some apps refuse to run even though the phone says they're installed and there are incompatibility errors when trying to download or update many titles in the store other Lumia users have been complaining of similar problems for weeks and it's persisted on our unit despite both an update to the store and an OS upgrade and many of the problems we noted on the 950 are also present on the XL issues like the Start screen straight up vanishing after one of those app update errors problems like Outlook being very slow to download and send email voice dictation cutting us off after just a few words and getting many of those words wrong the speaker has hang out five seconds of white noise after every sound the phone makes the phone occasionally exhausting its battery in hours instead of the day plus we can usually squeeze out of it why some speculate it's a problem with the new Skype integration in messaging but there's so much wrong with this platform that it's tough to say for sure to all this the window's loyalists refrain is always wait for the next update people are saying that the 0.36 upgrade solves these issues but we're still waiting on that package to hit our device and you know what people also said to wait for the update when we ran into that 4k recording bug on our first 950 which then reappeared on our second 950 and followed us all the way to the 950 XL even though we're recording to local storage and not a memory card again this isn't insider preview software this is what Microsoft is selling in stores to normal people for the record Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on these issues is there hope for the future sure some developers who left the platform in the past are now building apps for the new Windows 10 a trend we hope continues the software while not in beta is still quite young so updates will fix some of the problems eventually the hardware is powerful enough to run most high demand games in the store when they don't crash and if you're the kind of superfan who wants a Windows Phone no matter what you may not think twice about dropping the dough on this thing which after all has a pretty great camera and some very fun features but every time I feel like cutting this thing some slack another bug pops up or I try to shoot a video and the phone watches it it's this kind of bush-league stuff that convinces me that this is a terrible buy for anyone but the most die-hard Microsoft fan if you're literally anyone else you'll save a lot of money and a lot of hassle springing for an Android or iOS device for which even Microsoft itself has built better apps while those platforms aren't without their bugs and shortcomings at least they feel like finished product today the 950 XL feels like anything but it's more like reference hardware for a platform that might be ready sometime in 2016 not a complete smartphone that earns its $650 price tag for much more on the ups and downs of Windows 10 mobile see our Lumia 950 review at pocket now and here on YouTube and subscribe so you don't miss future videos until next time this has been michael fisher captain two phones on twitter thanks for watching see you next time