Gadgetory

it's been a long time since Microsoft has had an interesting phone to talk about but now we have the Lumia 950 s the first smartphone running Windows 10 the $600 950 is going head-to-head with the best phones out there and to make it it's going to need a few tricks up its sleeve it has one or two but is that enough but before we get to the interesting stuff we've got to talk about first impressions let's face it this hardware is not particularly interesting or notable the 950 is a rectangular plastic slab with no real defining design characteristics it's virtually indistinguishable from the ultra cheap Lumias Microsoft has been selling for the past couple of years it has modern smartphone things like a fast processor and enough RAM and there's a 5.2 inch display that's sharp but a little washed out it also has a removable back which is neat if you want to swap the battery the camera is 20 megapixels and it's fine but slow basically if this were just another Android phone it'd be okay but it's not an Android phone it's Windows 10 and that's what makes this phone different the real story here is Windows 10 instead of it running on a laptop it's running on your phone Microsoft likes to talk about home Windows 10 is now a unified platform the same code that runs on your laptop also runs on this phone that's true but on the surface Windows 10 on a phone feels a lot like Windows Phone 8 there are a couple minor interface updates and slight UI changes but this isn't a complete overhaul I do like the new hello feature which lets me look at my phone to unlock it just like I can do on a Windows laptop it's kind of like androids face unlock from four years ago but it's actually usable though you have to bring the phone pretty close to your face to make it work but what is new and big and different is this continuum feature which lets you turn your little phone into a PC to do that you need Microsoft $99 display doc a monitor or TV and a mouse and keyboard it's admittedly a fair amount of accessories to tote around and after using it's not clear to me that this is any better than just using a laptop you plug your phone into the dock fire up the continuum app and boom your phone's display and contents are on the big screen it's basically trying to be the dream of turning your phone into a full-size computer you could check your email browse the web compose Word documents or send text messages from a full-size keyboard on a big display you can even have one thing up on the big screen and do something else entirely different on your phone there's something fun about crushing emails with a mouse and keyboard and then unplugging my phone and walking away most of this works fine but the system really drags its feet when you fire up the browser try to navigate to a few sites which are now full desktop versions but beyond that you can't do much because the only apps that really support this feature or Microsoft's own I can't use slack in continuum nor can I use Twitter Netflix or a bunch of other apps I might want to see in a big screen let me change and developers might enable their apps to work with it the history tells us that they likely won't so it's not like turning your phone into a computer it's like making your phone screen really huge so you could do more phone stuff that's admittedly cool but it's limited and if anything continuum magnifies which is still the biggest problem with Windows 10 on phones the apps that matter just aren't there I really like managing my email with Gmail or inbox on an iPhone or Android or pay for my delicious chick-fil-a launch with my Apple pay or Android pay and good luck if you want to use a smart watch or other wearable the vast majority of them just won't work here none of that is new it's been the problem with Windows Phone for years and it's the reason why so many people don't even consider it an option when buying a new phone Microsoft managed to update the hardware which trust me was desperately needed but it still has the same old problems that have plagued its mobile efforts forever Lumia 950 maybe a phone to satisfy the few remaining Windows fans that want out every device to use but unfortunately it doesn't do enough to resurrect Microsoft's mobile efforts