I am rubbish with phones. I lose them, drop them, accidentally leave them in jeans pockets and wash them. Once, to my shame, I have driven over my phone.
I am not a good phone person, all told.
It says something that my current phone is the cheapest, and most long-lived, of all the phones I’ve owned. It’s a Nokia Lumia 520 that cost all of £25 unlocked several years ago, intentionally bought because it was small, cheap and frankly doomed to die a horrid death by my hands.
Yet somehow this phone has lasted, and lasted well. It runs Windows 10 Mobile well enough, the camera is ok-ish and the battery lasts a whole day. I’ve had little to complain about, and I’m quite partial to the Windows 10 way of doing things.
So when I was offered the chance to try out its much more powerful big brother, the Lumia 950, for 10 days, I jumped at it. After all, this phone is £400 new, compared to by old £25 model. How much better can it be?
Quite a lot, it turns out.
This phone is fast, smooth and wonderful to use. I feel almost guilty calling it a phone, because it’s so much more than what that mere word conveys. This isn’t hyperbole, more on that later. As a phone it’s very good indeed, partly thanks to the design quality of the handset itself, but mainly thanks to Windows 10 Mobile. On the hardware side of things it has a 2560x1440 Gorilla Glass display, 3Gb RAM and 32Gb storage. I’ve found the battery easily lasts a couple of days between charges, and can charge from dead to 50% in around 30 minutes using the USB-C connector. If like me you forget to put your phone on charge overnight then have to plug-and-pray first thing in the morning, this is a godsend.
When it comes to software, I rate Windows 10 Mobile as the best mobile operating system out there today. This is coming from someone who is largely OS agnostic. I own an iPad, an Android tablet, a Windows 10 laptop and a couple of Macs. I appreciate them all for what they are, and recognize the strengths and weaknesses in all platforms. But when it comes to Windows 10 Mobile, the weaknesses are far outweighed by its strengths. The usual criticism of Windows 10 Mobile is a perceived lack of apps. I prefer to think of it as “all the apps you need, none of the crap you don’t”. On my phone right now I have Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, WhatsApp, Word, Excel and a couple of games. For everything else I use the default apps (Mail, OneNote, Calendar, Skype, News, Weather, Edge, etc) and can’t find fault with any of them, so see no reason to switch. There are alternatives to all of them should you desire. What there isn’t much of on Windows 10 Mobile (compared to certain other platforms) are shovelware knock-off apps or crud to wade through in the Store, and to my mind that’s a very good thing indeed.
If you’re not used to Windows 10 Mobile I highly recommend giving it a try. It’s more customizable than Apple’s locked in one look fits all IOS, and less of a dog’s dinner than Android. The Start screen is genuinely useful (to the point where sometimes I hardly need to open apps at all to see what I need), and especially on the Lumia 950 everything is buttery smooth. I could gush about Windows 10 Mobile, but it’s better if you try it for yourself. You might just like it.
The Lumia 950 does have a handful of tricks up its sleeve that lift it above simply being an excellent phone with an excellent OS.
The first of these is the camera. Oh god, the camera. It has a 20 mega-pixel rear camera and a 5 mega-pixel wide-angle front camera. That rear camera is the star of the show. I’m a photographer, and that camera is easily comparable to optics I’ve seen on stand-alone cameras, if not better. This is a seriously good shooter’s camera with fast start-up, very accurate exposure, full control access should you need it (and Auto-everything if you don’t), and more. Everything you want a camera to do — 4K video, image stabilization, HDR, macro shooting, etc — it delivers. I’ve not encountered any other phone that delivers such consistently good results, and that includes the newest model iPhones. It’s stunning.
The Lumia 950 comes with Windows Hello, a new security feature that unlocks your phone by recognizing your eyes. This is clever tech though as a glasses wearer I’ve found it to be hit-or-miss, and even when not wearing glasses it’s not perfect. That’s embarrassing when you’re checking your phone surrounded by friends and one of the systems unique features just doesn’t work. It’s early days though, and I fully expect it to improve.
What Windows Hello does do for me is highlight the need for Windows 10 Mobile to support multiple user accounts on one device. I’d like the phone to recognise my face and open up my Start screen, and if my partner looks at the phone it opens up hers. I’d like her to be able to take the phone, take photos and have them automatically upload to her OneDrive, or kids have their own account to play games, etc.
Normally multiple users on a phone wouldn’t even be a thing worth considering on something as personal as a phone, but the Lumia 950 has one more trick up its sleeve that’s a game changer. It’s not just a phone.
It’s a PC.
My test handset came with the Continuum Display Dock, keyboard and mouse. Plug the Display Dock into any HDMI equipped TV or Monitor, set up the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and your phone becomes a full-screen monster.
Or, don’t do that and use the Connect app on any Windows 10 PC or laptop instead. That works too.
What this means is your phone is literally your PC in your pocket. I spent a regular working day using nothing but my phone, including visiting clients, making notes, reviewing data, sorting appointments and doing all the things I’d normally have to lug my laptop around. Back home I plugged the phone into my screen and just carried on, using just that one device. I could write reports using Word, check survey data in Excel, surf the web, all without compromise.
I should stress (before anyone points out “this isn’t new!”), this isn’t new. People have been able to display their phone or tablet on a big screen in some way (VNC or whatever) for a while. What this does is make the whole thing seamlessly easy and built right into the device. It turns the phone interface into a full screen desktop interface, and just works. It’s the first time I’ve used something like this and felt it to be genuinely productive and useful rather than a bit of a kludge to get a phone or tablet to display on a screen. I want this on every device, from the cheapest smartphone to the highest level. Imagine having any phone in your pocket able to seamlessly connect to your TV (or your friend’s) to play Netflix or Skype, all without expensive additional hardware or software. This is a huge step in that direction.
The only thing I would change is the Display Dock. It’s a brick. There are PC-like HDMI dongles smaller than this thing. In fairness the size is mainly down to the impressive number of ports (USB-C, 3x USB 2.0, HDMI and DisplayPort) but I’d gladly sacrifice those down to USB-C, Micro HDMI and Bluetooth to have something that’s a quarter the size.
In all the Lumia 950 is a remarkable, remarkable phone. It has a truly amazing camera and packs a desktop PC-like experience in a beautiful, sleek, wonderful device. I’m going to miss it when I give it back that’s for sure. It’s right up there as the next phone I plan to own. Highly recommended.
