Microsoft Lumia 950 review: How good is Microsoft’s first Windows 10 phone?

The Microsoft Lumia 950 is Microsoft’s first Windows 10 smartphone. That alone makes it a big deal. And if you’re a fan of Windows phones, skip the next two paragraphs, because I’m about to say something you’ll probably get angry about.

Let’s get this out of the way at the very start – this isn’t a phone anyone but dedicated Windows fans are going to buy today, tomorrow or next week. For most people, Windows 10 Mobile simply isn’t currently a practical alternative to the Android handsets or iPhones.

In a couple of years, though, who knows? Based on what I’ve seen so far of Microsoft’s new smartphone, I’d say the future, if not completely rosy, at the very least looks interesting.

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Windows 10 Mobile

The reason for this, of course, is the new Windows 10 Mobile OS for smartphones, which we’re seeing – on a new device – for the very first time here. What’s the difference between this and the old Windows Phone 8.1?

Visually, not an awful lot. The two share a familiar navigational structure. The vertically scrolling and customisable grid of Live Tiles remains in place, as does the Store, the Action Center pull-down menu and the alphabetical list of all apps off to the right of the main homescreen.

At the very bottom of the screen you’ll find the familiar trio of navigation soft keys: back, home and search. Holding down the back button pops up the multitasking view, where you can manage, launch and terminate your recently used apps. Even Cortana works in a similar way, although fortunately there’s been a big shakeup in what she can do, including the ability to write and send email from scratch, and the core voice recognition system itself seems vastly improved as well.

The rest of the differences are subtle, yet multifarious and mainly behind the scenes. The homescreen is more customisable than before, and looks far more modern. You can, for instance, now add a background image, whereas Windows 8.1 only allows background images behind the tiles.

The Action Center shortcut keys, which run across the top of the screen when you bring it up, can be expanded at a tap, adding a further two rows of toggles. Notifications themselves can now be acted upon directly. In fact, if you’re using Windows 10 on a laptop right now, this looks identical to the Notifications Center found in the bottom right corner of the desktop.

That gives you a clue as to the central thrust of Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft’s stated aim is to create a consistent look and feel across all devices – phones, laptops, desktops and tablets – and to a certain degree, they’ve succeeded. Launch the settings menu on the Lumia 950 and you’ll experience a feeling of déja vu: the styling, icons, even the headings are the same.

The key to this is Microsoft’s Universal apps architecture, which underpins everything. The Settings menu and Action Center, therefore, don’t just share the same look, but also the underlying code. And the same goes for the core preloaded apps: the Store app, Mail, Calendar, Photos and the mobile versions of Office are all Universal apps and work the same across all device types.

In a practical sense, that makes a lot of sense. In the future, developers will only have one app to develop, and will only need to expend all that effort once. They’ll have only one code set to maintain, saving on ongoing costs, and that might well convince some companies that it’s worth investing a bit more in the Windows platform at last.

As yet, though, there’s not much evidence of the concept taking off. Hats off to Microsoft for getting its own apps off the ground, but there isn’t much evidence of third-party development work so far. At the demo, I was shown Audible, BBC Store, Guardian and Economist, and promised that Netflix and Instagram were on the way, but beyond this, the pickings are slim.

The Universal app concept clearly works, though. Initial impressions are that the Photos app is effective, as are the Mail and Calendar apps, and the Microsoft Edge browser works as advertised as well. However, the Office apps do feel a bit kludgy on the phone, in particular the Ribbon menu that’s been relocated to an expanding section at the bottom of the screen.

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Continuum

The most interesting and intriguing feature of Windows 10 Mobile, however, is Continuum. Plug a video adapter into the Lumia 950’s USB Type-C port and you’ll be able to hook your phone up to any monitor or TV and use it like a desktop PC. All you need to add is a Bluetooth keyboard to complete the package. A mouse isn’t strictly required, since the screen of your the phone transforms into a multitouch trackpad – and a rather effective one at that.

I was also able to get it to work with an Apple Type-C to VGA adapter, albeit at a rather coarse resolution. You need an HDMI or DisplayPort adapter to run at 1080p. Microsoft’s £79 Display Dock is the best way to connect, however. This solidly built, palm-sized chunk of metal and electronics, is equipped with three USB ports, plus HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs – and makes the job of connecting your phone to your monitor much easier.

So what can you do with your phone in Continuum mode? Weirdly, not an awful lot – in fact, less than you can in normal phone mode. You can’t run full Windows desktop apps, understandably, just Universal apps, and there currently aren’t many of those around, aside from the core Microsoft apps. You can’t even run apps designed for Windows Phone 8.1 in Continuum either, although they will run on the screen of the phone while your pseudo-desktop runs on your monitor or TV.

However, it does work reasonably responsively, and if you do find yourself in a situation where you need to get some serious typing done, and have no laptop to hand, the ability to hook-up to a bigger screen and connect a proper keyboard and mouse could come in handy. Are you going to start carrying around just your phone instead of a laptop? No. But Microsoft is at least trying to give you the option in certain circumstances.

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Design and specifications

Beyond the software, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Inside the Lumia 950, you’ll find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chip – the same hexa-core unit used in the recent Google Nexus 5X and the LG G4 launched earlier this year.

There’s 3GB of RAM to back that up, 32GB of storage and a microSD slot for expanding on that storage. You can add up to 200GB extra, if you want to, and the battery is replaceable. Not since the LG G4 appeared earlier this year, have I had the full combination of smartphone practicalities in place in a flagship smartphone, so well done to Microsoft on that front.

Well done, also, in squeezing a sharp, quad HD AMOLED, Gorilla Glass 3-topped display into the Lumia 950’s 5.2in frame, and what looks like a top-spec 20-megapixel camera, which comes with Carl Zeiss optics, optical image stabilisation, a triple-LED flash and 4K video recording. There’s no fingerprint reader, which is feels like a big omission right now, although Microsoft’s Windows Hello iris recognition unlocking tehcnology does work nicely once you have it set up.

However, although the specifications are top-end, the look and feel is far from it. Indeed, I’d go so far to call it ugly. It’s plain, featureless, and the rear is made from thin plastic that sounds worryingly hollow when you tap it. The matte finish is totally uninspiring, and the metallic trim surrounding the camera lens only catches the eye because the rest of it is so dull. If you like your smartphones glamorous and glitzy, this is not the smartphone for you.

Still I liked the Nexus 5X, despite its design flaws, and the Lumia 950 hits a similar set of design notes.

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Performance and battery life

The combination of a Snapdragon 808 chip and 3GB of RAM ought to keep things flying along performance-wise, but this is where we hit another snag.

On an Android phone with this combination of components I’d expect animations from one screen to another to be as smooth as melting butter on a teflon frying pan; on the Lumia 950, the experience is far from judder-free. From the homescreen to the alphabetised apps list, launching the multitasking view and dragging down the Action Center, I often experienced a shuddering dragging of feet. Not always, but frequently enough to irritate. The Microsoft Edge web browser seems to take much longer than its iOS and Android counterparts to fully load web pages, too.

This is ironic, since Windows Phone always used to be the mobile OS that didn’t need beefy hardware to run smoothly. It was better than Android in that respect, and now it’s lost that advantage. The result is that, in addition to the cheap-feeling hardware, the Microsoft Lumia 950 doesn’t perform like the premium phone it claims to be. That, for Microsoft, is another critical problem.

Raw performance seems to lag behind rival phones running similar hardware, too. Running the GFXBench DX Bench Manhattan test delivered notably results in the GFXBench tests (see table below).

I’d hoped that the picture for the Microsoft Lumia 950 might improve during battery life testing. Unfortunately for Microsoft the gloom continues. In our video rundown test, with the phone in flight mode and the screen set to a brightness of 170cd/m2, it lasted 10hrs 1min. Not an unmitigated disaster, but this is below average.

And the display is distinctly below par as well. It’s an AMOLED panel and as sharp as you like, delivering a pixel density of 564ppi. Without a microscope you’re not going to be able to see the pixels here. Contrast is perfect, as with all AMOLED screens, and Microsoft has managed to keep a lid on the technology’s tendency to run riot with colour. Your photographs and graphics will look realistic without being completely over the top.

The problem is that it isn’t very bright, not even by normal AMOLED standards, reaching a maximum of a mere 297cd/m2. This doesn’t bode well for outdoor readability when the sun’s really beating down.

Alas, I can’t confirm this for sure, since a cold winter’s day at the end of November in London isn’t exactly the best testing ground, but experience suggests that it won’t be anywhere near as readable in bright conditions as an iPhone 6s or a Samsung Galaxy S6.

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Camera quality

Surely there’s something Microsoft has got right here? Well yes, it appears there is: the camera. No two ways about it, it’s great. It takes reliable photographs no matter what the conditions: in the pub, on a dark street, or in full, glorious sunlight, and it does so because Microsoft has taken care to get the fundamentals right.

The resolution is high at 20 megapixels, there’s optical image stabilisation (OIS), the aperture is a bright f/1.9, so plenty of light gets to the sensor, and – most important of all – the sensor itself is a comparatively large 1/2.4in. What this means is that, for example, although the pixel size of 1.12μ can’t match the 1.15μ of the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, the total light-gathering capacity is far greater.

Why is this important? Well, more light usually means better images, and that’s definitely the case with the Lumia 950. In my tests it coped brilliantly with every scene I threw at it, producing attractive, balanced exposures to rival the best smartphone cameras in the business. Even in poor light, the Lumia 950 captured clean, detailed images, and when it’s too dark for flashless photography, the powerful, triple-LED flash can be called in.

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What’s more, Microsoft has retained the excellent camera interface of previous Lumia smartphones, which delivers quick access to critical adjustments. Exposure compensation, white balance, ISO sensitivity, focus and shutter speed can all be accessed simply by holding the onscreen shutter button and dragging it to the left, then sliding a selection of dials up and down.

It’s a shame that the same breadth of adjustments isn’t available to lovers of video recording. Although it is possible to tweak the focus, white balance and exposure compensation in video mode, you can’t lock-off exposure or adjust ISO sensitivity.

Still, you can shoot in resolutions of up to 4K at 30fps, and quality is excellent. In poor light, the app keeps the shutter speed nice and high, ensuring footage doesn’t smear as you pan around, and transitions from light to dark areas are smooth rather than stepped.

The digital image stabilisation is pretty effective, too. I was able to walk at a steady pace down the street and still get usable footage.

Microsoft Lumia 950 review: Verdicts

The Microsoft Lumia 950 is a tricky phone to pigeonhole. Because it’s a Windows smartphone and not Android or iOS based, it will appeal in different ways to different people, so I’m going to give it two verdicts here.

Verdict 1

My first set of conclusions is for all you Windows Phone fans. For those who’ve been waiting more than a year for Microsoft to finally release a flagship worthy of the name, the Lumia 950 will be manna from heaven.

It isn’t the prettiest thing, but it’s capable and has a great camera. More importantly, it brings with it Microsoft’s next big play in the Windows ecosystem – Windows 10 (for phone) – and it works brilliantly as a companion to a Windows 10 laptop or hybrid like the Surface Pro 4.

You probably won’t care too much about the cheap plastic back because the phone has a plethora of practical features – microSD storage expansion, wireless charging, USB Type-C and the incredibly impressive Continuum docking system – and although the display isn’t amazing, in most circumstances it’s good enough.

The one thing that might give you pause for thought is the price, with the base 32GB version costing £420, when the cheapest Google Nexus 5X is £339. That’s a flagship price for a phone with uninspiring build and design. But it doesn’t have the individuality of this phone, nor its distinct sense of difference.

Verdict 2

For everyone else, the Lumia 950 will be a mere passing curiosity, a handset that looks interesting but ultimately one that misses the mark in too many ways.

If you’re even mildly tempted to jump ship from Android or iOS to the Windows 10-based Lumia 950, take my advice: don’t do it. You might quite like the idea of being able to use your smartphone as a desktop PC, and have apps that look and function identically across laptop, tablet and phone, but the truth is that, right now, the system is in its infancy, and has a long way to go.

Yes the camera is great. Yes, you get wireless charging. Yes, there’s a replaceable battery and microSD expansion. But if you buy this phone you will regret it. That isn’t so much the fault of the limited app store any more, but rather the wider issue of smartphone accessories that won’t work with Windows 10 handsets. Things like fitness trackers, Bluetooth speakers, smartwatches, smart home automation gadgets: they’re increasing in number and, increasingly, being sold with only iOS and Android app support.

That issue, above any other, should be the one that ultimately puts you off. Or to put it simply: forget about the Lumia 950 and go and buy a Nexus 5X instead.

See also: The best smartphones of 2015/16 – your guide to the best smartphones of the year

I was also able to get it to work with an Apple Type-C to VGA adapter, albeit at a rather coarse resolution. You need an HDMI or DisplayPort adapter to run at 1080p.