Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review: Microsoft’s last Windows Phone?

Alan Martin December 3, 2015

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£530

Price when reviewed

Its been over a year since I reviewed the Microsoft Lumia 950XL, and there’s a pretty good chance that on top of it being my first Windows Phone review, it could also be my last. Things have been pretty quiet on the Windows Phone front, and in the last quarter of 2016, purchases shrunk to just 0.3% of the marketshare. Ouch.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road, in terms of Microsoft’s involvement, however. Rumours of a Surface Phone have persisted for some time, and as recently as last November, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft weren’t done in the space. “We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today’s market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device,” he told Australian Financial Review.

“Therefore [with Nokia assets], we stopped doing things that were me-too and started doing things, even if they are today very sub-scale, to be very focused on a specific set of customers who need a specific set of capabilities that are differentiated and that we can do a good job of.”

With that in mind, it may be worth keeping an eye on Microsoft’s endeavours in the future, but for now, it’d be a brave man or woman to purchase the Lumia 950XL in 2017. Though if you have your heart set on one they’re under £300 on Amazon UK (or $308 on Amazon US) Read on to find out why it was a risky purchase in 2015 and is even riskier now.

The original review continues below.

Despite having reviewed many a phone in my time, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL is my first Windows phone. I have no expectations as to what Windows 10 Mobile can offer one way or another, having had all of ten minutes playtime with Microsoft’s mobile OS in the past. I do, on the other hand, have extensive experience with iOS and Android.

When Jon Bray, our Reviews Editor, took a look at the Lumia 950, he gave it two separate verdicts: incredibly positive for Windows Phone fans, and lukewarm for those who either haven’t been impressed with the OS before, or are yet to sample its charms. As a member of the latter camp, what would my verdict be?

So, come on Windows 10 Mobile: dazzle me.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: Design

Even before the phone is charged and ready to go, first impressions are strong. Although the fashion has moved away from plastic-backed handsets such as this one towards metal, Microsoft has made a decent stab of things here.

It’s a reassuringly solid-feeling slab, with gently rounded edges. While it won’t gain any marks for originality – which phones do? – the Lumia 950 XL is undeniably nice-looking. I do miss the more playful colour schemes the Lumia brand used to push, though, which proved so popular that even Apple tried it briefly with the iPhone 5c.

Another advantage of the plastic back, other than its durability, is that it can be removed to reveal a replaceable battery and microSD slot. This means you can expand the storage space from the already acceptable 32GB. It loses points for hiding the SIM slot away underneath the battery, but that’s probably more of an annoyance to someone like me who frequently has to swap SIM cards than to a normal smartphone user. But, y’know: those living double lives may find this mildly inconvenient.

What also might be inconvenient is the handset’s size. Make no mistake, the Lumia 950 XL is a big fella: the screen is 5.7in across the diagonal, meaning it dwarfs the 5.5in LG G4 and is the same size as Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 and Nexus 6P. But if you’re looking for a Windows phablet, this is as good as it gets.

The Lumia 950 XL makes the jump away from micro-USB to USB Type-C, but Microsoft helpfully provide both a USB lead and a plug charger in the box, so you’ll have at least two ways to keep the battery topped up as you enter the brave new world of slightly different connections. Oh, and it supports wireless charging too, so even if you misplace both you won’t be completely out of luck.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review: Display

The first thing to know about the screen is that it’s AMOLED. One aspect of this is that when the screen displays blacks, it’s actually off, so it’s pretty energy-efficient. Something that takes a while to get used to is the fact that the Lumia 950 XL always displays the time, even when you turn the screen off. It’s quite distracting when you’re used to shutting down everything to eke the most battery life possible out of an ageing handset, but it’s nice to always have pertinent information available onscreen.

It’s a decent screen, too. The 5.7in display is 1,440 x 2,560 with a pixel density of 518ppi. That’s slightly lower than the Lumia 950, which squeezes the same resolution panel into a smaller 5.2in display. In practice, both are very sharp to look at, and the XL offers perfect contrast with good colour accuracy, covering 99.4% of the sRGB colour spectrum.

In fact, the 950 XL goes a touch brighter than its smaller sibling, but it’s far from searing, with our tests registering just 305cd/m2 at maximum brightness. That’s in manual brightness mode. With auto-brightness turned on, it can reach a far higher brightness – in excess of 550cd/m2. That’s great, but note, however, that this will only be in very specific circumstances: displaying small areas of white pixels on a black background. When the screen is mostly white, the brightness drops dramatically, back down to around 350cd/m2. As such, you may struggle to read web pages and apps with a predominantly white background outdoors and in bright sunlight.

The bigger screen also means a larger chassis, and therefore room for a higher-capacity battery. The Lumia 950 XL has a 3,340mAh battery, which will comfortably get you through the day with some to spare. Of course, the replaceable battery also means you should never be caught short, if you care to buy a couple of spares.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: Performance

Along with its larger frame, the 950 XL also delivers a modest performance boost over the 950, with an additional two cores and 200MHz of speed from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 CPU, but the same 3GB of RAM powering Windows 10.

That may not sound like much, but I can’t say I noticed any of the judder or chug Jon reported in his review. This will make Microsoft breathe a sigh of relief, although if Windows 10 Mobile requires beefier specifications than Windows Phone 8.1 did, this is definitely one area where the company want to avoid parity with its rivals.

More strikingly, the difference in the GFXBench scores between the two handsets are huge. A quick recap of the smaller Lumia 950’s results before the big reveal: in the Manhattan test it managed 6.3fps onscreen, and 12.3fps offscreen. That puts it in a similar ballpark to the LG G3 (7.7fps and 11fps).

	Microsoft Lumia 950XL	Microsoft Lumia 950	LG G4	Samsung Galaxy S6
GFXBench Manhattan, onscreen	11.8fps	6.7fps	9.4fps	15fps
GFXBench Manhattan, offscreen	21.2fps	12.3fps	15fps	23fps

What a difference the Snapdragon 810 and Adreno 430 GPU makes! Suddenly, the Lumia has gone from lagging behind the LG G3 to leapfrogging the LG G4, and it’s not too far behind the impressive performance of Samsung’s flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S6. You could quite legitimately point out that gaming performance is less important on a Windows 10 phone, given the comparative lack of premium games in the Store, but it does mean day-to-day performance is pretty damned solid.

It’s a shame that this performance boost comes at a price, though: the Lumia 950 XL is £110 more expensive than the plain Lumia 950.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review: Camera

The ace up the Lumia 950 XL’s sleeve is the camera, which is identical to the one Jon raved about in the review of its smaller sibling. He’s far more of a cameraphile than I, and it takes a lot to impress him. The Lumia delivers.

It’s a 20-megapixel affair with optical image stabilisation and a bright f/1.9 aperture. Crucially, it has a 1/2.4in sensor, which means that it lets loads of light in for great quality in low light.

Images are balanced and detailed in pretty much any setting you can throw at it, including tricky low-light situations. Images are clean and detailed, and it packs a triple-LED flash for when it’s too dark for the 950 XL to cope.

Back when Lumias were exclusively a Nokia thing, their cameras often received praise for the camera interface, too, which offered quick access to adjustments such as exposure compensation, white balance, ISO sensitivity and shutter speeds. Microsoft has sensibly retained this, and it’s the cherry on the cake, adding up to what is one of the best smartphone cameras around. Video recording is good too, at up to 4K resolution and 30fps with excellent quality.

Despite the identical specifications on the camera, you could make a case for the 950 XL being slightly weaker than the 950 here. Its size makes it a touch more unwieldy, although it’s nothing that can’t be compensated for with a little practice. You also get a dedicated camera button, which can be used to launch the camera app from standby in a second or so.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review: Windows 10

Although I have seldom used Windows smartphones myself, I do know a fair few people who do. What tends to unite these people is that they:

Are far enough removed from technology that Android makes them uneasy, and…
They want a phone that does the basics: calls, texts and internet. They’re not interested in apps, so the comparative weakness of the Windows Store isn’t an issue for them.

Having used the 950 XL for a week, I completely understand this and can confirm that Windows 10 Mobile carries on in the same vein. Yes, it’s strange coming from Android to this somewhat more limited front-end, but it’s big, bold and easy to use.

Everything is simple to access, and the complicated innards are hidden away where they don’t need to be thought about and can’t be accidentally tampered with. Readers of Alphr will no doubt see that as a weak point, but for plenty of folk, it’s genuinely a strong selling point.

In day-to-day use, the Lumia 950 XL is a pleasant enough companion. It’s big enough that typing using the onscreen keyboard is easy and fast, and I experienced fewer typos than on Swype on my smaller HTC One M8. It’s good for one-handed use, too: hold down the Windows button and the screen halves in size, allowing your thumb to reach the corners without fumbling. And although the apps are limited, the mainstream big players are all present and accounted for: Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram mean Windows 10 Mobile users aren’t barred from talking to their mainstream-phone-owning friends.

There are a few strange peculiarities, however. Most app tiles on the homescreen are semi-transparent, showing through your background image, but some – like Twitter and the preinstalled Office apps – show up in their traditional colours. This can make spotting apps such as WhatsApp tricky, even when they’re hiding in plain sight, and an make your homescreen look rather messy.

On the subject of apps, the Windows Store versions of apps often feel like developmental afterthoughts. Twitter is a throwback to the days before you could “heart” posts, only letting you “favourite” items. WhatsApp groups with multiple people aren’t colour-coded per person as they are on Android.

None of this is new, of course; the big change for Windows 10 Mobile is that it’s now effectively running the same software as your PC or laptop. I can’t say I completely buy the argument that this makes Windows 10 Mobile more accessible – after all, most people use smartphones and computers in completely different ways – but the continuity of style is obvious.

And with Continuum, Microsoft is challenging that preconceived notion. Continuum lets you plug an adapter into the Lumia 950 XL and effectively turn it into a mini computer, complete with grown-up desktop and Start menu. It’s not the full Windows 10 experience, but connect a keyboard and mouse, and you’re away.

This is great if you want to write something long-form, or edit a spreadsheet without wanting to stab somebody, but it’s a long way from being a laptop replacement. One neat trick is that you don’t need to plug in a mouse, as the phone transforms into a multitouch touchpad.

You’re limited to using Universal apps in this mode, though, and they’re currently thin on the ground. The success or otherwise of this feature depends on developer support, but it’s still a cautious “wait and see”. Of course, if enough people “wait and see” we’re unlikely to see much support, but that’s the tricky corner Microsoft has backed itself into with the way it’s handled its mobile operating system in the past.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review: Verdict

There’s plenty to like about the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, and coming with an open mind and no real history with Windows Phone, I got on with the OS better than I expected. However, even if you take the somewhat controversial position that any mobile OS is as good as any other, the hard fact is that others have spoken, and they disagree.

Why does that matter? Well, it all comes down to support. Apps are one thing – I can do without most outside the core essentials – but what about the increasing need for other products to play nicely with your handset? Your next smartwatch, pair of speakers or even thermostat may not play nicely with Windows 10 Mobile, and even if they do, they may not work as well since the install base doesn’t warrant the development time to fix bugs.

Your next smartwatch, pair of speakers or thermostat may not play nicely with Windows 10

What if you’re certain you have no interest in any additional stuff, and you like the way the Lumia 950 XL looks? Well, okay, you’ll probably love the phone, but you’re also paying a premium for a handset with some pretty clear disadvantages.

At £530 inc VAT, the Lumia 950 XL is one of the most expensive handsets on the market, and while the camera and wireless charging go some way to making it seem like a flagship, it’s lacking in other ways. Where’s the fingerprint reader, for example? (Edit: Okay, I’ve been called up in the comments for ignoring Windows Hello – the iris scanning security lock that’s built in. That’s a fair point, but it doesn’t change the issue. It’s not as good as a fingerprint scanner: tricky if you’re walking, and requires you to stare intently in a not entirely natural way. In short, it’s no substitute.)

For £70 less you could get a Nexus 6P, and the Galaxy S6 can be bought for £350 if you shop around. The Lumia 950 XL is a nice phone, and the future for Windows Phone may be brighter than it’s looked for a while, but why take the risk when there are better options available?