I would only ever consider purchasing a windows phone. The integration with the PC/laptop with Outlook, Onedrive & Edge on both devices makes for a fantastically user-friendly experience.
The user-interface itself is great & I love the customisation possibilities & live tiles, transparent icons.
- OS
For me, this is where ALL the mainstream media reviews are plain WRONG. The WX operating system is hands down the best system on any phone. It is an absolute joy to use. I hate the Android OS as it always looks so cluttered and messy. There are buttons, numbers, widgits and mess everywhere. It is not a clean looking environment, every phone looks a mess, with random bloatware added. I also hate the oversaturated look of every Samsung phone.
The Apple iOS looks okay, but let’s face it, just like their computers (I am a long-time Mac owner), the OS has not actually changed in a decade or more. Okay, they have gone from jelly colours and faux 3D buttons, to a flat colour look, but other than incremental updates to the hardware each year, the OS on iPhones has barely changed.
Compare Android and iOS to WX and there is no comparison. The 950 is so much more dynamic and looks so much smarter. The main attraction for me is the ability to re-size and position all the buttons. I want large phone, email, messaging and internet buttons as they are what I use the most, and I can make them the size I want and position them where I want. No-one else allows this.
I am amazed that no-one points out that the ability to re-size tiles/buttons on Windows phones is great for anyone with impaired eyesight. I like photography, so I have a large Photos button and it scrolls through my photos which look great. On iOS you have had a flower button that takes you to your photos for nearly a decade and that is it. On WX your photos are shown on rotation on the photo tile itself. Having a photo as your background with invisible buttons is also brilliant (same as W8).
Live tiles, like the Photo tile, really are nice, with the latest news scrolling on the News tile, latest apps for sale on the Store button etc. The start screen looks so dynamic compared to the iOS screen that has not changed an iota in nearly a decade.
Everything is easy to use and navigate. I added a Micro SD card to hold all my music and it instantly recognised this and took me to a settings page so I could allocate everything either to the phone or the SD card. It was so easy to allocate all photos, video and music to the SD card. My iPhone has 16GB and no expansion. My 950 now has 150GB of storage and costs much less…
It’s hard to express how much nicer the OS is to use compared to Android and iOS, you just have to use it.
If, like me, you hate haptic feedback (small vibration when you press Home or Back), you can thankfully switch it off under Settings > Extras >Touch > Off
- Camera
For anything important, I use a top-end Nikon with prime lenses, but for videoing the family and taking snapshots, a decent camera phone is important. Again, the 950 excels. The camera is excellent. It has a Zeiss branded lens, which possibly helps, but the real winner is image stabilisation which really helps produce clear images in low light. The iPhone 6 has an excellent camera in good light, but in low light, I think the 950 is better. There is also this really cool feature when taking a flash photo where you can change the lighting effect to reduce the effect of the flash, which really improved some harshly lit photos. Very clever.
- Music
Groove Music is much better than the W8 music player, it is less complicated to use, the album displays are smaller so more information fits on the screen and the album features on the start screen during play. Music sounds very good and certainly beats my old iPod Touch which I have been using since the iPhone only holds 16GB, whereas my 950 now has 150GB of storage. Only the Sony Experias come close and they have a fatal flaw (in addition to Android) - the volume up and down button is at the bottom of the phone making it impossible to adjust volume holding the phone with one hand, it is a bizarre design error.
- Windows Store
The WX windows store is so much better looking and professional than the W7/8 store. It looks just like Apple’s App store and that is not a bad thing. Again, I think Android lags behind in terms of style. In terms of the Apps available, this is the single biggest knock against Windows and Microsoft. And it’s true. But it really depends if you care and need the apps.
The online reviews from tech magazines all focus on the Apps because they are techy geeks and apps matter to them because it is their job. In practice, I simply have no need to use any apps. I have 100s of games and Apps for Apple devices none of which get played or used and all of which have been deleted after a few hours or maybe days.
One online review slammed the phone because of an issue getting a photo onto Whatsapp. I have no use for Whatsapp and this glitch is irrelevant to me and I suspect many phone users. But the techie review focused on it and slammed the phone as a result.
Popular apps that actually have some utility, like Shazam, Uber, banking apps etc, can be downloaded. But if you are worried that you cannot download the 56th iteration of Granny Run or the latest game being given away at Starbucks, maybe don’t buy this phone.
It comes with a decent Maps App, but it no longer has Here Drive (which admittedly gave some of the worst routes but was still useful). I guess there might be a licensing issue as I think they are Nokia apps, so I will have to find a driving direction app.
Other people have complained about Bing Weather being an auto app. Compared to the useless Apple junk that cannot be deleted, this is actually a useful app that at a glance gives a weather update without being opened. Not being able to delete it is annoying - not for me personally, but conceptually as everything should be deleteable. As I say, compared to iOS and Android bloatware, it's no big deal
All the adults I know simply don’t use that many apps and just want a phone that is easy to use and does the basics well while being able to browse the internet, take photos etc. They couldn’t care less about the 100,000s of pointless, repetitive apps available for other phones, but which people working in phone shops or at online tech review sites focus on exclusively.
- Typing / keyboard
One thing I really liked about the Nokia 925 W8 phone was how quick and fluid the typing was on messages and emails. While I find nothing is as accurate as the physical keyboard on a Blackberry (it's only saving grace), the 925 swipe keyboard was super fast and the predictive text really clever and accurate. The good news is the 950 is just as good, perhaps better as it gives more options as you swipe. In comparison, the iPhone 6 has painstaking one letter at a time typing, it takes forever to type an email and worst of all, Apple overrides everything you type and chooses its own words anyway. iOS typing is infuriating as it changes simple, common words that are properly typed, like "Sally", into rubbish like "dally" that makes no sense in context. Apple keyboard (without a swipe app) is terrible, the 950 keyboard is great.
- Battery
The battery life is not very impressive if you use the phone consistently given the incredible screen resolution. It also gets hot listening to music for long periods. Not too hot, but it is hotter than previous phones I have used and is hotter than I would expect or want. The battery is replaceable which is great if you are on a long journey without a charging point, so you can swap in a new battery.
- Conclusion
Whether the 950 is right for you really depends on what you are looking for in a phone. If you prioritise a great screen, good camera, expandable memory and re-sizeable buttons with an easy-to-use and clean operating system, this is a great phone. If you want the latest games and apps and want to use the same phone as everyone else on the tube, train or bus, look elsewhere. I just wish Microsoft put more money into marketing the phone and into getting its Store populated with apps, so it had a fairer chance to compete as the OS really is wonderful.
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UPDATE:
From reading MS message boards, MS are looking into the short battery life, overheating and repeated warning about low storage (even when there is plenty of storage left on the phone). I am pleased that MS are taking customer feedback seriously as the short battery life and heating of the battery are the only two issues I have had with the phone so far.
The majority of colleagues at work have a personal iPhone 5 or 6, with a few others having Samsungs. Company iPhones are also issued to senior employees. Everyone who has seen the 950 has been wowed by the front page. Everyone loves the cycling of photos on the photo tile, the cycling of financial data and share prices on the Money tile, the news updates etc. When people have then compared it to their iPhones, where you need to press a button to take you to photos or to share prices or to weather, they have all commented on how much better Windows 10 is. However, people are still hung up about Apps, so MS really need to use their power and money to get developers to reproduce the most popular Apps for Windows 10.
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FURTHER UPDATE:
A firmware update has addressed the overheating battery, low battery life and low storage warning issues previously experienced.