
Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review - Tomte
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/18/10571504/microsoft-lumia-950-xl-review
======
petke
As a developer I like what MS is doing. Fragmented platforms is a programmers
hell. Universal apps and the same operating system across all devices is
surely the future. Most PC developers like myself wont care enough to learn a
new language and system, just to try out making a mobile app. But when we can
do it all from visual studio and c++ like we are used too. Then the barrier to
entry is low enough that more of us will. More programmers mean more apps.

Sooner or later PC's are going to get so small they fit in your pocket. I just
hope windows phone keeps going until then. Im not sure how apple and android
will cope with that future.

In the meantime, I think the Lumias are just fine. They makes calls, they
takes pictures, they gets you on the internet. What else is there? I haven't
noticed any apps I cant get either. Then again you don't miss what you never
knew.

~~~
ebbv
> As a developer I like what MS is doing. Fragmented platforms is a
> programmers hell. Universal apps and the same operating system across all
> devices is surely the future.

Whether it is or not (I don't think so) that's not really what Microsoft is
doing. You can't just download Windows 10 software and run it on Windows 10
Mobile.

Nor should you be able to. Phone software should be written for a phone. I
don't want to run a Windows desktop app on my phone any more than I want to
run a phone app on my desktop PC. They are fundamentally different platforms,
with different interfaces, different screen sizes and different needs.

~~~
sjmulder
> You can't just download Windows 10 software and run it on Windows 10 Mobile.

That's exactly what you can do, given that the app is written against UWP.

We already universal apps between phones and tablets and we use webapps
everywhere. Different screen sizes, different usage scenarios, different input
methods – those are all things you can adjust your interface for.

~~~
Retric
Bluetooth keyboard and mouse can handle input. So, why can't you run StarCraft
II on your phone?

~~~
pc86
Is StarCraft II written against UWP?

~~~
Retric
If there trying to unify platforms then it should not need to be a UWP app.
Until then there just adding a new standard.
[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

I mean the laptop / phone divide is not all that wide in terms of Ram or
Gflops. So, why not just run windows on everything?

~~~
sjmulder
Windows does run on everything. It won't run plain old Intel Win32 binaries on
everything, with good reason.

UWP is hardly a new standard. It's the continuation of the Windows
Phone/Windows 8 APIs and WPF, which dates back to 2006.

I think the biggest issue is that on Win32 both code and developers are much,
much more powerful. You can't make Steam for UWP, or an IDE, or something like
AutoCad with its plugin support. Other than mobile support, there is little
reason to use UWP over Win32 (perhaps with WPF).

A shame, because we really need to move on from Win32.

------
jasode
The subscore at the bottom of the article for "ecosystem" was given a rating
of 6 (out of 10). To me, a "6" would mean "above-average".

Yet, the review actually says:

 _" What’s not encouraging is the state of apps for the Lumia 950 XL. I wanted
to switch back to using this as my daily device over the past two weeks, but I
simply couldn’t hack it. It stayed in my pocket while I used my iPhone 6S
Plus, simply because so many apps are still missing or inadequate on Windows
Phone. I’ve been to a lot of events recently and need Periscope to stream from
the Verge account, or to use Snapchat. I simply can’t do this with the Lumia
950 XL, and I can’t even access our Trello work app. If I can’t get my work
done on the move, it’s really difficult to switch back to a Windows phone.

Microsoft’s original plan was to support Android apps on Windows 10 Mobile,
but that seems very unlikely now. Most of the third-party apps are just poor
ports from iOS and Android, and lack key new features. The Twitter and
Instagram apps are still depressing examples of the state of Windows, and I
don’t feel like much has changed over the past year. Microsoft’s mobile store
needs some serious love, but it’s running out of time."_

Seems like the "ecosystem" score should actually have been a "2" or "3".

Followup clarification to the replies: For those who think a score of 2 or 3
is wrong, The Verge's own explanation for the scoring [1] says...

    
    
      ...
      2: Slightly better than garbage, but still incredibly bad.
      3: Not a complete disaster, but not something we’d recommend. 
      ...
      6: Good. There are issues, but also redeeming qualities.
      ...
    

Granted, those score explanations are for the "final score" instead of
subscores but it seems reasonable to assume the subscores follow a similar
internal rationale. In the two paragraphs about the app ecosystem, the writer
didn't mention any "redeeming qualities". Therefore a score of 6 is
inconsistent.

[1][http://www.theverge.com/how-we-rate](http://www.theverge.com/how-we-rate)

~~~
chongli
_The subscore at the bottom of the article for "ecosystem" was given a rating
of 6 (out of 10). To me, a "6" would mean "above-average"._

6 out of 10 is _not_ above average. If you got 6 answers right out of 10 on a
test, you'd call that "barely more than half right". This is how American
review scores work: they're based on school grades where anything below 8 is
pretty much unacceptable.

~~~
alextgordon
That is not a very good way of scoring, because nobody cares about the
difference between about "bad" and "awful" yet those classifications have the
most bits of information.

Perhaps start at 5 and go to 15.

~~~
pc86
6 is literally 60% - a D-, or on a test containing 100 questions at 1 point
each, the minimum score required not to outright fail. At most US universities
you won't get a degree with a 6/10 average.

------
FussyZeus
This probably won't be a popular opinion on HN, but as much as people usually
make fun of reviewers citing design, it does matter to me and many other
people. I'm not saying I would REFUSE to own a device that wasn't pretty (and
honestly even some of Apple's stuff strikes me as a little ugly) but design
does matter, especially when you're a multi-billion dollar company and you
could easily locate and supply some designers to wrap your electronics in a
spiffy housing.

To me, it's less about you should have something pretty, and more about why
don't you have something pretty? It's not like a case made of silver plastic
with a few chrome bits or maybe something in matte black with accents is
massively expensive to make.

This is especially true for Windows Phone I think, because it has such a rep
already for being dull even by Blackberry standards.

FTR: I had a Lumia Icon for about a year, and dumped it for the same reason as
the author: Ecosystem was glitchy, the app market was way out of touch with
Android and iOS in terms of quality and diversity, and the iPhone 6+ finally
offered an iOS device of a decent size which was my final beef with it. Sold.

~~~
vegabook
Agreed. You're carrying this thing around with you 16 hours a day. Design is
crucial. And if it isn't then increasingly, you'll be fine with a 100 dollar
generic phone. Unfortunately, design is something that you can't just throw
dollars at, unlike the tech. Your people have to have some form of
inspiration, that they're doing something beautiful, that their aesthetic
efforts are appreciated, that they work in a place that has some measure of
artistic thinking. MS doesn't seem to have that mojo. Just look at the Xbox
One vs the PS4. Throw decent components into the most generic black plastic
box you can source then scratch a few patterns on it. Awful.

~~~
FussyZeus
Then you contrast that with the Halo 5 XBox one, designed in a place that does
have artists in a creative environment...

I mean it's not gorgeous but it's a hell of improvement, accomplished with
just different printing on the outside.

------
rloc
Most reviews for this phone were out 1 month ago. Theverge took its time.

Continuum is the most promising feature of the phone. It actually becomes a
"real" computer, even though this is just the start.

I think Microsoft is doing the right thing lately by leveraging its strength,
the desktop.

Reviewers are always blaming the ecosystem. But imagine the future when
smartphones get more powerful and the Win32 windows app can be distributed
through the Windows Store (this will arrive at some point). The phone would
naturally gain the ability to run a win32 app when plugged to a screen.

The phone would run both Win10 Universal apps and any old windows app that's
been there since the early ages of the PC era. The ecosystem would become
suddenly a lot better and the phone more interesting.

~~~
emehrkay
> It actually becomes a "real" computer,

I don't think that it does, not like the first few versions of the Ubuntu
Phone became a real Gnome desktop. This Windows phone's desktop mode seems
like a larger screen with mouse/keyboard support. Can it handle more than one
app at a time? Still impressive as hell though and I agree with it being the
future of devices.

~~~
sjmulder
You get multitasking, the taskbar and windowing. It's unforunate that there
are so few apps. Microsoft made a good effort with Office, now imagine getting
Visual Studio on there. That would rock.

------
Joeri
As a 950 owner I'd say that review is harsh but fair. At this point I can't
recommend to anyone that they buy these phones unless they've decided that
both android and iOS are not for them and still want a high-end phone.
Frustratingly the user experience is becoming more like android with every wp
version increment, and the whole reason I went to wp in the first place is
because i didn't like android (or iOS) as a phone ui. maybe a surface phone
will turn things around next year...

~~~
FussyZeus
Everything is boxes forever.

I fucking hate minimalist UI.

------
cabirum
How developing apps for Windows Phone can be compared with iphone/android? I
have experience in neither, but I expected Windows to gain traction given the
free VS IDE, adequate emulators, and universal apps automatically suitable for
desktop use.

Is it just small market share blocking wider adoption, or is the tooling
somehow lacking still?

~~~
mariusmg
When it comes to Microsoft, the tooling never lacks. Usually it's the best you
can get.

~~~
danieldk
It didn't help much far. I remember being in complete awe when you could run
Windows Phone 7 demo apps on Microsoft's tutorial pages by virtue of
Silverlight. Developer tools have indeed never been the problem.

It's the endless restarts (WM6 -> WP7 -> WP8, and to some extend WM10), lack
of Microsoft's engagement (why not launch a Surface Phone and be done with
it), the lack of good hardware, and simply the lack of developers.

At this point, I do not see much of a future for Windows Phone/Mobile. It will
probably continue to exist as one of their 'hobby projects'. But Satya Nadella
realized (correctly) that much more can be gained by serving the market. Now
Microsoft's own applications are better on iOS and Android than Windows
Mobile.

------
grabcocque
Continuum is an impressive tech demo (for a feature that nobody to speak of is
demanding).

Still, I think an x86 Surface Phone that goes heavy on the whole-PC-in-your-
pocket mantra really is Microsoft's Hail Mary pass for getting Windows Mobile
to stick.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Phone. Windows Phone.

~~~
sccxy
Mobile. Windows 10 Mobile.

------
drewg123
Continuum sounds awesome. I've been wishing for this for years. My current ~2
year old Nexus 5 has much higher hardware specs than my desktop from 10 years
ago (2x the cores, 4x the RAM), and I'd love to be able to take my computer
everywhere in my pocket.

This feature almost makes we want to go out and buy this phone, just to
support the concept. But then again, Windows Mobile... Arg.

------
aikah
> Not enough apps

So the review says not enough apps, but not enough apps bundled with the phone
or in the store? and what kind of app is missing?

~~~
dagw
I'm a WP 8.1 user. The main problem isn't so much that there aren't enough
apps or that entire classes of apps are completely missing, but that the apps
that are there lag way behind equivalent Android and iOS apps in quality and
features.

~~~
MichaelGG
The apps are also crappy quality, many just being wrappers for YouTube
channels. The reviews are somehow worse than YouTube comments. Even their
"top" charts have random crap in it like "FreeFlix Free Movies" or "Free Mp3
Downloader". For a while, MS was extremely uncooperative with trademark issues
(Netflix had to get fake Netflix apps removed several times; other ISVs
reported MS just wouldn't respond at all, even on well-known and obvious scam
apps.)

Even now, searching for "Game of Thrones" leads to a scam $5 paid app that
doesn't even have a website.

MS actually paid to help create this scenario. They were offering $100 or $200
per app for shovelware.

There seems to be zero QC or curation or any sense of class in the Windows
Store. So they get the downsides of a closed platform, with the downsides of
just letting people publish crap. Even Google Play is better.

------
princeb
for some reason, nokia's 930 has much nicer curves than this one. there isn't
a whole lot of that in either model, but this one somehow looks like a lame
htc.

I have a Lumia 930. I love it enough to not notice that there aren't enough
apps for it.

------
bechampion
I'd like to know what's the turnover of a phone like this?

------
rayiner
How do people put up with non-iOS phones? I scrolled halfway down that article
and mobile chrome decided to reflow and take me back to the beginning.

