Tech Tools review: Lumia 950 smartphone

Microsoft may be a distant third to Android and Apple, but it's still hanging in there. The latest trick up its sleeve? The Lumia 950, which comes with Windows 10 for phones.

Aesthetically the 950 doesn’t have much to distinguish it. Its plastic casing makes it lightweight and it is slim enough despite the slight protrusion from the 20 megapixel camera at the back. But the 950 has something a lot of the rivals don’t: a removable battery. You can also add a memory card to bump up storage capacity from a serviceable 32GB to more than 200GB.

That’s something commonly being ditched from phones and, if you take a lot of photos or video, it can be expensive to find a phone that will hold everything you need.

The 5.2in screen is big enough to comfortably read emails and watch video but compact enough to fit in your pocket. Regardless of what you are doing, the content will look good. The Lumia comes with a Carl Zeiss lens and the images are impressive. There’s a lot of competition out there and the number of smartphones that can shoot good video and stills is growing all the time.

A lot of phone makers rely on their software to set them apart. Ironically, Windows 10 may be one thing holding back the Lumia 950. In many ways, the software is leaps and bounds ahead of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 8. There are familiar elements from Windows 10, but things have been altered to suit the mobile platform. One Windows, many devices. If you weren’t a fan of Windows 8.1, the updated software may be more to your liking. Not only is there a familiar look but there is a familiar feel too; Windows 10 supports universal apps.

There are some omissions though. One of the major selling points of Windows 10 is Cortana, the digital voice assistant that is supposed to put Siri and Google Voice in the shade. I say "supposed to" because it's not yet available in Ireland, so I could not test it. If Microsoft is serious about competing with iOS and Android on this level, Cortana needs to be enabled in more countries.

Add in some buggy updates and you could understand people are cautious about making the leap.

On the plus side, the 950 is fast-charging, so you can get a 50 per cent charge in about 30 minutes, which should be enough to keep you going.

The good

Windows 10 also means you can use your phone as the hub of a very portable PC. The Lumia 950 is compatible with a small hub that allows you to connect it to an external display and a keyboard/mouse combo, using the Continuum feature to make your phone the brains of a very compact desktop set up.

The design of Windows 10 is preferable to that of its predecessor, from the ability to have an image as the background on the phone to the optimisation for smaller screens on universal windows apps.

The not so good

While the universal apps enabled by Windows 10 will be a boost to the Windows Store, there still isn’t enough there just yet to pose a real threat to Google or Apple. In the past it’s probably been one of the chief disadvantages of Windows Phone. Without the apps, persuading consumers to make the leap to the Windows platform is a challenge. Without the audience for the apps, persuading developers to put time into creating software for the Microsoft phones is equally difficult. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. Universal apps are designed to ease some of this – developers would create apps that work on PCs, tablets and phones – but it has yet to reach any kind of critical mass. Part of this could be due to the fact that the Windows Store is not the easiest to find apps in, something Microsoft may want to examine.

The rest

The Lumia 950 comes with 3GB of RAM and a Snapdragon processor, which makes it snappy at times. Universal Windows Apps also don’t close down when you exit them – they can run in the background, which makes it quicker getting back into them.

The verdict

HHH The Lumia 950 does a lot of things well. However, the question is whether it will be enough to persuade people to abandon the established platforms and move to Windows 10. Until the apps are more readily available, whenever that may be, I suspect the answer to that may be no.