Lumia 950 XL, 950 and 550 hands-on: First look

Microsoft Lumia 950 hands-on

The Lumia 950 looks a lot like its XL sibling, but there are few notable changes. The camera hump is smaller, leaves the triple-LED RGB flash outside and the sensor is surrounded by metal instead of glass.

Luckily the Lumia 950 keeps everything that makes the Lumia 950 XL great - it comes with a smaller 5.2" Quad HD AMOLED display protected with Gorilla Glass 3, the main camera is a 20MP PureView one with ZEISS optics, OIS and 4K video recording.

Microsoft Lumia 950

There is even the 5MP front snapper and the iris recognition for Windows Hello unlocking. The new USB Type C port highlights the bottom of the phone.

Lumia 950

Finally, we really like that Microsoft is sticking to its original policy for hardware shutter keys.

Lumia 950

Like its bigger sibling, the Microsoft Lumia 950 doesn’t feel as premium in hand as its specs suggest. We really hope that the optional premium third-party shells we saw for the 950 XL will be widely available for the smaller model. They will surely make the handset look and feel much better in person.

The Lumia 950 runs on a slightly less powerful Snapdragon 808, with a hexa-core processor and 3GB of RAM. The chipset also features liquid cooling, so heavy loads won't be resulting into hot phones. We've seen the 808 chip already in the LG G4 and we know it's quite a capable fella.

Microsoft Lumia 950

The SoC change is probably the most important change in addition to the smaller display. The battery had to be shrunk a bit, but we think 3,000 mAh battery for a 5.2" is still quite e beefy supply. Plus, it supports wireless charging, too.

The Lumia 950 runs on Windows 10 out of the box and you can opt for the Microsoft Display Dock, which will enable Windows 10 Continuum features. This way you can output the desktop version of your phone's Windows 10 on a big screen, you can evet plug and use mice and keyboards.

Microsoft Lumia 950

We saw the Lumia 950 doing Continuum at the presentation and once again - the demo was nothing short of impressive. A phone that delivers desktop-great experience once hooked up to a monitor is something you can't find anywhere else to date.

The Snapdragon 808 chip is clearly up to the task to handle the desktop Windows 10 hassle-free.

Microsoft Lumia 950 vs Lumia 950 XL

Microsoft will be selling the Lumia 950 for $549 starting this November.