Lumia 950 And 950 XL Review Round Up: What Reviews Are Saying So Far

It has been a few weeks since Microsoft's latest Windows 10 smartphones, the Lumia 950 and the Lumia 950 XL, were released in the market and the devices have been the subject of reviews on its performance as well as its battery life. According to a review by GSMArena, while both devices sport huge batteries in comparison to other flagship phones, the larger Lumia 950 XL showed better battery performance than the smaller Lumia 950.

In terms of specs, both phones are equipped with the same Quad HD AMOLED displays: the Lumia 950 is on a 5.2-inch screen while the Lumia 950 XL is on a 5.7-inch screen. Given these high-resolution displays, both phones are equipped with robust batteries – the Lumia 950 has a 3,000 mAh one, while the larger 950 XL packs a 3,340 mAh battery. Under the hood, the phones are quite different from each other. A hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor powers the Lumia 950 while an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor is found on the Lumia 950 XL. The larger phone is also equipped with liquid cooling.

GSMArena's battery test for both phones compared their performance in terms of basic tasks such as talktime and web browsing. Generally, the bigger phone, the Lumia 950 XL beats the smaller Lumia 950 in performance.

According to the report, when it comes to talk time, the Lumia 950 XL outperforms the Lumia 950, lasting for an average of 17 hours compared to Lumia 950's poor 8 hours and 25 minute average. Overall, the bigger phone comes close to the talk time performance of the HTC One (E8), while doing a little bit better than the LG G4 and the LG V10.

In web browsing, the Lumia 950 XL ran at an average of 10 hours and 50 minutes which is comparable to that of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and the Huawei Honor 7. The Lumia 950 on the other hand only had an average of 7 hours and 30 minutes, which according to the report was only an average performance.

When it comes to the devices standby times, both phones did not fare well as the report cited them as below average. Both devices can only last for 7 days on a single charge, which according to the report is surprising given the sizes of their batteries.