[NB: Watch this space (tease) for a new All About site that is completely cross platform and where articles may or may not include any Windows (or Symbian) references...]
Lumia 950 XL and iPhone 12 Pro Max....
As usual, I've shaded in green an obvious 'win' for either device, and any row where a winner would be totally subjective is left uncoloured. Or, where all devices are utterly excellent but in different ways, I've given each a 'green'(!)
[By the way, if you're viewing this feature on a phone then the table may well cause you problems. Try viewing in landscape mode? Failing that, go view this on a laptop or tablet!]
| Microsoft Lumia 950 XL | Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max | |
| Date first available | November 2015 | November 2020 |
| Current price, availability | No longer officially for sale, though it's often on clearance prices if you're lucky and at outrageous profiteering prices due to rarity (if you're not!) | From £1099, depending on storage. Hugely expensive, but at least it's available and supported. |
| Dimensions, form factor, weight |
152 x 78 x 8mm, plastic chassis and replaceable backs (plastic/leather/wood etc, from Mozo, as modelled here!), 165g, bezels are comparatively small. |
161 x 78 x 7mm, 164g, stainless steel frame, glass front and back, sealed as per modern smartphones. The exact same width as the 950 XL, but a good centimetre taller. And much heavier, at 228g. Must be the steel...! |
| Durability | No specific durability metrics, though the fact that the back comes off will help enormously for water damage, i.e. taking out battery and cards immediately, drying out the internals, even unscrewing the motherboard from the guts of the phone. I'm old-school here! All damage to the back or corners is trivial through replacement of the rear, but the screen's exposed, of course. All spare parts are still available, at Replacebase... |
IP68 water and dust proofing gets the win overall, though the all-glass construction does mean that a good case is mandatory. It's also worth noting that this generation of iPhones has 'Ceramic Shield' glass, in theory 4x tougher than traditional Gorilla Glass. We'll see...! |
| Operating system, interface | Windows 10 Mobile, (dismissable) virtual controls, as needed, now officially updated to W10 Fall Creators Update (Redstone 3, Autumn 2017) with security to 'January 2020'. No more updates, though, so we're at End of Support. |
iOS 14.2, gesture navigation, with on-screen 'home' indicator.
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| Display | 5.7" AMOLED (1440p at 16:9 aspect ratio, matching most video media), Gorilla Glass 4, ClearBlack Display polarisers help with outdoor contrast, excellent viewing angles. Screen area is approximately 88 cm2 Glance screen available (in various colours) for always-on time, day and notification icons, plus some detailed info from a specified app. |
6.7" 1284p OLED, 19.5:9 ratio, HDR10, screen area is roughly 110cm2, so 20% more screen real estate in a fairly similar form factor, which is always good and gets the win, despite the lack of always on display (though a tap with a finger always lights up the screen). |
| Connectivity |
LTE, NFC (all uses), Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, integral wifi tethering, Bluetooth 4.2 (all uses). Continuum connectivity to use a wide range of first and third party UWP apps on external displays as secondary screen, independent of the phone display. Includes the new NexDock 2, transforming the Lumia into a Windows 10 S laptop, effectively. |
5G, LTE, NFC (just for payment), Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac/ax, integral wifi tethering, Bluetooth 5.0 (all uses). A tough one to score, given 5G, but I think in 2020 I'd still rather have all the Continuum functionality available. |
| Processor, performance | Snapdragon 810 chipset, 3GB RAM, faster than it's ever been now on the Fall Creators Update though still slower for almost everything than on the Android phone. Multi tasking and app resumption is excellent though, at least with all the modern UWP apps |
Apple A14 chipset, 6GB RAM, very fast at everything compared to the Lumia, things just happen instantly. |
| Capacity | 32GB eMMC internal storage, expandable via (cheap) microSD to extra 256GB | Starting at 128GB internal storage goes up to 512GB, non-expandable. Tempting to let the Lumia win because of microSD but then if you know you want to keep a lot of media you'd just buy a more capacious iPhone etc. |
| Imaging (stills) |
20MP PureView f/1.9 1/2.4" BSI sensor, Phase Detection auto-focus, dedicated camera shutter button and launch key, genuine 2x lossless digital zoom (in 8MP oversampled mode), OIS. 'Rich Capture' produces customisable HDR shots and 'dynamic flash', with triple LED illumination. Outstanding shots in most light conditions, with just focussing issues in low light as an Achilles heel. 5MP front camera, no auto-focus |
12 MP, f/1.6 1/1.9" (estimated) main camera, dual pixel PDAF, sensor-shift OIS See here for my imaging head to head! 12MP, f/2.2, 1/3.6" front camera, no auto-focus |
| Imaging (video) | Up to 4K, optically (and optionally digitally) stabilised, with 'Best photo' 8MP grabbing built-in, plus Rich Recording and HAAC microphones for high quality, gig-level stereo capture. The noise floor is too high for me too, a definite hiss. | Up to 4K video capture, includes Dolby Vision HDR at up to 4K/60fps, optically and digitally stabilised and with high quality stereo audio capture, including an almost zero noise floor. It's why I've shot The Phones Show on an iPhone for the last couple of years. |
| Music and Multimedia (speakers) |
A tinny mono speaker by modern standards, though, as ever, you can trade volume for fidelity in a simple tweak on Lumias.
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Genuine stereo speakers. Well balanced, has Dolby Atmos support baked in, and makes a very satisfying sound for a phone, when watching YouTube or Netflix etc. |
| Music (headphones) |
3.5mm headphone jack driven by a dedicated Qualcomm DSP chip, plus Bluetooth A2DP+AptX, so great wired and wireless headphone audio too. | 3.5mm audio was ditched by Apple a while ago, and indeed they don't even ship an adapter/DAC in the box anymore. Happily these are just under a tenner on Apple's site. Bluetooth audio is just A2DP, but good enough for most people. |
| Navigation | Windows 10 Maps is now pretty mature and impressive, especially once you've learned the live traffic routine trick! Offline maps save a lot of data bandwidth for those on tight contracts or anyone in a low signal (data) area. Maps would still be competitive but live traffic support can't match Apple's and Google's, plus it's started to get erratic in most countries. |
Apple Maps is pretty good, with real time traffic coming from TomTom (at least in the UK), though you have to be online all the time since only limited areas are cached. However, in the App Store, Google Maps is available and now the gold standard in phone navigation, offering true real time navigation around real time, low-level traffic issues, along with offline maps that auto-update. So just use this! |
| Cortana/Voice | Cortana was now mature and well integrated, though functionality has been falling away and it no longer functions at all in most parts of the world. | Siri is baked in and works superbly, especially responding to 'Hey Siri' even in noisy environments. Google Assistant knows more about you, but Siri is still pretty damned helpful and still getting better. |
| Battery, life | Removable 3000mAh battery, and the ability to change cells are a positive here (and you CAN still buy decent spare batteries), plus USB Type C Power Delivery (up to 3A, so 15W) and 1A Qi wireless charging built-in also helps. However, a Lumia running Windows 10 Mobile will now discharge in 24 hours even if you don't use it much, so it's a win here with caveats! |
Sealed 3687mAh battery, easily gets through a day, though depends on the use case for the phone. The Lightning port supports 20W (4A) charging, though in 2020 you need to find your own (Type C) mains charging source for the provided Lightning to Type C cable (or use some old Lightning accessories!) There's also (up to, with Apple's own MagSafe pad) 15W Qi wireless charging for top-ups around the home or office, which helps a lot. Can iOS's legendary battery efficiency and the large cell here compensate for just swapping in a new battery in 10 seconds? Just about. But I'm not prepared to call an outright win here.
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| Cloud aids | Windows Photos syncs across all signed-in devices, subject to your OneDrive tariff (stingy, unless you have Office 365), should you have thousands of images in the system. Plus Windows 10 backs all your media, application data and settings to a separate backup folder system, tariff-free on OneDrive, for easy restoration on a new or factory reset phone. | Apple's iCloud Photos does very well to backup your data and settings, and well enough to archive all photos, but the latter is a bit confusing to a newcomer and I'd recommend doing what I've done with iPhones and simply install the Microsoft OneDrive application. This then archives all photos as it used to on Windows phones, and you also get all your old OneDrive files and images accessible, etc. (Office 365 status-permitting!) |
| File compatibility | As with all Windows phones, plugging into a Windows PC gives full drag and drop to the phone's user file system. Plugging into a Mac isn't trivial, though see here! | Plugging into a PC gives immediate basic Windows Photos importing, or you can use iTunes for more control of syncing media to and fro. Ditto on Mac, though things are a bit more integrated, plus you also then get AirDrop which 'just works' over Wifi to move big files backwards and forwards quickly without wires. |
| Biometrics | Iris recognition ('Windows Hello') works well unless you wear varifocals(!), but takes a couple of seconds (including an animation!) in real world use. There's also no official way of paying in shops using this, at least not in most of the world. | Face ID works superbly well, as always, for unlocking and paying for things, though with the caveat that in these pandemic times you have to lower your mask to authenticate. Or, you know, use your PIN. |
| Applications and ecosystem | Windows 10 Mobile has most (though not all) mainstream apps and services covered. Often third party clients are involved, mind you, there are companies who hate Microsoft so much that they simply refuse to write for Windows, it seems. And 'long tail' niche/boutique apps are hard to find for real world companies and shops. | The might of Apple and iOS's app ecosystem - everything is available and almost always in first party form. Plus a surprising amount built in (or a tap away) from Apple, including their Office suite (Pages, Numbers, etc.) and their photo and video editing suites. And the Garage Band recording suite. |
| Upgrades and future | Windows 10 Mobile is now effectively out of support. From now on, it will be useable but with more and more service caveats applying. Still, 'end 2019' was a full four years since the Lumia 950 XL was launched, so it's hard to complain. | iPhones traditionally get longer than average support in terms of updates, with five years being common. So the iPhone 12 should still be receiving OS and security updates in 2025. |
Verdict
Adding up the green 'wins' (for fun?!) gives a convincing 10-3 win to the much newer device, unsurprisingly. Despite the lack of storage expansion, the lack of 3.5mm jack, and the generally sand-boxed OS, there's a lot to like for long-time Lumia fans, I think, especially of larger devices like the 1520 and 950 XL here. Watch this space for a full review of the newcomer, including the aforementioned imaging shootout.
Your comments welcome, anyway.