Tag Archives: Microsoft Lumia 950XL

Mobile, Technology

My List of Mobile Handsets (updated)

10 Comments

I’ll go back in time now and make a list of all the mobile handsets I have owned till date. You may notice that the list is quite long, with it being especially dense in the first few years.

The iPhone X still holds the record of the longest used mobile handset by me (almost 3 years).

YearPhoneComments
2003Reliance LG RD2030 (CDMA)My first phone, my father had to pull many strings to get me this.
2004Nokia 3530My first colour phone. I miss the paragliding game.
2004Samsung C100Had a hidden temperature sensor and a notification LED supporting customisable colours.
2004Samsung X100Slightly better than the above.
2004Nokia 1100My first phone with a torch.
2005Nokia 2112My last CDMA phone.
2005Nokia N-Gage QDDidn’t have stereo audio for music playback.
2005Nokia 3510iPurchased Second hand.
2005O2 Xphone IIOne of the best phones I had.
2005Motorola C350When the above got stolen. I think I got it for ~₹1000, second hand. Shitty.
2006Nokia 6100Second Hand.
2006Nokia E50One of the best phones I had. It was the sleekest Symbian ever. I still use the Text Tone “Flurry” as my wife’s message tone.
2006Sony Ericsson J100iShitty.
2007Nokia N73 MEIt was thick, but had a good (back then) camera.
2007Nokia E51Back to the thinner E Series.
2007LG KS20One of the worst phones I had. It was unrefined and shitty.
2008Nokia E51Went back to E51.
2009Nokia E52Good phone, died on the flight to Palo Alto. I spent an entire weekend in San Francisco and many days in Gurgaon trying to get it repaired, but failed.
2010iPhone 3GGot this as a temporary phone in Palo Alto, later gifted to mother. Used only a week.
2010Nokia E63Mooched this one off my father.
2011Nokia E7-00First phone I ever pre-booked, and got immediately after returning from Turkey. My first AMOLED phone.
2012Nokia Lumia 900Was obsoleted by Microsoft within a few months of launch. Got it from SGBest.
2013Nokia Lumia 720Got it from MGF Metropolitan Mall
2013Nokia Lumia 925The Lumia 720 didn’t feel premium enough, so.
2014Nokia Lumia 920The Lumia 925 didn’t have wireless charging, so.
2014Nokia Lumia 830Slightly bigger screen, but LCD.
2015Microsoft Lumia 950XLLumia Flagship. Also, a big mistake.
2017Apple iPhone 7 PlusFirst legit iPhone.
2018Apple iPhone XGift from a fiend.
2019Apple iPhone XSGot it for dual SIM during travel, gifted iPhone X to wife.
2020Apple iPhone XSwapped Xs with X with wife, as I switched jobs and didn’t need to travel anymore.
2020Apple iPhone 12 ProFirst phone I bought in a long time with money I already had
2022Apple iPhone 14 ProCurrent phone
List of Mobile Handsets

As you can see, my mobile handsets have gone through different eras:

2003-2005 : Feature Phone era. I generally bought any handset I liked.
2005-2011 : Symbian Era. I mostly had Symbian phones with some other platforms sprinkled in between.
2012-2015 : Lumia Era. I purely had Windows Phones.
2017-Present : Apple Era.

Let’s see what the future brings.

Gadgets, Mobile, Rant, Technology

My Worst Purchases-Microsoft Lumia 950XL

3 Comments

Continuing with my series, the next entry in the list is the Microsoft Lumia 950XL, which was my 29th phone.

Microsoft Lumia 950XL, Dead on Arrival
Microsoft Lumia 950XL, Dead on Arrival

I was super-excited to buy this phone since the day it was announced by Microsoft. In the months leading up to the actual launch, I used to send my family members to the Microsoft Store at Ambience mall every Sunday (one-by-one) to ask about the phone’s launch date. I even had a Google search alert setup which sent me emails as soon as any news article were published about this phone. Although this phone was great on paper (Great hardware, huge display, excellent camera), this phone was my 7th Windows Phone overall and by the time this phone launched, Windows 10 Mobile was all but dead.

I remember the day this phone launched; I had just started a new job that week. I immediately dropped everything I was doing and went to Ambience mall to buy it (For ₹55,000; of course, I had pre-booked the phone months ago). The store employees told I was the first person in North India to get my hands on this phone. At that time I thought I was special. In hindsight, it is clear now, I was one of the few fools in North India to buy a Windows Mobile (at the tail end of 2015).

Within months, Microsoft announced the death of Windows 10 for mobiles. Within weeks after that, app developers abandoned the platform. There was still a small community online of loyal fans but we were more and more reliant on 3rd party apps for basic services. Uber, specifically, was a huge pain point. There was no easy way to search for destinations, you had to zoom out on the map, zoom in to where you thought you wanted to go and mark the location manually.

I also remember claiming some of the phone’s cost from my company (There was a company BYOD policy) and my manager laughing at me that I spent such a huge amount for such a phone.

Slowly and painfully, over the next year, the number of useable 1st party apps dwindled to almost zero and I eventually made the jump to Apple’s (Walled) Garden putting an end to my Lumia misery. If I could do things over, I should have bought an iPhone for the same amount and prevented myself from a year of misery.