John promised me this phone (Lumia 950 XL) for Christmas, but it wasn't available in the Microsoft store until a week or so ago. We grabbed it, and arrived yesterday, and I've been playing with it ever since.
This thing is fast and has a glorious screen. I haven't even gotten to take any pictures yet. I had quite a bit of research to do in terms of choosing a provider and finding out what the specs were and whether they would work on T-Mobile, in particular.
For instance, T-Mobile has this new thing called "Extended LTE." They don't define it on their website, but only certain phones support it, and it gives you much higher speeds. The first support person I spoke to, couldn't get the difference between "Extended" LTE and "Expanded LTE" which is just geographic coverage. Finally found out that Extended LTE was its own band, and yes, fully supported by the 950 XL.
Verizon, on the other hand, explicitly blocks THIS PHONE from its network, although the phone is perfectly compatible with it as well. This phone will run on any network, I think. This is why I left Verizon.
I got the unlocked version, by the way, so I'm not tied to a carrier, don't have to worry about bloatware or a carrier getting in the way of my Windows Phone 10 updates from Microsoft. Yes, it is Windows Phone 10, I forgot to mention. The specs on this thing are outrageous.
I also ordered a 200 GB Micro SDXC card:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V62 ... ge_o03_s00which arrived today, and I've spent the last 3 hours copying my 75+ GBs of Music onto it, so I can have all my music with me on my phone, not have to carry around a 2nd device (Zune player) and not have to stream it from my OneDrive. Because the phone software is handling it, and my car connects to it via Bluetooth, the car will display the title and so forth of what is currently playing, and my car's on-steering-wheel controls will be able to control skipping tracks, going back, etc. as well. I understand from my husband that the Lumia music app, was Xbox Music, now Groove Music - both successors to the Zune software - has greatly improved sound over the Zune software. Looking forward to that!
Here's the phone:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msu ... .326602300Scroll down for the tech specs. More later!