Lumia 950 XL for $299 and 950 for $249 at Microsoft Store

If you were looking to get the 950 XL, there’s a price ‘drop’ at the Microsoft store where you can grab the 950 XL for ‘just’ $299. The 950 for $249.

For those that are die-hard Windows fans, this might be worth considering as the hardware there is quite decent. I’d find it difficult to recommend as a ‘gift’ item though as I wouldn’t want to lock anyone in to the Windows store ecosystem.

https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Microsoft-Lumia-950-XL—Unlocked/productID.326602300

Another thing I couldn’t justify was this useless ‘Lap Dock’ thing that HP is trying to do. It’s essentially a revival of that Palm Foleo thing wherein they try to sell you an underpowered, laptop wannabe as a phone companion. But HP have priced their lapdock into the range of an actual windows laptop that could, you know, do stuff, but has been instead lobotomised requiring the phone to power it.

Yes, you might say, it’s a little bit like that ASUS Padfone thing. That was actually relatively useful given that the innards of phones tend to be better than the innards of tablets. Better brains, better camera but more importantly, the content and interaction type is pretty much similar from phone to tablet (there was even a keyboard dock if you wanted to extend that). And the price was about the price of a high end phone but you get the tablet too! And even after all that, you would probably have lucked out getting actual individual devices.

The dock to connect via continuum to any screen might actually have some use. Watch this demo video from HP. “A do you see a welcome screen” screen displays on the phone :/

You’d best use a keyboard and a mouse but it means having a bigger display that you didn’t have to lug about. Again though, if you’re gonna carry a keyboard, you might as well just carry your laptop and have a connector to a display if you really needed that bigger screen. Continnum probably isn’t all that useful yet in a consumer setting but I can see how this could be useful in a work environment (e.g. where they’d have stations for you to dock into).

Via: neowin

Category: Lumia