At its big event on Tuesday Microsoft introduced the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book convertible tablets, overshadowing a pair of powerful new Lumia smartphones also designed with productivity in mind.
Panos Panay, Microsoft's VP recently promoted to head of devices including the Lumia and Surface lines, showed off the new Lumia 950 and 950 XL on stage at the New York event.
"This is the most productive phone you've ever picked up," he told the crowd of journalists and employees while holding up a 950 XL.
The claim isn't just hot air, thanks to the Windows 10 mobile operating system running on both. Unlike previous versions of Windows Phone and Windows Mobile that were more like shadows of the real deal, Windows 10 on these Lumias isn't just a mobile OS. Using Microsoft's Continuum feature and a new display dock, you can hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse to your phone and run full-blown apps like Office, Edge or media players -- all while being able to still operate your phone completely independently.
Beyond the new spin on mobile multitasking, these Lumias offer pretty top notch hardware with the quality cameras we've come to expect from this line.
Microsoft has added multiple antennas to these phones for stronger, more consistent connections, a removable battery and a USB-C connection with quick charging capability, as well as wireless charging. Both also have a 20 megapixel PureView camera with a dedicated external camera button, Zeiss optics, triple RGB flash and image stabilization. The camera can shoot 4K video and automatically back it up to the cloud.
Microsoft is also introducing "glance screen technology" that gives you a quick look at your notifications when you hold your phone up without turning it on, a feature that phones like the Moto X have had for a couple years now.
As for the nitty gritty details, the Lumia 950 rocks a 5.2-inch 2,560 x 1,440 AMOLED screen, a Snapdragon 808 Hexa-core processor, 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB storage expandable to 200 GB via a microSD slot.
Storage and RAM are the same on the Lumia 950 XL, but as the name suggests, this is a bigger phone with a 5.7-inch display and an 810 Octa-core CPU.
The Lumia 950 starts at $549 and the 950 XL will be $649, with availability set for November. Presumably we'll see the display dock available at the same time, but there's been no official word on price for that one.
You can get a little taste of how Continuum for Windows 10 Mobile it works in the promotional video below:
Source: Microsoft
