Microsoft unveils its next flagship smartphones, the Lumia 950 and 950 XL

Meet the first smartphones designed for Windows 10 Mobile: the 5.2-inch Lumia 950 and the 5.7-inch Lumia 950 XL.

Microsoft formally announced the two phones today during its fall hardware event in New York City Tuesday.

The new Lumia flagships aren’t terribly sexy-looking phones, and they’re not radical departures, design-wise, from earlier Lumias. But they are powerful.

The phones have fast Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, and deal with overheating issues seen in some Qualcomm chips by building in liquid cooling technology. Liquid cooling is technology more commonly seen in servers, not phones.

The Lumia 950 runs on a Snapdragon 808 hexa-core chip running at 1.8 GHz. The 950 XL has a Snapdragon 810 octa-core running at 2.0 GHz.

“These are phones you can run your business on,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Above: The Lumia 950. Image credit: Evan Blass

Both phones ship with Skype, Cortana, Microsoft Office, and Continuum. (Continuum allows the phones to wirelessly connect to mice, keyboards, and displays.)

The phones feature a large 20-megapixel camera on the back that shoots 4K video. The camera uses Zeiss optics and triple-LED flash technology. On the front of the phones is a 5-megapixel selfie camera.

The phones ship with 32GB of storage, in addition to 256GB of memory via the memory card, Microsoft said, with 3GB of RAM.

The Lumia 950 has a WQHD OLED display (1,440 x 2,560). The Lumia 950 XL has a 5.7-inch Quad HD AMOLED display (2,560 x 1,440).

Both the 950 and 950 XL feature a USB Type-C port for data and power. The phones also support Qi wireless charging.

The 950’s 3000 mAh battery charges to 50 percent capacity in just 30 minutes, Microsoft said, as does the 950 XL’s 3340 mAh battery.

Price and availability

The Lumia 950 starts at $549 and the Lumia 950 XL starts at $649. Both phones will be available in November, Microsoft said.