Next Windows 10 Mobile build scheduled for Friday, April 10th

Some great news coming out of Microsoft this week via the Twit TV studios in California for Windows Insiders and Windows 10 Mobile.

During an appearance on Windows Weekly, Microsoft's Gabe Aul, revealed that the company actually pushed the Windows 10 Mobile build distribution button at their Redmond headquarters late on Tuesday evening.

That action started a new Windows 10 Mobile build on its way to Windows Insiders that will arrive at 10 AM Pacific Standard Time. The next couple of days will insure the hundreds of images for the various handsets and languages are in place by that time.

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Here is the current list of phones we expect to support with the next flight.

If, during our testing, we find a device specific bug it MAY be pulled from the list.
If a phone isn’t listed here it is likely because we have found such a bug, but it MAY get fixed before the next flight.

Bottom line is that this is a preliminary list, but as Windows Insiders I wanted to give you the visibility even though it’s not 100% locked:

Lumia 1020
Lumia 1320
Lumia 1520
Lumia 520
Lumia 525
Lumia 526
Lumia 530
Lumia 530 Dual Sim
Lumia 535
Lumia 620
Lumia 625
Lumia 630
Lumia 630 Dual Sim
Lumia 635
Lumia 636
Lumia 638
Lumia 720
Lumia 730
Lumia 730 Dual SIM
Lumia 735
Lumia 810
Lumia 820
Lumia 822
Lumia 830
Lumia 920
Lumia 925
Lumia 928
Lumia ICON
Microsoft Lumia 430
Microsoft Lumia 435
Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM
Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM DTV
Microsoft Lumia 532
Microsoft Lumia 532 Dual SIM
Microsoft Lumia 640 Dual SIM
Microsoft Lumia 535 Dual SIM

UPDATE 4/8: The Lumia Icon will not be supported in the next flight due to a scaling bug we need more time to fix.

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New Windows 10 Technical Preview build now available for phones

April 10, 2015 by Gabe Aul


Here is what’s new

Project Spartan:

An early version of Project Spartan is available in this flight. It uses our new rendering engine to give greater interoperability with the modern mobile web, and includes early versions of Reading View and Reading List. For now, Project Spartan is not the default browser, and exists side-by-side with IE11. You can find it in the All Apps list and pin it to your Start Screen from there. Please send feedback on sites and design. For more details on Project Spartan on the phone – see this blog post. Be sure to also check out this blog post from Joe.

New mail and calendar apps:

Outlook Mail and Outlook Calendar are the new built-in mail and calendar universal apps for Windows 10. These new apps bring a fresh UI, with a toggle to freely move between your email and calendar without returning to the Start screen. Outlook Mail includes customizable Swipe Gestures, letting you swipe right or left to take actions like delete, flag, move or mark as read/unread. Also check out the new email authoring experience. Outlook Mail leverages the familiar capabilities of Word to create a richer email experience. You can do formatting tricks like inserting tables, adding pictures and using bullets and text. Outlook Mail and Outlook Calendar connects to Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Gmail, Google Calendar, Yahoo!, IMAP, POP and other popular accounts.

Please note that to add or remove accounts in Outlook Mail and Outlook Calendar, you do so within these apps. The Email + accounts page has been removed from the Settings app.

New Phone and Messaging apps:

You’ll see our new Phone and Messaging apps in this build. Give them a try and let us know what you think. The Messaging app has a new visual design. You can also easily upgrade from a messaging conversation to a voice call with one click of the phone icon in the new app bar.

Note: If you are updating a phone from Build 9941 – please see below for a known issue regarding MMS that will require you to go use the Windows Phone Recovery Tool to roll back to Windows Phone 8.1 first and upgrade to this build in order to have MMS working on your phone.

New People app:

The new universal People app has a new visual design but will continue to be the comprehensive list of all your contacts across the services you care about such as Exchange, Outlook.com, Gmail, Facebook, etc. You’ll be able to easily manage all your contacts and quickly connect with them.

New Maps app:

The first preview of our new universal Maps app on phone is now available. Maps offers you the features and tools you need to explore and navigate the world. This includes the best maps, aerial imagery, rich local search data, and voice guided navigation experiences from both Bing Maps and HERE maps, integrated together for the first time into a single app for Windows.

Updated App Switcher:

Check out the updated app switcher by pressing and holding the back button on your phone to see your recently used apps. We’ve added support for landscape when invoked from an app being viewed in landscape. For large phones like the Lumia 1520, we’ve introduced a new grid layout so you can be more efficient at switching between apps. And we’ve extended the length of recently used apps to 15.


Some things we’ve fixed

We’ve updated the keyboard layout based on your feedback. The keyboard layout now has period, comma and emoji keys on first page of keyboard. Language switching is enabled by press-and-hold on the &123 key. There is also an option to replace the emoji key with the language switching key.
We’ve fixed the Cortana icon resolution so it now scales with tile size.
We’ve fixed the issue where the Photos app would fail to launch periodically when attempting to add a photo attachment to an email, OneNote or Facebook item.
We’ve fixed the issue where the Microsoft Band wouldn’t sync with your phone after upgrading to Windows 10.
The Photos app’s tile will now pick up the phone’s theme color before it’s launched and then start showing pictures from your collection including OneDrive in the Live tile.


Here are some known issues


This is preproduction software going out to the Fast ring – so you should expect to see some bugs. The list below are some of the ones that we thought you should know about up front, and it’s worth reading carefully. We’re working to fix all of these in future builds.

There might be situations in which auto-upload of your Camera Roll to OneDrive may not be working. Please be sure to back up your photos especially if you need to use the Windows Phone Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1.
The Office Hub has been removed from this build. You won’t be able to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote files in this build. Preview versions of the universal Office apps will be available in the coming weeks.
All Bluetooth-based interactions with Cortana are not working in this build because we’re reworking how Cortana interacts with Bluetooth. This includes dictating and reading text messages, initiating searches and chit-chat, and all system-level control (such as playing music, launching applications, or navigating settings.
After upgrade, some apps that have been installed onto a SD memory card will fail to launch. To fix this, uninstall and reinstall the apps.
About 1% of the time, incoming phone calls may not play a ringing sound.
Call + SMS filtering will not work after upgrade.
For people upgrading their phone from Build 9941, there is a bug in which your phone’s MMS settings will be lost after upgrade. The new Messaging app doesn’t yet have the ability to re-enter these settings. You will need to use the Windows Phone Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 and then upgrade to this build to get MMS working again.
Also for people upgrading their phone from Build 9941, the tiles on your Start screen for the Camera and Photos apps may be missing or corrupt. You will have to unpin any corrupt tiles and re-pin the apps to your Start screen.
On some phones, due to a scaling bug the dismiss button won’t be visible when an alarm is triggered. To stop your phone from “alarming “just touch the arrow and swipe up on the notification and off the screen to end the alarm.
On phones with 512MB of memory, apps can randomly crash due to an issue with memory management.
Flight mode cannot be enabled.
Data connections can’t be disabled.
You may need to re-pin the Phone app after upgrade.
The Insider Hub is now included on Phone but may fail to launch on some phones.

I’m very excited to get this build out to all of the eager Windows Insiders who have been waiting since our first preview build to try Windows 10 on their devices. We are still very much in the thick of development and this build still has some rough edges, but there is also a lot to be excited about here as well.

I hope that you’ll try it out and send us feedback via the Feedback app with your problem reports and suggestions.

Thanks,
g

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User Expectations & Recovery efforts:
For users who have already unusable devices, we’re continuing to research this situation. There is no guarantee that using this updated version of the tool will recover an already-bricked device. If your device is showing the red Nokia logo, please do the following:

--Ensure your device has a good power source (connected via USB cable that can transfer data and charge the device simultaneously)
--Close the WPRT, re-open, and take the update to the new version of the WPRT. The new version is 1.2.4
--Once he new version is installed, re-attempt the flashing process.
--If your device is not recognized, click the "My phone was not detected" button and continue the attempted recovery process

If your device is on a blank/black screen and is unresponsive, you may attempt the same steps as listed above. Devices that do not have the red Nokia logo on the screen are in a different state and will not have the same recovery rate should they be recoverable. Please do try to recover and share your results.

Please check back for additional details and updates. More information will be shared as it becomes available.

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Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 10052 now available for phones

April 21, 2015 by Gabe Aul

Hi everyone,

We’re releasing Build 10052 of the Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones to the Fast ring today. This build is a minor update from the 10051 build that we released 11 days ago with several of the top issues affecting Insiders fixed. There are no new features in this build, but it should be much more usable day to day with these improvements.

Here are the big things that we fixed:

--Flight mode can now be enabled.
--You can now disable data connections.
--We fixed the bug in which your phone’s MMS settings were lost after upgrading from Build 9941.
--We fixed the issue in which you couldn’t download keyboards for additional languages.
--We fixed the issue where the viewfinder in the Camera app gets composed incorrectly on some devices like the Lumia 1020.

We received reports of failures on a small number of Lumia 520 devices from Windows Insiders at the end of last week when trying to roll back to Windows Phone 8.1 using the Windows Phone Reset Tool. We quickly paused build availability for these devices to investigate the issue. The issue causing these failures was the way in which the Windows Phone Reset Tool was re-flashing these devices. We’ve released an update to the Windows Phone Reset Tool that should get those impacted by the issue up and running. More information is available here. With this issue resolved, we’re resuming offering builds today for folks on Lumia 520 devices as well.

As always, thanks for participating in the Windows Insider program and please keep the feedback coming through the Windows Feedback app.

Thanks,
g

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Universal Windows Platform Innovation

With the Universal Windows Platform, developers can now create a single application for the full range of Windows 10 devices. The platform’s UX controls automatically adapt to different screen sizes, and the developer can then tailor applications to unique capabilities of each device. The platform enables developers to integrate Cortana and Xbox Live into their applications, offer trusted commerce, embrace natural user input, create holograms, and more.

The Universal Windows Platform enables Continuum. Previously, we’ve demonstrated how Universal Windows apps and the Windows shell transition seamlessly between tablet and PC modes. Today, we showed how Universal Windows apps and Continuum for phones enables a screen to become like a PC.*

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Microsoft is perpetually compiling new builds of Windows 10 for internal use and when one of these builds meets the quality standards for an Insider release, then it is pushed out. While it has been a few weeks since we last received a build for phones, if the telemetry data comes back clean, a build will go out this week.

Gabe Aul, who is head of the Windows Insider program, said on Twitter that if all goes well with build 10080 for phones, then it will be released to Insiders.

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Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10080 for phone now available
May 14, 2015 by Gabe Aul


Hi everyone,

We’re releasing Build 10080 of the Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones to the Fast ring today (will show as 10.0.12562.84 in Settings > System > About). We’re excited to get this build out because it brings many improvements but also because it adds support for a few important phones that Insiders have been asking us about. Specifically, it supports the Lumia 930/Lumia Icon, Lumia 640 and 640XL, and our first non-Lumia phone – the HTC One (M8) for Windows. (Please note that if you are on Verizon and your HTC One (M8) for Windows is on version 8.10.15143.154, you won’t be offered today’s build just yet. We are still working to offer the upgrade to Windows 10 for these particular devices.)

This is a Fast ring build so be aware there are some bugs that will affect your experience with it, make sure to read the known issues below before installing.

Here is what’s new

Windows Store Beta for phones: This build brings a first look at the new Windows Store in Windows 10 for phones. You will see it designated as Store (Beta). The Store Beta has a new visual design and if you’ve been using the Store Beta on PC, it should feel familiar since it’s the built using the new Universal Windows Platform code. As a beta, there are a couple of known issues to be aware of with this Store app. Both the app selection and markets where the Store Beta is available are limited in this release. You can browse and search, as well as download apps. You can pay for those apps and games with options such as international credit card, gift cards and PayPal. However, carrier billing is not enabled yet. At Build, we announced that all Windows 10 devices (not just phones), will be able to support carrier billing. That means that the growing number of carrier billing connections we have today may be used by Windows 10 customers to purchase all Store content. We’re also adding music, movies and TV shows into the Store for you to purchase and access across all your devices. Movies & TV page is functional. Music is not available in this build but will be coming soon. And just like on PC, the current Windows Store remains available in this build.

Universal Office apps: Now that the Store Beta is included in this build, you can download the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Preview apps. For more information on the Universal Office apps – read this blog post from the Office Blog. We know that you’ve been waiting to try these apps on your phones, so we’re very excited for them to be available for you now.

Xbox app: The Xbox app for Windows 10 is also now available for phones in the Store Beta (version 4.4.230). With the Xbox app on your phone – you can access your activity feed, achievements, friends list, activity alerts, messages, watch Game DVR clips, and connect to your Xbox One. For more information, see this post on Xbox Wire.

Music Preview app: Access your music collection and play all your music – including songs you have added to OneDrive. The new experience for Now Playing makes it easy to swipe between songs and it looks great. We’ve got more improvements coming in future app updates that will be delivered through the Store Beta including a Live Tile showing what’s currently playing, pinning favorites to your Start screen, exploring the full catalog and listening to Radio with an Xbox Music Pass, support for Kids Corner, the ability to shop for music in the Store Beta, and more. Download the Music Preview app here.

Video Preview app: Browse and play video files (including MKV files!) on your device. Try out filtering and sorting your collection and adding a folder of videos to include in your collection. You can also browse and play movies and TV shows you’ve purchased and rented from Xbox Video. Try starting a purchased video on your PC or Xbox and pick up playback right where you left off on your phone. In a future app update, we’ll be adding the ability to download movies and TV shows for offline playback, new device management so you can manage your offline downloads on the devices you care about, improved search results, movie reviews and cast info, and more! Download the Video Preview app here.

Check out the new Camera app: We want your feedback on the new Camera app for Windows 10! Make the Camera app your default camera app by going to Settings > System > Photos & Camera (or pin it to your Start screen) and let us know what you think. Note that high-end Lumia devices (1520, 1020, 930, 830, 640, and 640XL) have some features not supported by the new Camera app. For these devices, the new app will work but to get the full functionality from your device you will need to use the Lumia Camera app. In coming weeks we’ll have updated versions of Camera apps with the superset of all features.

A few fixes: We have fixed a few things in this build. Tapping on an e-mail notification now launches you into that e-mail message instead of the calendar. Incoming calls should play a ringing sound now.

Here are some known issues

*We’re aware of several migration issues after upgrading to this build.
--After upgrading, you may see duplicate tiles for apps like Search and Phone under All Apps.
--“Pending” may show under some apps after upgrade and those apps are unresponsive. Restarting the phone will clear the pending flag and the apps should work.
--All data and settings for apps installed on a SD card do not get migrated and you cannot launch these apps or install them again. Workaround is to uninstall then reinstall these apps.
--The old email app will still show up after upgrade in All Apps list with “Error” text displayed and cannot be removed. This app also shows up banged out on the Start screen if it was pinned previously. It can simply be unpinned to remove.
*When upgrading from Windows Phone 8.1 to this build, even if you have your cellular data connection turned on, it will get turned off during upgrade. Go to Settings > Network & wireless > Cellular and SIM to turn it back on.
*VERY IMPORTANT: there is a condition in which you may never receive MMS messages. Usually when someone sends you a MMS message and your phone’s cellular data connection is turned off, you will receive a “Get message” link in the text thread from the sender, allowing you to download the message once you turn your cellular data back on. There is a bug in which this link is not received in this case and the MMS message is completely lost. To ensure MMS messages are not lost, be sure to turn cellular data on (via Settings > Network & wireless > Cellular & SIM > Data connection). This issue will occur any time your cellular data connection is turned off in this build.
*If you are in a region where Cortana is enabled (US, China, UK, France, Italy, Germany, or Spain) and you have changed the default shipping language on your phone – please ensure that your region, language, and speech settings are restored to their default values before initiating the update. This is required in order to avoid a bug that will cause Cortana/Search to repeatedly crash.
*After upgrade, uninstalling an app may not remove it from the All Apps list. Usually restarting your device resolves this issue.
*Playback of movies and TV may fail with error 0x8004c029 in the Video Preview app. If it does, go here to learn more about how to fix it.
*After upgrading, the Twitter app may crash on launch. If you uninstall and reinstall the app, it should work.
*Auto-update for apps is not enabled in this build for apps installed via Store Beta. You will have to manually check for updates.
*After upgrading from Build 10052, the Insider Hub still does not launch. However, if you upgrade from Windows Phone 8.1 the Insider Hub should now launch.

We’re really excited to get a build out for Lumia 930, Lumia Icon, Lumia 640XL, and HTC One (M8) owners who have been wanting to participate, and also to get new apps, Store Beta, and Office Preview apps into your hands.

It’s also worth briefly talking about timing for releasing Windows 10 for phones. Last month, we announced that Windows 10 for PCs would be launching this summer. At the Build conference a few weeks ago, Joe Belfiore spoke to a group of press and elaborated a bit more on timing for other devices including phones. Because we’re treating Windows more like a service, this allows us to release Windows 10 on different devices and customers at different times. For phones, Windows 10 will arrive later this year – both on new devices and also upgrades for existing Windows Phone 8.1 devices. Even though Windows 10 will be arriving for phones later than it does for PCs, the underlying OS code is still the same. As Terry mentioned earlier this year, Windows 10 will support the broadest device family ever – from PCs, tablets and 2-in-1s to phones to Xbox and the Internet of Things. To enable this, we work to specifically tailor Windows 10 to these device types. And what you’re seeing with phone builds today is that work in progress to tailor Windows 10 to be great on phones.

Please continue to send your great feedback and problem reports on things that you see when using this build on your devices, and thanks for being a Windows Insider!

Thanks,
g

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Build 10080 brings lots of new features, including the Beta Store, with access to the new Universal Office preview apps, as well as UI changes, more customization options and so on.

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Universal Office apps: Now that the Store Beta is included in this build, you can download the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Preview apps. For more information on the Universal Office apps – read this blog post from the Office Blog. We know that you’ve been waiting to try these apps on your phones, so we’re very excited for them to be available for you now.

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Windows 10 Mobile: Microsoft is taking control of OS updates from the carriers

By Andy Weir

The issue of having to face lengthy waits between the announcement of an OS update and its actual release is one that Windows Phone users know only too well. Indeed, the recent Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1/Lumia Denim update didn't even begin until months after it was first announced.

Carriers, in particular, are notorious for dragging their feet when it comes to testing and releasing updates for handsets that they've sold to their customers. But that's all going to change with Microsoft's new smartphone OS, which the company confirmed this week will be called Windows 10 Mobile.


Read more: Here

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