Windows 10 (phone) preview

10536 is out now, and while it's nearly unusable on my 920 (like most recent builds have been - the device overheats, killing performance and battery), it works really well the majority of the time on my 635. Hopefully the new phones will be released shortly after the event on the 10th, because I'm getting pretty eager to use this on a high-end / fast device. Pretty much every app is upgraded from WP8.1 (with the two big exceptions for me being that Contact History and Unified Inbox are gone).

 

I'm in the fast ring on 10536 and writing this post with my 920. Slightly warm near the top (been using it over an hour) and it really sucks down the battery all the time, but it's mostly fine for normal use. The Edge crashes are annoying, however.

Overall I like WP10 better than 8.1.

 

It works well on my 1520 as well. A major improvement that the mail app now shows the accounts with unread count right 'in the burger menu'. The mail app as released for Win10 and WP10 was beta bordering on alpha, holy cr@p. Another major improvement for those with a landscape-view car mount: the music app now has landscape view, as does the maps/navigation app. The start screen still doesn't though.

Minor gripes
- The start screen is still glitchy. Some flickers, late drawing, some tiles losing their icon randomly, etc.
- I like that they added smart dialing to the 'phone app', but it's weird that there's no link to the address book (people app) from the dial page.
- I still cannot set the photos tile to display photos from a single folder, e.g. the folder "Hawaii trip". That's how every digital photo frame works, why not the photos tile. It's either a single photo, or all 'recent', which excludes those cool vacation pics.
- Edge still only generates blank tiles (or rather, tiles with only the Edge logo on it) for pinned sites, without even text info for the small tile. Not helpful.
- Restore from backup still takes a ton of work to get back to a previous device state.
- We still can't reach glance screen settings easily. It doesn't show in the settings app. We have to download 'sysapp pusher', locate 'glance', tap it to find it in the store, wait for a while, and then hit 'open'.

Still, this is a surprisingly short list given the absolute disaster that was build 10512, at least on the 1520.

 

Thanks for that tip! I thought glance was not yet supported in WP10. Glad to have it back now, I so missed it!

 

Pretty much what I mean about my 920 being unusable, but I see a few other issues as well - SMS/MMS stops working for hours after a device reboot, I still frequently get the "Loading..." trying to go to the start screen, sometimes I get a corrupted display when switching apps, etc. Plus, the battery only lasts about 4 hours. I just cannot use it this way.

My 635 though has it running really well.

Oh, and I agree entirely with JoeS that backup is a joke (and always has been).

But yeah, I'm far happier with Windows 10 Mobile than with WP8.1. I know some people are unhappy with the hamburger menus and stuff, but the added functionality makes up for it to me.

 

I did the necessary reversion to 8.1 on my 920, then got 10572 installed & reset the phone. Worth the trouble! It's smooth, fast, and stable enough to rely on as my daily driver, now. The battery doesn't drain quickly anymore.

And Nokia's HERE Maps and Drive apps are back! I gave Microsoft's map app a try but it needs much work as a GPS navigator. Mostly the UI--text too tiny in places, etc. Glad to have HERE Drive back.

Glance is still unavailable, even through SysAppPusher. It can't find it in the store. Hopefully this is temporary.

As always, YMMV. Good luck to those who take the chance.

 

My big problem with 10572 is that it partially stopped recognizing my SD card on the 635 I'm using right now. The store sees that it's present and tries to update apps that are on it. The start screen / app list doesn't let me launch any of them.

 

Updated my 920 (which is to say wiped it to 8.1, then upgraded to this build) over the weekend, and it's a drastic increase in performance on that device. Apparently the decreases in performance over time were fixed (apparently due to Cortana bugs), but we'll see.

On top of that, I'm loving the DPI scaling options on the 920. I can lower it from recommended 225% scaling to the lowest 175%, and then that gives me the option for a four medium tile width on the start screen, plus it shows four apps at a time in the app switcher and five quick action buttons. This lets me pull out some of my most commonly used live tiles (messaging and mail are the big two, but others as well) out of their folder and give them a more prime location.

Plus, there are a bunch of apps I've always wanted smaller font sizes in anyway, so this helps with that as well.

With regards to the above comment, I actually overall much prefer the new Microsoft Maps app, but I would agree that they need to work on the view when using driving directions. It should be simpler than it currently is, with only high priority information being displayed.

 

Looks like they're doing away with Astoria which is hugely disappointing for end-users.

http://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-project-astoria-delayed

They already removed the Android subsystem in recent builds. Islandwood is still an option, but it's one which requires far more work on the developer end than Astoria would have.

I wonder if part of the reason is because using it (in the leaked form) created an entire Android file system that you couldn't ever really wipe, and having two separate silos like that could be hugely confusing to people.

No idea. Good for Windows developers, though.

 

IOS apps tend to be higher quality anyway and their porred apps will be UWA so I think it'll work out for the better.
Sent from my Lumia 1020