Windows 10 Mobile Update For Older Lumias Pushed To 2016
by Brandon Chester on December 18, 2015 1:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- Windows 10 Mobile
Earlier this year Microsoft stated that their plan was to begin the roll out of Windows 10 Mobile to existing Lumia devices in December. With December being half over by this point, the fact that the update would probably be pushed to 2016 was something of an unofficial but accepted truth. Today Microsoft has made that truly official. The company said the following in a statement to ZDNet:
"This November we introduced Windows 10 to phones including brand new features such as Continuum and Universal Windows Apps with the introduction of the Lumia 950 and 950 XL. The Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will begin rolling out early next year to select existing Windows 8 and 8.1 phones."
It's not made explicitly clear why the update has been delayed, as the OS is already available on Microsoft's recently launched Lumia 950 and 950 XL. From my experience with the beta/developer releases of the OS that Microsoft has made available, it's entirely possible that they still need to work on ironing out bugs and improving performance. Many reviews of the new Lumia phones have a similar sentiment, and with many of the older Lumia devices running less capable hardware from Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 series than the 950 and 950 XL, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have the update delayed to ensure it doesn't cripple performance on those phones.
At this time it's also not known how many devices will receive the update to Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft has stated that phones will need 8GB of NAND, but it's not clear if there are other hardware requirements. Given that the Lumia 550 just launched with Snapdragon 210 and runs Windows 10 Mobile, I would hope that Microsoft plans to update a significant number of existing devices.
Source: Microsoft via ZDNet
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Frangelina - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link
as stable as 8.1 wasFrangelina - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link
i update on the fast lane since a month. they correct minibugs that i can not identified. It is pretty stable by now. In the past 25 years, i saw boxed system worst than that. People are spoiled now. People expect perfection, 0 bug a week.silverblue - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Better battery life plus a camera app that supports the Lumia 1020 would've been the trigger for an early update to Windows 10, however as I'm approaching my upgrade I'm unlikely to stay with Windows Phone (plus I can get a Nexus 6P for cheaper than a 950).I can definitely recommend a hard reset following an update; I tried 10 a few months back and it was a shockingly poor mess full of errors until I went ahead with a hard reset. Sure, the battery life was a little on the poor side, but the errors generally went away. I did go back because of the battery life, but also because it decided to suddenly stop synching photos to OneDrive (bye bye holiday snaps). I suppose I should've checked they were backed up beforehand - my own stupid fault - but I hadn't turned the backup feature off and it was working for at least a couple of weeks.
Frangelina - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link
I went back to 8.1 last june and stayed with it until November. 10 is a lot more stable now. However, by not going CDMA with the 950, in other words boycotting Verizon et others, is a dead deal. I will go android next july.flyguy29 - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
Wow. Simply "wow"..... Microsoft's commitment to mobile smartphones is simply going to continue to remain a "?" ....Azurael - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link
Amusingly, I think W10M insider preview is actually working better on older devices like my 930 than the 'RTM' currently is on the 950, having read a few reviews of that device. Seems to me like they're simultaneously beta testing hardware and software on people who bought it - perhaps they should have called it the Lumia 950 'Insider Edition'?Unlike the 950 review units, my 930 running the insider preview doesn't reboot itself spontaneously or have camera issues, but it still doesn't quite feel finished as an OS... I frequently see formatting issues with the UI of apps (the 'three dot' menu in Edge sometimes coming up behind the other bar at the bottom so the bottom few options are unusable is a good one) - and why have 'hamburger' menus but not the swipe in from the left gesture to bring them up, meaning you have to reach an uncomfortable distance up the screen on a 5"+ phone for the button? It's just far more frustrating and unintuitive than Android or iOS despite having adopted (for better or worse) much of the UI paradigm from those two.
Also, outside the browser, performance seems to have regressed noticeably in the last few builds... I can't even bear to play Crossy Road on it any more, it's too jerky. Maybe they've done that intentionally to make the 950/XL seem faster given what we know about the SoCs (808/810 driving a 1440p display isn't really faster than SD800 on a 1080p display, especially after throttling sets in and worse, W10M is all ARMv7 32-bit code... )