Windows 10 Mobile builds 10549 and 10572 - Showing some polish
On Oct 14th, then the 20th MS released two new Windows 10 Mobile builds 10549 and 10572.
In both cases you had to revert to Windows 8.1 first and re-install Windows Insider app to get the builds. I performed this exercise on my Nokia Lumia 735.
Luckily in both cases, the entire process took less than two hours which was huge improvement over the experience I had with 10536 which took the better part of 8 hours end-to-end.
MS claims with 10549 that they were testing their Windows 8.1 to 10 upgrade process and therefore that was the requirement - but I would say that for the vast majority of us Insider Fast Ring folks who were at 10512 or 15036 previously it was still a nuisance.
One step I did not do this time with either 10549 or 10572 was to perform a Phone Reset after the upgrade. I simply used the 3.01 version of the Windows Device Recovery tool to flash my device back to 8.1, then let the store update all the apps, installed Windows Insider and registered, the updated. Also I did not attempt to restore from a backup - always doing a new install.
I still argue that MS is too reliant on the store to get their "core" apps on the devices and that those apps should be in the build itself. With that said the Store app is much more responsive with updates that in previous builds.
There were a few small issues with this process - for example MSN apps like News, Sports, etc would loose their Live Tile on update and you would have to re-pin to start, but they do run better than I have ever seen them.
Also for Visual Voice Mail (VVM), you need to launch the Phone app, dial voicemail once and hang up, then you get prompted for VVM password and it works.
With both builds so far I have not installed any 3rd party apps, I was more interested in how the base MS build installed and ran. In both cases all of the apps worked relatively well. Maps, Store, OneDrive, etc all launched relatively quickly and worked correctly. As I mentioned above all of the MSN apps run well and in fact better than their Windows 10 TH2 counterparts.
Additionally one mobile Live Tile feature I'd like to see make the transition to Desktop/Tablet Windows 10 is the People live tile with photo bubbles of your contacts.. To me its nice because it confirms its working..
Overall build 10572 seems stable and fast and the long time fear that I had about Windows 10 not working well on older devices is gone. If you have a Lumia x30 or greater device, so think 635/735/830/640 - I think you'll have a good experience.
Screen scroll is smooth and most apps launch quickly and you don't see much of the "loading" or "resuming" screens you saw in previous builds.
Groove Music did a faster job of loading my library. As I've mentioned in previous posts a have a large Music library it is used to take Groove over an hour to sync. it still does get some album art wrong or misses it - but at least it does it much quicker than it used to.
Bottom line is just like with regular Windows 10, these recent Windows 10 Mobile builds and beginning to feel like what Windows 10 should be.
Rumors have mentioned a 10575 build for next week - so MS is mostly likely getting ready for RTM for the new 950/950XL and 550 phones.
In both cases you had to revert to Windows 8.1 first and re-install Windows Insider app to get the builds. I performed this exercise on my Nokia Lumia 735.
Luckily in both cases, the entire process took less than two hours which was huge improvement over the experience I had with 10536 which took the better part of 8 hours end-to-end.
MS claims with 10549 that they were testing their Windows 8.1 to 10 upgrade process and therefore that was the requirement - but I would say that for the vast majority of us Insider Fast Ring folks who were at 10512 or 15036 previously it was still a nuisance.
One step I did not do this time with either 10549 or 10572 was to perform a Phone Reset after the upgrade. I simply used the 3.01 version of the Windows Device Recovery tool to flash my device back to 8.1, then let the store update all the apps, installed Windows Insider and registered, the updated. Also I did not attempt to restore from a backup - always doing a new install.
I still argue that MS is too reliant on the store to get their "core" apps on the devices and that those apps should be in the build itself. With that said the Store app is much more responsive with updates that in previous builds.
There were a few small issues with this process - for example MSN apps like News, Sports, etc would loose their Live Tile on update and you would have to re-pin to start, but they do run better than I have ever seen them.
Also for Visual Voice Mail (VVM), you need to launch the Phone app, dial voicemail once and hang up, then you get prompted for VVM password and it works.
With both builds so far I have not installed any 3rd party apps, I was more interested in how the base MS build installed and ran. In both cases all of the apps worked relatively well. Maps, Store, OneDrive, etc all launched relatively quickly and worked correctly. As I mentioned above all of the MSN apps run well and in fact better than their Windows 10 TH2 counterparts.
Additionally one mobile Live Tile feature I'd like to see make the transition to Desktop/Tablet Windows 10 is the People live tile with photo bubbles of your contacts.. To me its nice because it confirms its working..
Overall build 10572 seems stable and fast and the long time fear that I had about Windows 10 not working well on older devices is gone. If you have a Lumia x30 or greater device, so think 635/735/830/640 - I think you'll have a good experience.
Screen scroll is smooth and most apps launch quickly and you don't see much of the "loading" or "resuming" screens you saw in previous builds.
Groove Music did a faster job of loading my library. As I've mentioned in previous posts a have a large Music library it is used to take Groove over an hour to sync. it still does get some album art wrong or misses it - but at least it does it much quicker than it used to.
Bottom line is just like with regular Windows 10, these recent Windows 10 Mobile builds and beginning to feel like what Windows 10 should be.
Rumors have mentioned a 10575 build for next week - so MS is mostly likely getting ready for RTM for the new 950/950XL and 550 phones.
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