Comments Locked

26 Comments

Back to Article

  • Flunk - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    The next announcement will be that they're cancelling the update for older handsets. That's what they did for Windows Phone 7, why not do it again?
  • AkulaClass - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    I think not. They need as large as possible installed base of Win10 Mobile.
  • close - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    I really liked Windows phones because they run well even on low specs, the interface is clean and I was willing to go past the fact that the market place is almost abandoned.
    But constantly skipping over updates (like most Android makers also do) is not something I can put up with. I can understand 3rd parties doing this but MS controls the environment. Apple provides updates to its handsets, Google does the same, MS is acting like a 3rd party failing to update its own handsets.
    This i sad and really not a good sign so I find less and less reason to invest in such a platform.
  • Gich - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    WM10 is already aviailable via the insider preview...
  • Pessimism - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Its sad that these false promises and subsequent backpedalling have become accepted industry practice.
  • BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    @Pessimism: "Its sad that these false promises and subsequent backpedalling have become accepted industry practice."

    Not sure I agree that this situation falls into false promises or backpedaling. Thus far, they haven't backed off of support for the older phones. As soon as they come out and say we changed our minds, I'll agree with you.

    I think this situation falls into the less condemning category of "we over estimated our ability to execute and/or underestimated the problem to be solved." I still prefer this to the, "We are going to go ahead and release it and let the users beta test it for us." category.
  • Manch - Sunday, January 3, 2016 - link

    I have the insider preview fast ring build on my 1020. Its a bit slow at times. As long as I don't keep too many apps open and make sure I have a few GB of free space for swap files, it works pretty good. I was using it as my daily driver until I got my 950XL. Still, it does need more polish before it hits the older phones. If the fast ring builds are any indication, when they do release it, it will be very nice.
  • Cryio - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    Because WP8.0 would've needed too many workarounds to work on single-core system as well. Not to mention WP8.0 would've crawled on single core devices. I agree it would've been nice though.
  • BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    There are two misconceptions around why MS didn't bring WP8 to WP7 devices.

    The first misconception is that it would have resulted in a usable device. @Cryio You are correct. I was part of a small group that managed to get WP8.0 onto a Lumia 900. I believe this was the most capable WP7 phone and it launched with 7.8. Even ignoring the bugs from workarounds that we didn't have, the performance was not something you'd want to deal with from a daily driver. It ran worse than the iPhone 3G post iOS 6 update. When you consider the countless issues from missing hardware support, well, its a no brainer.

    The second misconception is that MS dropped all support for the old phones. That same Lumia 900 received updates up to version WP7.10 after WP8.0 had dropped. It brought a lot of the UI features from WP8 to WP7. It's not quite the same, but it's better support than I recall ever seeing from iOS or Android (perhaps excluding Nexus devices).
  • AkulaClass - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    I have a Lumia 830 and have been using the latest Windows 10 mobile. For normal use it has been a disastre. Especialybbattery life has been terrible. Standy-by have been eight hours!
    So I want to return to Win8.1 for now.. Not that easy. The tool for this did not work for me and MS could not helt. They did try with various suggestions but no result. After som search mt self Infound a Noka?! tool that did fix it, so now I am back in good shape.
    So from my experience good they delay it. Seem to lack some work.
    Else I must say the Lumia 830 has been good to me.
    Nice camera
    Nice UI
    Nice display
    OK browser
    Good messaging and call handling
    Nice mechanical design
    Good battery life
    Terrible and hopeless app-support
  • haukionkannel - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Well the win10 mobile is still in beta stage, so no wonder that older phones are in waiting state. MS-first need to get win10 ready to new phones, and when that is done they can tweak it so that older phones also get stable upgrade.
  • Michael Bay - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Try restoring it to factory defaults before returning to 8.1.
    Helped a lot of people on the latest preview build for some reason.
  • HardwareDufus - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    That was my experience on every phone I've put the Win10M Insider Preview on.

    Install it.. Then do a Hard Reset... Then re-install all of your apps..

    The idea is similar to a PC where a clean install is always better than an upgrade... doing the reset makes your Win10M insider preview install a clean install.. then just put your apps back on.

    The performance is night and day... it goes from unuseable to a very nice experience... Especially after about 24 hours after things have really settled in.
  • BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    @HardwareDufus: "The performance is night and day... it goes from unuseable to a very nice experience... Especially after about 24 hours after things have really settled in."

    What exactly are they doing that improves the experience a day after you clean install it? Kinda sounds like a lot of phoning home to MS (perhaps to get advertising IDs and the likes) is going on reducing performance until it is done. Speculation to be sure, but I'm not sure I can get on board with that until I know what is going on there.
  • BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    @AkulaClass: "Terrible and hopeless app-support"

    Terrible app-support or terrible library, because I've heard the SDKs and development environment was actually pretty good. Dev's just don't want to waste time on a platform with little ROI and MS hasn't done a terribly great job at convincing them its worth their time. That said, it does look like most of the major hitters are on board now so I'll have to see if my current app list or near enough equivalents exist before I pass further judgement.
  • Michael Bay - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Well, damn. I hoped to get a stable one for my 730, seeing that applications on 10 are actually better.
  • Dr_Orgo - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Had an HTC 8x on Verizon for 2 years. Didn't receive the update to Windows Phone 8 before I switched to an iPhone 6. I hope Microsoft is able to keep pushing for more timely updates as it's one of the nicest features of iOS.
  • haukionkannel - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link

    The problem is the Verizon, not MS... My old 630 has get every update so far, but I live in Europe, so we have it easier...
  • Frangelina - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    Windows 10 insider preview 10.0.10586.36 runs extremely well on my lumia 928. It is fast, superb operating system. I like my phone very much. Yes I had iphones for years.
  • Michael Bay - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    I`m thinking about jumping on the preview with my 730.
    Is it feature complete, does it hang up or act weirdly somewhere?
  • Frangelina - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    as stable as 8.1 was
  • Frangelina - 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... )

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now