The Windows 10 Anniversary Update has begun rolling out for Windows 10 Mobile. The Anniversary Update includes additional features and improvements for your Windows 10 phone. To manually check for the update, on Start, swipe over to the All apps list, then select Settings > Update & security > Phone update > Check for updates. Note that availability may vary by manufacturer, model, country or region, mobile operator or service provider, hardware limitations and other factors.
In other words, it’ll be a crapshoot if and when Windows Phone users actually get the update. Not that it matters – most Windows Phone users have already had to move to different platforms due to Microsoft’s horrid mismanagement of an otherwise incredibly promising operating system.
I seriously doubt they’ve migrated to Android for an improved OS update experience..
no, had to for the apps, Blackberry was dead in the water and Apple outside what I was willing to spend.
Android as an OS is less responsive and lacks even basic integrations (multiple versions of copy paste)
But it was still in a better position than windows phone..
I gave up, went back to Android, then when that became unbearable, I went to iOS.
I still have no idea if my Lumia (535 I think?) ever actually got the update. It looks like it did, but who knows?! MS was never very forthcoming.
I don’t really see OS upgrades as something the end user should have to worry about.. ideally if it did it behind the scene and then I just reboot enable (i.e. something similar to Solaris & ZFS approach of patching the OS), I’d go for it.
It’s so easy with iOS.. do it now, schedule for when you’re not using your phone.
Being mindful not everyone will have the same experience as I have, but it’s had a success rate of 100% for me.
It’s still not clear wether or how the new Skype app will do SMS texts.
Thom I completely understand your reasons for saying will/have/are leave/left/leaving the platform, and I’m sure it’s happening in a big way.
As a Lumia 950 owner though, I wanted to add my 0.02 for why I’m sticking with it. My first WP was a Lumia 920 running WP 8, not long before the release of 8.1. I think I joined at the right time, Android was still a mess (it still is unless you use a Nexus IMO, which is the only Android device I’d use) and a lot of the bigger platform issues had been resolved.
I’ve always found Android to be a bit messy, I think that’s largely resolved these days but there’s nothing there that would entice me to switch now. I’ve never liked iOS and it’s insane amount of lock down, and I hate the fact that it’s always so far behind on many fronts… how long did it take to get a keyboard that’d show caps vs lower case?!
Most people’s beat-down on Windows Phones largely revolves around the ‘app gap’. Yes it exists, but I really don’t think it’s as big a deal as people seem to think. When it comes down to it most people use very few apps on their phones, because phones are too small to offer a good experience for many things. There are situations where they’re perfect, e.g. Uber, but potentially the only app I don’t have that I’d like is one for Internet Banking, and that’s no big deal since my bank has a solid mobile website (that is the basis for their mobile apps) and you need to be online at any rate to use internet banking. Skype, Spotify, Uber, GoTo Meeting, Twitter, Whats App, FitBit are 50% of what I use my phone for, the rest is basic web, email & calling.
I don’t think the split would be different on any other mobile platform, and in light of that I’d rather stick with what I believe to be the most friendly mobile UI around.
I am also sticking to my Lumia 630 for the time being, however it already got its death sentence the day Microsoft announced Skype support will be dropped in 2017.
Skype alongside a few other apps, are critical for my daily workflow and I cannot ask my contacts to switch their apps just because I want to keep the phone.
However I love the UWP programming model.
For the mobile OS stacks, I would sort them as UWP, iOS, Android in programmer friendliness (IDE tooling, SDK programming languages and Frameworks as criteria).
Developers, Developers, Developers…that mantra is still going strong inside Microsoft. And UWP is clearly evolving and gaining traction. Now they need a mobile platform to run these apps on so the selling point isn’t only “it works and scales nicely and is easy to install/update/sync”
.NET works on Android and iOS. The past investment into WP was shifted to cross platform cause ~99% of potentiel customers are not on Windows any longer, they don’t come back and are otherwise lost. That ship sailed long ago.
Edited 2016-08-17 15:10 UTC
Yes, but it is only worthwhile if targeting iOS and Android.
Xamarin is quite good, but outside pure .NET shops the majority of business tend to choose other options.
Then there are those developers that decide just to focus on a specific platform, which makes adding another layer not worth the effort.
I gave up on the platform when I upgraded my simply phenomenal Lumia 640 from 8.1 to 10 (I was already using an iPhone 6 for daily use but the 640 was what I planned to move to from there). It was such a severe regression that I had to throw in the towel, knowing that 10 is the future for that platform. On such a beautiful, economical, feature packed device that was designed with 10 in mind, the fact that it was buggy, slow, and dropped features compared to the excellent 8.1 that shipped on the phone, that was simply unacceptable.
Lately I’ve been getting emails from various app developers and from Microsoft themselves that they are dropping support for core apps on the platform. Let me restate that: Microsoft is mothballing their own apps on their own platform while continuing to support and improve those apps on Android and iOS.
I’ve resisted saying it for the past two years, but Windows as a mobile phone platform is dead.
Windows Phone is being replaced by Windows 10. The next generation of Windows phones will be high powered ‘Surface’ devices designed to be pocket PCs using Continuum.
Everyone thought that Windows was dead in the premium laptop market a couple of years ago. The latest Windows laptops are now thinner, faster and cheaper than anything from Apple.
Agreed.
Also it’s true that there have been a lot of feature regressions and things pulled, but those things are starting to come back too. It’s quite clear as an end user that Microsoft are making some pretty major changes and that they’re new efforts rather than just updates to old things.
The new Skype preview app is a great example of this. That said, I still miss my FM radio on the one weekend a year where I use one!
nobody said that windows was dead in the premium laptop space… thinkpads et al, hello?
WP is down to single digits globally. Not even microsoft is willing to maintain some of their apps for it, if you still refuse to get the hint so be it.
Edited 2016-08-17 01:32 UTC
MS has always had a very long term view. They know Continuum needs very high end (by today’s standards) phone hardware. That means it is pointless to directly compete with Android at the bottom of the market. In future MS will focus on corporate users with premium Surface phones. When cheap phones are good enough for Continuum the Windows phone market should expand very rapidly.
Thinkpads are as mainstream as macbooks. Not all thinkpads are bulky. Also ultrabooks have been a thing for years.
Windows Phone is a dead man walking. Nobody wants a desktop on their phone, that’s something that MS keeps trying to make happen, and it never gets any traction in that market.
Actually that’s something I wouldn’t mind. There have been several attempts at it over the years; I’ve tried the Motorola Atrix/Photon desktops via laptop and desktop docks respectively, and MaruOS on the Nexus 5, and there’s always some sort of compromise that makes it unworkable. Hell, back when I had a Nokia N900, basically a full Linux computer in a phone package, I tried it via the TV out function and it sucked (granted, that was six years ago).
This would be a great, though niche, feature for some people. I disagree that nobody wants it, but I agree that so far no one knows how to do it right. I think Microsoft will be the one to perfect it on the desktop side, but by the time they get it right no one will care because their OS keeps regressing on the mobile side.
OK. Almost nobody then. Still, it’s a niche feature and thinking it’s going to bring WP back to prominence is pure denial, ergo my reply to the previous poster.
The market spoke long ago: platforms with healthy apps and media ecosystems thrive (iOS, Android), those which don’t wither(BlackBerry, WP, etc).
Edited 2016-08-17 17:35 UTC
I suggest you look at the history of technology. There is always something newer and better. Android and iOS could become just as irrelevant as Blackberry or Symbian within a decade.
Perhaps you should take your own advice. Windows Phone is in the “Blackberry, Symbian” category you just listed. I’m not doubting iOS or Android will be replaced or surpassed by a new competitor. But I can guarantee you it won’t be Windows Phone.
Edited 2016-08-18 19:30 UTC
I think you’ve just summed up Microsoft’s problem quite nicely: they’re stuck in the desktop computing age, and have no idea how to get out because they simply can’t understand the new wave of computing. They built themselves so thoroughly on desktops that they cannot, or will not, see beyond them.
Pretty much the entire business and professional community wants a proper desktop on their phone. They would love to just carry their phone and be able to dock to a screen/keyboard/mouse on a plane, the airport lounge,the office or at home.
They think they do. But just wait until they drop their phone somewhere and lose it, and that’s their only on-the-go machine. Then they’ll rant and rage about only having one device.
Well Apple did. They even started commercials with what you can do more with iPads.
That aside I agree that Microsoft’s “continuum” feature looks nice on paper but still is a list of promises. Neither Android and iOS are perfect by any means but they are usable and accessible.
I’d like to believe that, but I will when I see it. Until then I’m forced to believe they are once again clueless on the mobile phone front.
I see Windows taking hold of the hybrid laptop/tablet market, because it is the only full stack OS and allows me to use Visual Studio on the go.
iOS and Android tablet + keyboard, still require another computer for software development.
I don’t consider Swift Playgrounds a replacement of XCode, neither is AIDE a replacement for Android Studio.
I don’t think anyone has ever said that Windows on premium laptops was about to die. That’s nonsense. Anyways, the problem with Windows laptops has been the manufacturers not giving a fuck about their customers and their own hardware. That’s pretty easy to fix. (One other thing, apparently, was Windows’s poor support for advanced touchpad features.)
“Intel has mostly given up on its own phone SoCs.”
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/intel-will-allow-arm-chipmak…
ARM CPUs can already match i3 performance. Windows 10 works quite well on much less powerful Atom chips.
In five years ARM SoCs will probably be easily matching or exceeding current i7 performance.
Nope, Windows was always strong in the workstation and gaming categories, just not in the StarBucks/Journalist categorie.
Apple really seems to have given up on high-end and gaming and mostly doubles down on thin/light but everyone else now has those models as well that offer more choice and value for money
…but not fast enough. I love that my 1520 is still getting new features like the panorama camera but I hate that my 1020 is unsupported after they promised it would work.
I love how there are more and more quality apps coming from the Desktop to the Phone (UWP at its best) but hate that I always see “download this app for iOS and Android” everywhere.
I love how integrated apps like mail and maps have so greatly increased in functionality but I hate that some of the things that made Windows 8 great (hubs) have disappeared.
But most of all I hate how Microsoft is entirely neglecting this platform from a hardware point of view and how few big changes to the mobile OS are being made. UWP is evolving steadily, but the mobile OS feels almost stagnant. How Microsoft can call this a TEMPORARY retrenchment that they expect to come back from stronger is still beyond me.
But then again, I only paid about 150 Euro for that 1520 and it is still a great device, just not exciting anymore like WP used to be
Weren’t Microsoft supposed to be doing some amazingly brilliant thing where by they could update the os without touching the firmware, thus avoiding this problem? They hyped it up so much, after all.
You’re correct. The base code is isolated so that software updates can be delivered directly, like iOS. The Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows Mobile 10 upgrade was the last to require telco approval.
If that’s so, what’s the deal with the crap-chute distribution of this update?