A t the end of last year, Microsoft unveiled its vision for the future of Windows: not only the desktop, but also on smartphones, tablets and other connected devices. Until now we've only been able to get a feel for Windows 10 on the desktop – what's changed is that the next piece of the puzzle has been made available: Windows 10 for phones.
Just like the desktop OS, the smartphone version is a Technical Preview, available to anyone with a compatible Windows Phone 8.1 handset who registers with the Windows Insider Programme. We've installed it on a Nokia Lumia 630, but you can also try it out on the compatible phones listed above.
So what's new?At first glance, you'd be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. The lockscreen and homescreen look largely as they did in Windows Phone 8.1, and that's a good thing. After all, Windows Phone's biggest strength, and what sets it apart from Android and iOS, has always been its vertically scrolling, data-rich Live Tiles.
It doesn't take much digging before the changes begin to emerge, and the most profound are to be found in the Action Center notifications menu.
The first time you look, you'll see the same four toggle buttons along the top of the menu, with notifications lined up beneath. Look closer, though, and you'll see some subtle alterations.
The All Settings shortcut has disappeared, to be replaced by Expand. Tap this and the single row of shortcut buttons grows to three rows, allowing quick access to all 11 of Windows Phone's available shortcuts. It's still possible to customise the four that appear by default, but you can't currently remove or add items to the expanded list.
Below the shortcut buttons, notifications have also received an upgrade, but this is far more significant. To the right of each notification now sits a small down arrow. Tapping this expands items, allowing you to either read more or interact with them. Currently, the range of apps that hook into this capability is limited: you can respond directly to text messages, but not emails.
This also applies to the pop-down alerts that appear at the top of the screen, although it's fiddly at the moment: you need to tap a thin bar below the notification; swiping down doesn't work. Hopefully, Microsoft will have addressed this by the time the software is finally released. Tuck the notifications menu away for a moment, and you may also notice a tweak or two to the look of the homescreen. Background wallpapers that were previously displayed rather oddly - only through individual tiles, as if they were windows onto the image behind – now fill the entire screen. And some tiles, such as those for Outlook and Internet Explorer, are now translucent.
There are a couple of new tile sizes as well: a 4x4 square and a 2x4 rectangle, although currently only a few apps are compatible with these sizes. Swipe right to Windows Phone's alphabetical list of apps, meanwhile, and you'll see a list of recently installed apps conveniently displayed in a group at the top of the list for easy access.
Unified look and feelWith Microsoft even merging the names of the desktop and mobile operating systems, the eventual aim is to unify the two platforms so that there's consistency across them. Equally crucial, developers will be able to produce universal apps that share the UI and feature set across the two platforms as well.
The work isn't complete, but you can see where Microsoft is going with this. In the Settings menu, each entry is now accompanied by the same wireframe icon as used on the desktop version of Windows 10, plus fonts match too.
Microsoft has also rationalised and organised the list of items in the Settings menu. In Windows Phone 8.1, you'll find no fewer than 50 items in a vertically scrolling list, arranged in no kind of order; in Windows 10 for phones, these items are organised into ten thought-through categories, under titles such as Network & Wireless, Accounts, and Time & Language. As a result, it's much easier to find what you're looking for.
The redesign of some core apps is another indicator of how the design of Windows Phone is set to change this year. The Photos app, for instance, already shares the layout and UI of the Modern app on Windows 10 for desktop.
Perhaps more significantly, it also does away with Windows Phone's characteristic sideways swipe for navigation in favour of a single-screen view with pop-up menus.The dialler and calculator apps have seen a similar revamp. Cortana now shares the desktop app's look and feel as well, and there's set to be much broader text-to-speech support in Windows 10 for phones. These features are currently restricted to US residents, although those of you running this preview here in Australia can get them partially working for the time being at least by changing the language, region and speech settings to US English.
What isn't working yet, and a "key" new featureNot everything promised in the launch announcement for Windows 10 for phones is working yet. One such example is the unified notifications system, dubbed Continuum, which will eventually tie your phones, tablets, laptops and desktops all together in one homogenous whole. When this is working, the idea is that you should be able to dismiss an alert on the desktop, and it should then disappear on your phone as well. And vice versa.
However, we did spot one small improvement that works very well indeed. The keyboard now sports a small blue dot nestling in the junction between the Z, X and comma keys. This acts as a four-way virtual joystick: press and hold it in any direction for fine control of the cursor.
Initial verdictIt's clearly early days for Windows 10 for phones, and there's a long way to go for Microsoft's developers. There's plenty here that's incomplete, not yet working, or just plain buggy. None of what we've seen so far is likely to improve Microsoft's biggest problem, which is the lack of depth of apps that work across both phone and desktop in the Windows Store. We're also yet to see how Microsoft's universal apps strategy is going to pan out with third-party developers. However, there is encouraging evidence that Microsoft's developers have sat down and had a long, hard think about how to take Windows Phone forward in a constructive manner.
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