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March 27, 2015
Mobile

A quick update on Windows 10 builds for phones for Windows Insiders

Hi everyone,

When we sent out the first build of Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones on February 12th, the list of phones was very limited. As I wrote in the accompanying blog post, the reason for this is that we had to select from the set of phones that had sufficient system partition sizes configured by the manufacturer. This was necessary for us to be able to in-place upgrade the phones. I also talked about a feature we were working on called “partition stitching” that would allow us to re-size the system partition dynamically, allowing us to do the upgrade on a larger set of phones.

Also in the last month we heard feedback on build frequency, and adjusted how we are sending builds out as a result. The latest build for PCs is the first build that we’ve delivered on that new cadence. We expect the same principles to hold for phones as well as PCs, but the first step for us was to get partition stitching done so that we could unlock a much larger set of phones for you to use for Windows 10 technical previews.

Here’s a quick update on where we are:

  • The partition stitching feature code came into our main code branch late last week. The Storage and Filesystems Team had been working on this in their branch and it passed all of their quality evaluations.
  • We spent this week testing on individual devices, as well as providing the builds with this feature to our internal rings so that we all could test it on our own phones which had been previously not usable. I’ve been thrilled to get my beloved Lumia 1020 on Windows 10!
  • This testing will allow us to support A LOT more phones for the next flight. I get a ton of questions every day on Twitter about when your favorite phones will be usable, and I’m happy to report that the vast majority will be supported with the next flight (full list below.)
  • We’ll also have support for phones that didn’t have China Mobile Operator support in the last build, so that’s great news too for our Windows Insiders in China.
  • We still have some work to do to validate individual phones, as well as the builds that we’re flighting through our internal rings. As I said in the post on frequency I cannot guarantee a date for a new build. What I CAN tell you is that we feel great here about the partition stitching code and current builds, but we likely still have at least one more week of engineering to do to ensure we get a great build for the expanded list of devices.

Here is the current list of phones we expect to support with the next flight.

  • If, during our testing, we find a device specific bug it MAY be pulled from the list.
  • If a phone isn’t listed here it is likely because we have found such a bug, but it MAY get fixed before the next flight.

Bottom line is that this is a preliminary list, but as Windows Insiders I wanted to give you the visibility even though it’s not 100% locked:

  • Lumia 1020
  • Lumia 1320
  • Lumia 1520
  • Lumia 520
  • Lumia 525
  • Lumia 526
  • Lumia 530
  • Lumia 530 Dual Sim
  • Lumia 535
  • Lumia 620
  • Lumia 625
  • Lumia 630
  • Lumia 630 Dual Sim
  • Lumia 635
  • Lumia 636
  • Lumia 638
  • Lumia 720
  • Lumia 730
  • Lumia 730 Dual SIM
  • Lumia 735
  • Lumia 810
  • Lumia 820
  • Lumia 822
  • Lumia 830
  • Lumia 920
  • Lumia 925
  • Lumia 928
  • Lumia ICON
  • Microsoft Lumia 430
  • Microsoft Lumia 435
  • Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM
  • Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM DTV
  • Microsoft Lumia 532
  • Microsoft Lumia 532 Dual SIM
  • Microsoft Lumia 640 Dual SIM
  • Microsoft Lumia 535 Dual SIM

UPDATE 4/8: The Lumia Icon will not be supported in the next flight due to a scaling bug we need more time to fix.

Thanks,
g