Windows 10 TP for Phones for some is out now
Disappointing day for me. Waited around for a while hoping to load up the Windows 10 Preview on my phone when it was released... and it isn't supported in this first wave of devices. I'm in the same group as many; I'm not so much annoyed that my phone isn't supported yet but more annoyed by the fact that it isn't supported due to a known limitation they haven't worked around yet and the explanation doesn't indicate that they were even aiming for this feature to be included in this first pass. So, it is something that they would have known well before today.
Basically if you have a newer device in the form of a 630 or better you're in luck. With the possible exception of the 930 (though I think the 930 is actually older than the 630, so it holds). Basically, it seems like they need extra space in the OS partition OR a feature called "Partition Stitching" which I imagine allows them to temporarily expand the OS partition to get the same effect to do this the way that they want. And the bulk of the older phones which includes effectively every high-end Lumia doesn't have the OS partition space needed and the partition feature isn't done yet.
While the 830 is supported and I could buy out my phone and aside from that cost upgrade for free, the general impression of the 830 is that it is SLOW. With rumours that new flagship phones will be released potentially later in the year and my current phone being paid off in December I know I'm better off waiting. So I will. Also, there is no given timeline for the Partition Stitching feature. I could order a phone and end up able to put the preview on mine before that one even arrives.
Not super likely it will turn around that fast. If you follow Twitter, there was a 1-2 week gap where it sounded like they had completed the bulk of it and were just testing the devices that they were going to roll it out on. So, you can expect there to be some amount of time where they wait for serious bugs and feedback, plus some time to work on actual dev for the new feature and then another couple weeks of testing. I would peg the next reasonable batch of supported phones won't popup for about a month. But still, I'm not going to buy a new phone just for this.
Might be more phones added in between. But that I would suspect would be more of the phones that don't need the partition stitching which weren't in the original list, including potentially additional regions for the already supported devices. The assumption there being that another team may be behind testing and ensuring there is a ROM to rollback to so that process wouldn't be held up by actual new dev work.
So, I'm going to spend a long time now pining for a new phone while wait for my current one to be supported. Largely because I'm glutton for punishment. There are features listed with known issues that I regularly use and I STILL want to load it on my phone. And I do the same with Preview versions of Windows on desktop.
The unfortunate outcome of all of this is that the people who are feeling left out are those who have been with Windows Phone the longest (old phones not getting it yet) and those who are most heavily invested (flagships not getting it yet). That is the wrong way to look at it. But it doesn't matter. People do feel that way about it if you read the blogs or Twitter.
The simple reason this was done is that those phones were the low hanging fruit. They were the quickest and easiest to get the update to at this stage in the release cycle which is far earlier in the release cycle than regular consumers have ever been able to see an OS release on a phone (on any OS). Once it gets ironed out more, the loyal fans will get their preview as well. And as an added bonus it should be both more complete and more stable by that time.
Basically if you have a newer device in the form of a 630 or better you're in luck. With the possible exception of the 930 (though I think the 930 is actually older than the 630, so it holds). Basically, it seems like they need extra space in the OS partition OR a feature called "Partition Stitching" which I imagine allows them to temporarily expand the OS partition to get the same effect to do this the way that they want. And the bulk of the older phones which includes effectively every high-end Lumia doesn't have the OS partition space needed and the partition feature isn't done yet.
While the 830 is supported and I could buy out my phone and aside from that cost upgrade for free, the general impression of the 830 is that it is SLOW. With rumours that new flagship phones will be released potentially later in the year and my current phone being paid off in December I know I'm better off waiting. So I will. Also, there is no given timeline for the Partition Stitching feature. I could order a phone and end up able to put the preview on mine before that one even arrives.
Not super likely it will turn around that fast. If you follow Twitter, there was a 1-2 week gap where it sounded like they had completed the bulk of it and were just testing the devices that they were going to roll it out on. So, you can expect there to be some amount of time where they wait for serious bugs and feedback, plus some time to work on actual dev for the new feature and then another couple weeks of testing. I would peg the next reasonable batch of supported phones won't popup for about a month. But still, I'm not going to buy a new phone just for this.
Might be more phones added in between. But that I would suspect would be more of the phones that don't need the partition stitching which weren't in the original list, including potentially additional regions for the already supported devices. The assumption there being that another team may be behind testing and ensuring there is a ROM to rollback to so that process wouldn't be held up by actual new dev work.
So, I'm going to spend a long time now pining for a new phone while wait for my current one to be supported. Largely because I'm glutton for punishment. There are features listed with known issues that I regularly use and I STILL want to load it on my phone. And I do the same with Preview versions of Windows on desktop.
The unfortunate outcome of all of this is that the people who are feeling left out are those who have been with Windows Phone the longest (old phones not getting it yet) and those who are most heavily invested (flagships not getting it yet). That is the wrong way to look at it. But it doesn't matter. People do feel that way about it if you read the blogs or Twitter.
The simple reason this was done is that those phones were the low hanging fruit. They were the quickest and easiest to get the update to at this stage in the release cycle which is far earlier in the release cycle than regular consumers have ever been able to see an OS release on a phone (on any OS). Once it gets ironed out more, the loyal fans will get their preview as well. And as an added bonus it should be both more complete and more stable by that time.
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