Ian McGurren takes a look at the Windows Phone 10 preview
Microsoft is in a strange place at the moment. No more is it the world's biggest technology company (even combined with Google, its market cap is less than Apple's), its current OS has been a comparative failure, the Xbox One's gestation has veered from bad to even worse before righting itself a little, and Windows Mobile hasn't troubled iOS, much less Android, even after MS took up the manufacturing mantle. It's odd, then, that in critical terms, Microsoft is entering a much more favourable phase. Windows 8.1 was warmly welcomed by many and praised for its under-appreciated innovation. The flood of exceptionally cheap Atombased Windows tablets has become hard to ignore, and Windows Phone is finally being seen as its own unique platform and not just Redmond's way of not towing the line. Coupled with Android and iOS becoming a little stale in many eyes after five years, the time for Windows Phone 10 could be just right.
The Windows Phone 10 preview is available for many Lumia devices, though oddly it's not on the flagships yet. If you have a Lumia 630, though (currently the lowest-end device that can run it), you're all set, and the preview can be accessed by signing up to the Windows Insider program, which many of you will have signed up to in order to get Cortana voice assistance ahead of time. Don't forget, though, like the desktop Windows 10 Preview, it's a preview and isn't meant for daily use. Therefore use it on your daily handset at your own peril...
So what does the Windows Phone 10 Technical Preview actually offer?
Settings
Eh? Why are the settings the subhead here? Well, firstly it's really good, or at least not the swipeslog the previous one was, with MS finally categorising the elements into groups, similar to er, Control Panel, only some decades later. Either way, they are lain out in a far more intuitive fashion, albeit in a design language not yet present anywhere else in the rest of the build. It's absence that also means Settings is first up, as this build doesn't include any new versions of any headline apps – no new browser, messaging, maps, mail and calendar – but there's every chance later builds will give a glimpse of these.
Keyboard
Nubbins. Remember them? Those odd grey nipple things found in the middle of laptop keyboards as an alternative to trackballs in the late 1990s? Well, they're making a comeback – not only on the right-hand side of Nintendo's 'new' 3DS as a kind-of-joystick and also in the Windows Phone 10 keyboard. Nestling down by the Z and Shift keys, holding on it allows you to move the cursor around text easier than the hit-and-miss stabbing at the screen method.
Action Centre and Notifications
It's crazy to remember that Windows Phone has only got proper notifications in its past couple of revisions, and even then they've lagged behind the rest. Finally things are on par, with more toggle switches at the top of the Action Centre and the ability to swipe away individual notifications, even within a batch from the same application. Small, but very welcome.
Home screen
So far, it's not that different, but there is improved transparency in the tiles, letting your home screen image shine through better – something sorely ignored initially with WP7.
Sharing
With iOS and Android, deep integration with cloud services is a given, so photos in either will often show not only what is on the device, but also what is stored on iCloud or Google too. What's more, they'll automatically upload new images to them too. With Windows 10's push for integration across platforms, the same is being pushed here too, with OneDrive integration out of the box from phone to desktop. Useful, if that's your thing, though if you store your images in, say, Google, it's not clear if you'll be able to nominate an alternative cloud source.
Windows Phone 10 shows promise and builds on the good groundwork laid by version 8.1. It's difficult to judge just yet, with major apps currently missing. However, it does show that this is quite likely to be the most interesting mobile platform in 2015 and one well worth keeping an eye on.