Microsoft gave Windows Insiders a heads up yesterday that Windows 10 Mobile Build 10136, the first new build for Windows Phone devices in over a month, would be made available today for download and installation.
True to their word that build went live just after 1 PM EDT today (Tuesday).
Windows Insiders did have to jump through some hoops such as rolling back to Windows Phone 8.1 because of an upgrade bug from build 10080 to 10136 but many happily did just that.
By far this update, from a plain install of WP 8.1, took the longest to complete - 1 hour and 40 minutes on a Nokia Lumia 830. I am also experiencing some general lag when I tap on a tile - takes about 2 seconds for the action to open up the app afterwards. It can take a while for a new build to settle in and download all the app updates, etc. I thought it was weird that tiles kept disappearing from the Start Screen but it was because the older apps were being removed in favor of their updates for Windows 10.
The most obvious thing about this build is the fit and finish. Fonts, tiles, icons all look much better - no weirdness that I have found so far. Everything I have looked at appears to align properly as well.
As I dug through the Settings pages a lot of things looked very familiar as there is even more alignment with Windows 10 Desktop.
Microsoft did add some new features to this build including one-handed use for devices over five inches, fixed a list of eight issues from build 10080 and show just four known issues for this build.
Be sure to read all the details over at the Microsoft Blogging Windows site.
You can definitely tell that Windows 10 Mobile is a few months behind its desktop counterpart but it is good to see things settling in from a UI perspective so they can work on performance.
What do you think of the new build?
