Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build 10136 – One handed use, UI changes, better Cortana and more!

Microsoft have announced build 10136 for Windows 10 Mobile Insider preview.

If you were already on 1008, you cannot update to this. You have to go back to 8.1 via Windows Phone Recovery Tool and then update via Windows Insider. This is due to a migration bug. Instead of waiting for that to get fixed, you can do a few steps first. You can alternatively wait to get the next upgrade.

NOTE: Post migration screen status missing. In plain English? Your lockscreen may appear stuck for 10 minutes. Just leave it. Normally there’s something to tell you the update was making progress but this is missing.

Here is what’s new

• Tons of fit and finish changes:
• Far too many subtle changes in the UX to cover.
• Obvious ones: PIN pad is now transparent and slides up over your Lock screen image instead of displacing it.
• Changes to fonts, icons, layout, etc.
• UX will feel more complete than what you used in 10080.
• Lot of refinement to the UX right now and you should see more of that work in the next build we flight.

• Improvements to Cortana:
• Very close to our final design.
• Adjustment to cards on Cortana’s homepage and in the hamburger menu.
• Added the dark theme colors to Cortana’s UI to make our UI more cohesive with the rest of the OS.
• Tracking of your flights and packages has also been enabled so when you get an e-mail with flight or package information from supported providers they show up in the Cortana experience and Cortana will also alert you about them.
• Alerts for going to work, going home and the airport are also enabled again.
• Further you can ask questions to weather, currency information, stock quotes and more and get the answers directly inline. That makes it easy to quickly check on multiple locations or stock tickers. To explore further and get the full experience you can tap on these results.

• Photos and Camera improvements:
• Tap on a month to get a list of months so you can quickly “jump” to photos you may have taken a while ago.
• You can also now double-tap to zoom on a photo.
• The Photos app also comes with performance and reliability improvements.
• If you’re running this build on a Lumia 640, 640XL, 930, Icon, or 1520 – check out the Lumia Camera Beta and make it your default camera app. The Lumia Camera Beta is the same app as the new Windows 10 Camera app but with additional features that light up based on Lumia hardware. Let us know what you think!

• One-handed use: if you have a device with a screen of 5 inches or greater, it’s now easier to use your device with one hand. Press and hold the Start button and your screen will slide down so you can reach items at the top of your screen. To slide the screen back up, tap the black space at the top of the screen, or press and hold the Start button again. One-handed use will also naturally time out after several seconds and return to your regular view.

Bugs fixed from 10080:

• MMS bug in Build 10080, and you should receive MMS messages normally.
• touch will stop responding on the Lock screen preventing you from swiping up to unlock your phone.
• visual glitches in Action Center when expanding/collapsing.
• text in the People app was too small.
• toggle the Wi-Fi quick action in Action Center, it now disables/enables Wi-Fi instead of taking you to the Wi-Fi Settings page. This was one of the top 5 pieces of feedback we heard from Windows Insiders.
• Start screen background should be scaled correctly now.
• can add a detailed status to display on your Lock screen from apps like Outlook Calendar without having the Settings app crash.
• mouse cursor would appear when pressing the back button on your phone.

Some additional known issues to be aware of:

• You will still see duplicate tiles for apps like Search and Phone under All Apps.
• If you have too many PIN unlock attempts, you’ll see the “enter A1B2C3” reset experience. However, there is an issue in this build where after you enter the code you won’t see the PIN pad. The workaround is to press Emergency Call after entering the code, then press Back and you’ll be able to enter your PIN.
  • We recommend disabling the double-tap-to-wake feature on some Lumia devices by going to the Settings app then Extras > Touch > Wake to prevent any accidental PIN unlock attempts.
• There is an issue that may cause Skype not to work after upgrade. The best workaround is to uninstall Skype on Windows Phone 8.1 *before* you upgrade to this build and then reinstall it after upgrading. If you miss that step though, you can usually resolve by uninstalling it and reinstalling from the Store once you’re on 10136.
• If you’re having issues installing new Language Packs in this build, see this forum post.

Source: Windows

User reviews seem to be quite happy with the update. Things working much faster than before. Some report continuing battery issues. There are still some things that keep crashing. There are reports that the update takes a long while. Just leave it alone until it eventually tells you it has finished.

Category: Windows Phone