Windows 10 Mobile
Windows 10 Mobile is the fourth and final generation of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8.1. First released in 2015, it was marketed by Microsoft as being an edition of its PC counterpart, Windows 10.
Windows 10 Mobile aimed to provide greater consistency with its counterpart for PCs, including more extensive synchronization of content, Universal Windows Platform apps, as well as the capability, on supported hardware, to connect devices to an external display and use a desktop interface with mouse and keyboard input support. Microsoft built tools for developers to port iOS Objective-C apps with minimal modifications. Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones are eligible for upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile, pursuant to manufacturer and carrier support. Some features vary depending on hardware compatibility.
Windows 10 Mobile was designed for use on smartphones and phablets running on 32-bit ARM processor architectures. Microsoft also intended for the platform to be used on ARM tablets with screens 9 inches or smaller in size, but such devices were rarely commercially released. Windows 10 Mobile entered public beta for selected Lumia smartphones on February 12, 2015. The first Lumia smartphones powered by Windows 10 Mobile were released on November 20, 2015, while eligible Windows Phone devices began receiving updates to Windows 10 Mobile on March 17, 2016, pursuant to manufacturer and carrier support.
The platform never achieved any significant degree of popularity or market share in comparison to Android or iOS. By 2017, Microsoft had already begun to downplay Windows 10 Mobile, having discontinued active development due to a lack of user and developer interest in the platform, and focused on serving incumbent mobile operating systems as part of its software and services strategy. Support for Windows 10 Mobile ended on January 14, 2020., Windows 10 Mobile had approximately a 0.01% share of the mobile operating system market.
Development
Microsoft had already begun the process of unifying the Windows platform across device classes in 2012; Windows Phone 8 dropped the Windows CE-based architecture of its predecessor, Windows Phone 7, for a platform built upon the NT kernel that shared much of the same architecture with its PC counterpart Windows 8 including file system, networking stack, security elements, graphics engine, device driver framework and hardware abstraction layer. At Build 2014, Microsoft also unveiled the concept of Universal Windows Apps. With the addition of Windows Runtime support to these platforms, apps created for Windows 8.1 could now be ported to Windows Phone 8.1 and Xbox One while sharing a common codebase with their PC counterparts. User data and licenses for an app could also be shared between multiple platforms.In July 2014, Microsoft's then-new CEO Satya Nadella explained that the company was planning to "streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes", unifying Windows, Windows Phone, and Windows Embedded around a common architecture and a unified application ecosystem. However, Nadella stated that these internal changes would not have any effect on how the operating systems are marketed and sold.
On September 30, 2014, Microsoft unveiled Windows 10; Terry Myerson explained that Windows 10 would be Microsoft's "most comprehensive platform ever", promoting plans to provide a "unified" platform for desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and all-in-one devices. Windows 10 on phones was publicly unveiled during the Windows 10: The Next Chapter press event on January 21, 2015; unlike previous Windows Phone versions, it would also expand the platform's focus to small, ARM-based tablets. Microsoft's previous attempt at an operating system for ARM-based tablets, Windows RT, was commercially unsuccessful.
During the 2015 Build keynote, Microsoft announced the middleware toolkit "Islandwood", later known as Windows Bridge for iOS, which provides a toolchain that can assist developers in porting Objective-C software to build as Universal Windows Apps. An early build of Windows Bridge for iOS was released as open-source software under the MIT License on August 6, 2015. Visual Studio 2015 can also convert Xcode projects into Visual Studio projects. Microsoft also announced plans for a toolkit codenamed "Centennial", which would allow desktop Windows software using Win32 APIs to be ported to Windows 10 Mobile.
Project Astoria
At Build, Microsoft had also announced an Android runtime environment for Windows 10 Mobile known as "Astoria", which would allow Android apps to run in an emulated environment with minimal changes, and have access to Microsoft platform APIs such as Bing Maps and Xbox Live as nearly drop-in replacements for equivalent Google Mobile Services. Google Mobile Services and certain core APIs would not be available, and apps with "deep integration into background tasks" were said to poorly support the environment.On February 25, 2016, after already having delayed it in November 2015, Microsoft announced that "Astoria" would be shelved, arguing that it was redundant to the native Windows Bridge toolkit since iOS is already a primary target for mobile app development. The company also encouraged use of products from Xamarin for multi-platform app development using C# programming language instead. Portions of Astoria were used as a basis for the Windows Subsystem for Linux platform on the PC version of Windows 10.
Naming
To promote it as being unified with its desktop equivalent, Microsoft promoted the operating system as being an edition of Windows 10. Microsoft had begun to phase out specific references to the Windows Phone brand in its advertising in mid-2014, but critics have still considered the operating system to be an iteration and continuation of Windows Phone due to its lineage and similar overall functionality. Microsoft referred to the OS as "Windows 10 for phones and small tablets" during its unveiling, and leaked screenshots from a Technical Preview build identified the operating system as "Windows 10 Mobile". The technical preview was officially called the "Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones", while the user agent of Microsoft Edge Legacy|Microsoft Edge contained a reference to "Windows Phone 10".On May 13, 2015, Microsoft officially confirmed the platform would be known as Windows 10 Mobile.
Features
A major aspect of Windows 10 Mobile is a focus on harmonizing user experiences and functionality between different classes of devices—specifically, devices running the PC-oriented version of Windows 10. Under the Universal Windows Platform concept, Windows Runtime apps for Windows 10 on PC can be ported to other platforms in the Windows 10 family with nearly the same codebase, but with adaptations for specific device classes. Windows 10 Mobile also shares user interface elements with its PC counterpart, such as the updated Action Center and settings menu. During its initial unveiling, Microsoft presented several examples of Windows apps that would have similar functionality and user interfaces between Windows 10 on desktops and mobile devices, including updated Photos and Maps apps, and new Microsoft Office apps. Although marketed as a converged platform, and as with Windows Phone 8, using a Windows NT-based kernel, Windows 10 Mobile still cannot run Win32 desktop applications, but is compatible with software designed for Windows Phone 8. Similar to Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 10 has used UEFI with ACPI protocol as its bootloader.Notifications can be synced between devices; dismissing a notification on, for example, a laptop, will also dismiss it from a phone. Certain types of notifications now allow inline replies. The start screen now has the option to display wallpapers as a background of the screen behind translucent tiles, rather than within the tiles. The messaging app adds support for internet-based Skype messaging alongside SMS, similarly to Apple's iMessage, and can synchronize these conversations with other devices. The camera app has been updated to match the "Lumia Camera" app previously exclusive to Lumia products, and a new Photos app aggregates content from local storage and OneDrive, and can perform automatic enhancements to photos. The on-screen keyboard now contains a virtual pointing stick for manipulating the text editing cursor, a dedicated voice input button, and can be shifted towards the left or right of the screen to improve one-handed usability on larger devices.
Windows 10 Mobile supports "Continuum", a feature that allows supported devices to connect to an external display, and scale its user interface and apps into a "PC-like" desktop interface with support for mouse and keyboard input over USB or Bluetooth. Devices can connect directly to external displays wirelessly using Miracast, via USB-C, or via docking station accessories with USB ports, as well as HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.
A new iteration of the Office Mobile suite, Office for Windows 10, is also bundled. Based upon the Android and iOS versions of Office Mobile, they introduce a new user interface with a variation of the ribbon toolbar used by the desktop version, and a new mobile version of Outlook. Outlook utilizes the same rendering engine as the Windows desktop version of Microsoft Word. Microsoft Edge Legacy|Microsoft Edge replaces Internet Explorer Mobile as the default web browser.
Release
Windows 10 Mobile's first-party launch devices—the Lumia 950, Lumia 950 XL, and Lumia 550—were released in November 2015 being the first phones to ship with Windows 10 Mobile. Monthly updates to the OS software are being released to address bugs and security issues. These updates are distributed to all Windows 10 Mobile devices and do not require the intervention of a user's wireless carrier in order to authorize their distribution. Firmware upgrades will still require authorization by the user's carrier.The Windows Insider program, adopted to provide a public beta for the PC version of Windows 10, is used to provide a public beta version of Windows 10 Mobile for selected devices. A build released on April 10, 2015, was to support most second and third generation Lumia products, but the Lumia 930, Lumia Icon, and Lumia 640 XL did not receive the update due to scaling bugs, and delivery was suspended as a whole due to backup and restore issues on some models. An update to the Windows Phone Recovery Tool resolved these concerns, and delivery of Windows 10 updates was restored to the 520 with build 10052, and to the 640 with build 10080.
Build number 10136 was released on June 16, 2015, with a "migration bug" that required that existing devices on build 10080 be reverted to Windows Phone 8.1 using the Recovery Tool before the installation of 10136 could proceed. This migration bug was fixed a week later with the release of build 10149. Mobile builds of the Redstone branch till 14322 were halted for the device Lumia 635 due to bugs.