Microsoft releases new Windows 10 Mobile preview with Cortana, Edge, and lock screen improvements

Microsoft released a new Windows 10 Mobile preview today. The latest build includes improvements to the Action Center, notifications, Cortana, Settings, emoji, Edge, and the Lock screen.

Like the last mobile build, this one is only available for devices that shipped with Windows 10 Mobile (the Lumia 950, 950 XL, 650, 550, Xiaomi Mi4, and Alcatel OneTouch Fierce XL) and select Windows Phone 8.1 devices that have been upgraded. The only exception is the Lumia 635, which Microsoft plans to add at a later date. Microsoft naturally has no plans to offer new preview builds to other devices.

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First up, individual app notifications in the Action Center no longer show the app icon repeated for each notification, while more Cortana notifications have been added. You can also now add, remove, and rearrange the Quick Actions that show up in Action Center. Notifications in the Action Center now also have more flexible layouts, including larger images.

You can now manage the notification settings for individual apps (Settings => System => Notifications & actions) to one of three levels: Normal, High, or Top. And the number of notifications visible per app is now adjustable (default is three).

It’s now easier to set a reminder in Cortana. You can create a Photo Reminder by taking a picture of something you want to be reminded about, and you can also set reminders on content from some UWP apps.

The Settings app has gotten individual icons for pages, a dropdown flyout with page suggestions, a page for the navigation bar, a simplified Glance screen, and other small changes. The two big revamps are the new Battery section, which includes an updated Detailed Battery Use page for managing per-app background settings inline, and a Windows Update option that avoids automatically installing updates when you’re using your device.

Next, this build adds new emoji to your phone, just like the recent PC build did. The emoji section of the keyboard has been slightly reorganized to accommodate the new emoji, arranged as follows: Favorites, Smileys and Animals, People, Celebrations and Objects, Food and Plants, Transportation and Places, Symbols, and ASCII emoticons.

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Edge has gained copy and paste improvements: If you select text on a web page, the copy button will appear immediately near the selection, and there’s also a new paste button above the keyboard when you are typing into an edit box. If you tap on a link in an app that opens a new tab in Microsoft Edge, pressing the back button will close that tab and take you back to the app.

Continuum-capable phones now include support for most (but not all) USB Ethernet adapters, so when you connect a USB Ethernet adapter, your Lumia 950 or Lumia 950 XL will have network connectivity through an attached Ethernet cable. You may still see error messages and there’s no visual indicator that you are connected, so there’s still work to be done. Proxy support for LAN connections is coming.

On the lock screen, the back button has been replaced with a camera button (press and hold to launch the Camera app). Media controls are now available on the lock screen so you can pause your music, as well as go to previous and next tracks.

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Features aside, this build also contains a long list of fixes:

• User dictionaries contained incorrect words or were corrupted, so they have been reset.
• The screen flickers while watching a full screen video or when you first launched the Camera app.
• The alarm volume will get louder faster.
• If you answer a call while at least one notification is visible, you no longer need to dismiss that notification before being able to end the call. You will now see the call in-progress banner above the notification while in this state, and tapping it will bypass any existing notifications without having to first dismiss them.
• An issue where pressing the hardware volume controls would quit Netflix playback.
• An issue where Chinese Input Method Editor users would lose their typing history after reboot, as well as an issue resulting in the Chinese 12-key keyboard crashing if you typed “erbo” (㜦).
• An issue where swiping from Start to the All apps list would get stuck after exiting Continuum.
• An issue where music would sometimes stop playing a few minutes after the device had been locked or the screen had been turned off.
• An issue resulting in the keyboard dismissing when you tapped the first key after having interacted with the app bar.
• An issue where trying to delete and re-type an auto-correction would result in it getting auto-corrected again.
• An issue where locking and unlocking the phone quickly with Action Center open could result in Start being stuck on resuming.
• An issue where the keyboard would sometimes show all black when responding to a text in the Action Center above the Lock screen.
• An issue where users with their Lock screen set to Bing would just see the default Windows 10 background.
• An issue resulting in a missing Windows logo above the Start screen in the Task Switcher.
• An issue where a phone call could stop ringing if interrupted by an SMS notification.
• An issue where the app name on the Start tile could be truncated even though there’s space available to display it.
• An issue where volume control would continue to show headphones volume after headphones had been disconnected.
• Notification text in banners and Action center will now grow larger when the Ease of Access “Text Scaling” option is enabled.

That said, this build also contains five known issues:

• Language and speech packs are unable to be downloaded and will show errors due to a backend issue.
• The Camera app can crash when going into your camera roll.
• You may see duplicate apps under All apps showing as pending despite being installed and usable on your phone. You may also see some apps stuck in the Store.
• You may see square boxes in certain apps when using some of the new emoji.
• In some cases, users might get in a state where neither space or enter are working on the keyboard. If that happens, pressing and holding one of the apps in the All apps list until a context menu appears may resolve the issue. If this doesn’t work, you will need to reboot.

Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 build number from 14295, made available to testers on March 25, to build 14322. This is clearly a massive release, so die-hard Windows Phone fans should be pleased.

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