Microsoft releases new Windows 10 Mobile preview with PC texting and Cortana in more languages

Microsoft released a new Windows 10 Mobile preview today. The latest build turns on the “messaging everywhere” feature in preview and adds three new Cortana languages.

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. Microsoft has no plans to offer new preview builds to other devices.

First up, the “Messaging everywhere” preview allows you to send and receive text messages with your Windows 10 PC. To use this feature, you’ll need to be signed in with your Microsoft Account, enable “Send texts on all my Windows devices” on your phone, and choose which phone to send messages through in the settings of the Messaging app on your PC.

Microsoft has temporarily removed the Messaging app’s Skype integration in this build. This is because the universal Skype app will eventually handle your chats (you can use the existing Skype for Windows Phone app in the meantime).

On the desktop, the universal Skype app today gained support for marking any person or group as a favorite, editing and deleting messages, and even video chatting with up to four people at once. It’s coming to Windows 10 Mobile “soon.”

Next, Microsoft has turned on Cortana for the Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil), and French (Canada) languages. This aligns Windows 10 Mobile with Cortana’s languages in Windows 10 for PCs.

If you’re running the Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview in these languages, all you have to do is launch Cortana. Also, voice input is now available for these languages: Just tap the microphone above the keyboard near any text field.

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

• An issue causing Language and Speech packs to fail to download.
• An issue where in some cases your phone’s screen may not turn on and become unresponsive and Windows Hello stops working if you used the power button to lock/unlock your phone quickly.
• An issue where in some cases, users might get in a state where neither space or enter are working on the keyboard.
• An issue causing Facebook Messenger and other apps like WeChat, Transfer My Data, and UC Browser from failing to launch from Start or All apps.
• An issue where diverse emoji couldn’t be deleted from the text box in an interactive notification.
• The autocorrection logic has been updated so you can now abort an autocorrection by tapping on the bolded word.
• The Glance screen has been updated to reflect Ease of Access text scaling.
• An issue where tethering over Bluetooth wouldn’t work if Bluetooth had never been turned on before.
• An issue where you couldn’t set a sample image as a lock screen background.

That said, this build also contains seven known issues:

• Feedback Hub is not localized and the UI will be in English (U.S.) even with language packs installed.</li.
• The Camera app crashes when going into your camera roll.
• 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. To get out of this state, just start and pause a download in the Store and then choose to “resume all” downloads.
• Square boxes show up in certain apps when using some of the new emoji.
• A bug prevents some apps such as Tweetium from launching.
• Issues which cause mobile data to stop working but show as connected.
• Glance on/off setting is not respected after updating to a new build. After updating, you can reset this setting to what you had before.

Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 Mobile build number from 14322, made available to testers on April 14, to build 14327. That is less than a week apart, which is very rare for mobile builds.