Microsoft To Expand Windows 10 Smartphone Preview To More Devices

The next build of the Windows 10 technical preview for smartphones should support a much larger number of Windows Phone 8.1 devices now that Microsoft has completed development of the ‘partition stitching’ feature.

It is expected that Windows 10 on smartphones should work in the same way as on PCs and the first version of the technical preview for the small screen was released in February.

Windows 10 preview expansion

However it is limited to the Lumia 630, 635, 636, 638, 730 and 830 as these handsets have sufficient partition sizes to support the preview. The interaction of partition stitching allows Microsoft to dynamically change the partition sizes, opening up the preview to more devices.

The company has published a list of devices it expects to be supported by the next build and is testing individual smartphones internally to see if there are any device-specific bugs to be found. All of the handsets included in the preliminary list are Lumia devices and Microsoft says if a particular phone is missing, it is possible that a bug has been discovered.

Eventually, all Windows Phone 8 devices should be able to upgrade and Stephen Elop, former Nokia CEO and current head of Microsoft’s devices and services unit, said at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 that the company wanted to get as many third party manufacturers on board as possible.

No firm release date for the second version of the build has been made available, but Microsoft says just one more week of engineering should be required.

The preliminary list is as follows:

• Lumia 1020
• Lumia 1320
• Lumia 1520
• Lumia 520
• Lumia 525
• Lumia 526
• Lumia 530
• Lumia 530 Dual Sim
• Lumia 535
• Lumia 620
• Lumia 625
• Lumia 630
• Lumia 630 Dual Sim
• Lumia 635
• Lumia 636
• Lumia 638
• Lumia 720
• Lumia 730
• Lumia 730 Dual SIM
• Lumia 735
• Lumia 810
• Lumia 820
• Lumia 822
• Lumia 830
• Lumia 920
• Lumia 925
• Lumia 928
• Lumia ICON
• Microsoft Lumia 430
• Microsoft Lumia 435
• Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM
• Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM DTV
• Microsoft Lumia 532
• Microsoft Lumia 532 Dual SIM
• Microsoft Lumia 640 Dual SIM
• Microsoft Lumia 535 Dual SIM

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