Microsoft Adds More Devices to Windows 10 Phone Preview

When Microsoft released the highly anticipated Windows 10 phone technical preview in early February 2015, it was met with rather sever criticism from Microsoft’s enthusiasts. The reason for this was the preview was limited to just a few devices: Lumia 830, Lumia 630 /Lumia 635 and Lumia Lumia 730 / 735. All the high end devices like the Lumia 930 or Lumia 1520 (which are favorites of the enthusiast community) were left out. The reason given by Gabriel Aul (General Manager, Operating Systems Group, Data and Fundamentals Team) was that the high end devices required special partitioning on the non expandable storage:

Some context on why we chose these and not higher end phones like the 930/Icon or 1520: We have a feature that will be coming soon called “partition stitching” which will allow us to adjust the OS partition dynamically to create room for the install process to be able to update the OS in-place. Until this comes in, we needed devices which were configured by mobile operators with sufficiently sized OS partitions to allow the in-place upgrade, and many of the bigger phones have very tight OS partitions.

Gabriel Aul – Source

Microsoft announced today that this issues have largely been resolved and thus more devices will be able to test the next Build of the Windows 10 Phone technical preview. Though this list is quite extensive, a notable omission is the Lumia 930. This device is still undergoing testing and there is a very good chance that it will added by the time the build is released. Unfortunately, Gabe Aul did not provide a specific time frame for the release of the next Windows 10 Phone preview build. However we can make assume that it will be released before the Easter weekend.

Devices Approved for the next Windows 10 Phone Preview Build

Lumia 1020
Lumia 1320
Lumia 1520
Lumia 520
Lumia 525
Lumia 526
Lumia 530 (including 530 Dual SIM)
Lumia 535 (including 535 Dual SIM)
Lumia 620
Lumia 625
Lumia 630 (including 630 Dual SIM)
Lumia 635
Lumia 636
Lumia 638
Lumia 720
Lumia 730 (including 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 (including 435 Dual SIM, 435 Dual SIM DTV)
Microsoft Lumia 532 (including 532 Dual SIM)
Microsoft Lumia 640 Dual SIM

Windows 10 Phone technical preview will bring a host of new features to the mobile platform including:

Full-size Background Image for Start: option to customize the start screen with a full-size background image.
More Quick Actions in Action Center: 3 rows of programmable quick actions
Interactive Notifications: Notifications are now interactive, allowing you to take action directly like dismissing an alarm, or answer messages within the notification
Significantly enhanced speech-to-text capability: You can talk to virtually any data field you choose. Your words show up as you speak them – and punctuation appears automatically. This feature is smart enough to understand when to use ‘two’ – the number — instead of ‘too’ as in ‘also’.
More powerful Photos app: From your very first launch, Photos will show the aggregated set of all your local photos and all your OneDrive photos
Bluetooth HID Support: Use Bluetooth peripherals like Keyboards with the Phone.
Biometric Login Support