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A few months back, I installed one of the beta / preview builds of Windows 10 Mobile (then called Windows 10 For Phones) on my Lumia 930. I thought it would be safe to use the early version of the mobile OS on my daily driver, but I turned out to be very wrong. Many of the things I loved about Windows Phone 8.1 were simply broken, and basic stuff – like Bluetooth connectivity and saving photos to an SD card – didn’t work properly. My experience with the beta was so bad, I wiped my phone and started clean with the stock Windows 8.1 ROM.

Considering how ambitious Microsoft’s plan for Windows 10 Mobile is, which will include universal, cross-platform apps, Continuum, and a myriad of other additions, and the relatively poor state of the beta, I wasn’t confident that Microsoft would be able to remedy the situation in time for the mobile OS’ official launch. Although it’ll ship on the Lumia 950 series devices very soon, the latest information has Windows 10 Mobile upgrades rolling out just before the end of the year.

I have since changed my mind about the OS and think Microsoft may just pull this off.

I decided to revisit Windows 10 Mobile – again on a Lumia 930 – but this time I used a spare Lumia 830. And after spending some time with the last three builds (four, if you include 10581, which just hit), I’m pleasantly surprised by the progress.  I moved my SIM card into the spare phone a few weeks back to see what the experience would be like using the OS as a daily driver, and at this point I have no intentions of going back to 8.1.

The stability and feature set of Windows 10 Mobile, as it stands today, are just about ready for prime time. It’s not perfect, but the minor issues I’ve experienced aren’t enough to make me switch back and I’m fairly confident they’ll be ironed out in the next few weeks anyway.  Information density on the home screen is vastly improved, many of the navigational elements are more intuitive, performance is still fluid on an older device like the Lumia 930, Office works well, and the Outlook e-mail client is stable, fast, and easy to use. Windows 10 Mobile feels new, yet familiar at the same time.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. I’ve had a couple of random phone restarts. On rare occasions, apps will close and drop to the Start screen for no apparent reason. And I’ve gotten duplicate notifications sent to my Band a few times too. Photos sometimes take longer to save than normal and I’ve had only half of the screen render a couple of times—locking / unlocking the phone remedied that issue in a couple of seconds though.  Additional problems are sure to arise when the update starts rolling out to existing devices as well, but that’s par for the course when a new OS arrives.

Microsoft also has to do more to woo back developers. Though the app situation is much better in the Windows Phone Store that it ever has been, some developers have abandoned the platform, and others have been slow to update their apps for Windows 10 compatibility. TeamViewer, for example, a popular remote desktop client, is not available yet, among many others.

In the end, however, I think Microsoft is going to have a successful Window 10 Mobile launch—relatively speaking. Even with new hero devices like the Lumia 950 XL arriving soon, it’s not likely Microsoft is going to gain all that much (if any) market share.  But, I think fans of the platform can look forward to Windows 10 Mobile with enthusiasm and Microsoft’s vision of a seamless user experience between smartphones, tablets, and desktops, is going to come to fruition, sooner rather than later.

Some would say believable slow, but that depends on who is doing the talking. Fact remains that Windows 10 adoption in China is yet to take off in its fourth month on the market.

Then again, it is up for debate whether China is the immediate focus for Microsoft right now.

It may well be in the future, given the huge number of computers that are powered by various versions of Windows in the country.

And while Windows 10 has put up a good show in several markets — gaining ground at a decently fast pace across the globe — things have slowed down in the past month or so. Data provided by StatCounter reveals that Windows 10 is unlikely to overtake previous versions of the OS any time soon.

It is only the fourth most used operating system with 4.33% to its name.

However, Microsoft’s latest is still is more popular than OS X and its 2.13% share and the original Windows 8 with 2%. Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows 8.1 have posted figures of 53.6%, 29.87% and 5.3% respectively.

The worrying thing here is that Windows 10 had a 3.18% share in August, measured by the same source, and this has only grown 1.15% in these three odd months.

Contrast this to a market like Denmark, where Windows 10 has already soared to the highs of a 20% market share at a very fast clip.

The two markets could not be more different, yes. And there is also the case of software piracy in China, and some say that the fact that it is not as easy to pirate as previous version of the operating system, may be one of the reasons why Windows 10 is yet to really take off.

A lot of this also depends on whether the various government departments in China migrate to this latest version of Windows, which in turn will drive adoption.

For the time being, though, users in the country seem happy with Windows 7 and Windows XP.

The Insider Program for Windows 10 Mobile is getting closer to reaching its first goal soon. Next Mobile build for Insider could be the public release candidate.

Every morning Gabriel Aul sees the same question, will we get new mobile build today? The answer is usually the same, today there will be no new build, we're working on it and its launch will have to wait a couple of days.

Now Finally Microsoft has released the new build and it comes with lots of improvements

Here are some things we have fixed:

•We have fixed the issue that caused the Start experience to become corrupted (garbled) after upgrading and restoring a backup from a phone that had a different resolution.
•You should now be able to set your default save locations via Settings > System > Storage and it will correctly reflect the current storage settings. Your SD card should no longer show up as a garbled name in Storage settings either.
•Moving apps to a SD card should no longer cause those apps to crash.
•We’ve made improvements to the Messaging + Skype app – through both app updates via the Store and also on the server side.
•This should be seeing less resuming/loading text when switching apps.
•The physical camera button should be working again if it wasn’t working for you before.
•Apps and games should download from the Store more reliably.

Known issues:

•After we released Build 10581 to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring, we discovered a bug in the build that will cause the filesystem to become partially corrupted after doing a factory reset. For those of you who did a factory reset of your phone, you most likely did not notice this issue on Build 10581. Due to this bug however, upgrading to Build 10586 will cause your phone to go into a reboot loop after the upgrade completes – rebooting at the Windows or operator logo. To recover your phone, you can use the hardware key combination to reset your phone which will then put it at the OOBE experience on Build 10586. We highly recommend that you make sure you do a backup your phone *before* upgrading to Build 10586 due to this bug. Additionally, you can also recover your phone by using the Windows Device Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 and then upgrade to Build 10586.
•Deploying Silverlight apps through Visual Studio to your phone still won’t work in this build. This issue will be fixed with the release of Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 on Nov. 30th. You can deploy UWP apps to your phone without any issues.
•There is a known issue where the tile for Insider Hub still remains under All apps but doesn’t open. Insider Hub isn’t included in this build. There isn’t a way to get it back unfortunately. However, it’ll return in a future flight! In the meantime, use Insider Hub on the PC as a workaround.

In recent days, we have received a number of reports that suggest unequivocally that Microsoft is about to complete the development of the first version of Windows 10 Mobile (if not already done) and launch the first devices will be imminent, taking place later this month and early December.

Without going any further, this week has leaked the existence of the build of Windows 10 10586 Mobile (shown in video ), which would be the RTM version of Microsoft's new operating system and lack of anything new beyond correcting all errors and performance improvements necessary since the last build released, which already offered more than good performance.

This is a very simple video that never tries to sell or impress, but to look back far beyond the main innovations of Windows 10 Mobile. No frills, no tricks. What do you think of this video? Do you think that soon the build 10586 of Windows 10 Mobile?

Microsoft’s ace in the hardware stakes, Surface Book won’t be hitting western Europe until well into 2016.

That’s according to company reps, and a blow to their plans for mega sales, but a relief to partner hardware makers who will have a better chance selling their own high-end notebooks and convertibles.

On the other hand, if Microsoft is selling Surface Books here in America as fast as it can make them, then it has no real alternative but to delay roll outs elsewhere.

Another benefit for Europeans is that all the launch bugs like the flickering screen will be fixed by the time the Windows 10 flagship device does arrive.

Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella are currently strutting their stuff on the London stage at Excel Arena for the Future Decoded event, talking about a mobile first, cloud first future plus European data centers, defense IT, and other enterprise systems.

Causing a few British eye brows to raise, Nadella showed off his iPhone running plenty of Microsoft apps.

There’s also been demos of Surface Pro 4 and Hololens, but it looks like Europe won’t get their hands on that elusive Surface Book, despite a regular flow of tweets from would be owner asking Microsoft to get a move on.

Finally. If you have been waiting for some news on the Lumia 950 launch on US soil via AT&T, you will be pleased to know that a whole bunch of information about this anticipated arrival is now with us.

But first things first — the carrier has already started to advertise the phone, and there is speculation that it plans to launch the Windows 10 Mobile device before the end of this month.

On November 20 to be exact.

No details on the Lumia 950 XL yet. Then again, this other flagship is expected to be only be up for purchase in the United States via Microsoft’s official stores.

Getting back to the Lumia 950, reports claim that the launch of this device was slightly delayed because AT&T and Microsoft wanted to enable the iris scanner (Windows Hello) on this phone.

That, and the fact that Redmond figured it was better to hit the Threshold 2 milestone for its operating system before making this handset available on the market. The software side of the puzzle has taken a while to come together, the hardware has been ready for ages now, it seems.

But everything has aligned now, it appears, as the Lumia 950 recently also received the FCC certification.

Anyway, even though the carrier has not confirmed the availability of Windows Hello at launch for the Lumia 950, insider sources have hinted that AT&T is currently testing this feature.

So all signs point towards this being enabled when Lumia 950 goes on sale later this month.

In terms of pricing, there are rumors that the Lumia 950 will be made available at $550 outright, but customers can also get it for $100 on a two-year agreement.

So then, let us know if you are up for this phone?

Or is the deluxe Lumia 950 XL phablet more to your liking?