Windows 10 Mobile review: Small fixes show this plucky phone OS won’t give up

April 21, 2018

A year ago, we characterized Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mobile as a second-tier OS, but not one that’s second rate. Fast-forward nine months later to the Windows 10 Mobile Anniversary Update, and we’re still seeing signs of slow progress—but perhaps not quite fast enough for an operating system the market has largely given up o

My impressions of the Windows 10 AU are of tweaking, patching, and catching up. The most important additions include the new Wallet app, which finally allows tap-to-pay NFC payments for Windows 10 AU smartphones—something that both Android and iOS have had for years. The simplified Skype Preview app debuts, as it also has on PCs. An existing app, Continuum, now projects screens wirelessly onto a PC without the need for a Display Dock, and Windows 10 now exchanges messages and notifications between the phone and PC better than ever. Otherwise, there are other, minor adjustments, scattered throughout the updated OS.

Fortunately, these new updates are rolling out to all Windows phones faster than expected, even “carrier-locked” models. Consider: Two phones—AT&T’s Lumia 640 and Verizon’s Lumia 735—were upgraded to vanilla Windows 10 just months ago, in June. If you don’t have it, however, and absolutely want the Windows 10 Mobile AU now, jump on the Windows Insider program—and opt for the Release Preview, as it’s the best way to try out Windows 10 Mobile AU until the carriers get their act together.

We tested Windows 10 AU with a Lumia 950, plus a slightly older Lumia 640. Because the 640 includes just 1GB of RAM, interacting with the OS lagged slightly at times. But the new Anniversary Update also felt surprisingly stable, more so than Windows 10 AU on the desktop. As before, your best experience will be had by using the phone in conjunction with a Windows 10 AU PC, ensuring that data moves freely between both platforms.

All in all, though, it’s a minor update. Windows 10 AU for desktops necessitated a re-review of Windows 10. Windows 10 Mobile AU feels like more of an adjustment than an entirely new product, so we’ve chosen to update our original review with our impressions of the AU’s new capabilities.

Continuum, connecting to Connect

In our original review, we called Windows 10 Mobile’s Continuum feature its most impressive feature. The AU leaves that capability unchanged, but adds something new: the ability to connect the phone wirelessly to the Connect app on a Windows 10 PC.

continuum connect edited — The Continuum app on Windows 10 Mobile connected to a Surface Book and its Connect app.

As before, Continuum offers the option of connecting via the wired Display Dock or wirelessly via Miracast—either to a dongle or now to a Miracast-enabled PC. Unfortunately, only certain newer phones like the Lumia 950 work with Continuum, not older phones like the 640.

Though the connection process is seamless enough, connecting both devices takes a bit of prep. You’ll need to unlock both devices, then launch the Continuum app on the phone and Connect on the PC. The Connect app projects a Windows 10-ish desktop environment onto the PC, allowing you to use the phone’s basic functions and UWP apps in a full-screen environment.

Everything feels pretty laggy, though. While you can use the phone’s display as a touchscreen, you can’t then touch the PC screen to navigate. And, of course, there’s the obvious question: Why would you use a PC as a dumb display...when it’s a PC? (My guess is only in a pinch, and probably with a user who doesn’t own that particular PC.)

win phone hub — The $99 Microsoft Display Dock lets you enjoy the Continuum feature on a Lumia 950 or 950XL.

Otherwise, the wired version of Connect works best with the $99 Microsoft Display Dock, which connects to—and powers—either the Lumia 950 or 950XL via its USB-C cable. (Similar docks are either in the market or en route from companies like HP, as an accessory for its forthcoming Elite x3 Windows smartphone.)

Plug a wired keyboard or mouse into the 2.5-inch cube via one of the three USB 2.0 ports, and you’re in business. You’ll also have the choice of connecting via HDMI (with HDCP 1.3/1.4 copy protection) or DVI. Using DVI, your phone will act as a speaker. You can also connect a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to the phone itself.

Windows 10 Mobile Microsoft Continuum start menu — Windows 10 Connect (Continuum) and the Microsoft Display Dock provide a PC-like experience. Note that the Start menu might not look as distorted as it does here.

Continuum can also forgo the Display Dock entirely, projecting your phone’s screen wirelessly via Miracast to a dongle or directly to displays like the Panasonic CX800 60-inch 4K monitor in our lab. The Continuum app senses nearby wireless displays and helps you set them up. It’s amazing to look at, but like Connect to a Windows 10 PC, not really practical—there’s a great deal of lag.

With the Connect app running, your phone projects a PC-like, slightly low-res desktop view onto your display, roughly similar to the look and feel of a Surface Pro 4 in tablet mode. Microsoft goes to a great deal of effort to make your Connect experience feel like using a full-fledged computer. You can set a custom, landscape background for your monitor, and apps align themselves in a PC-like taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Tapping the Windows key brings up the Start menu.

In Connect mode, the 950’s display transforms itself into a touchpad. You can slide your fingers around to move the cursor, tap with your finger to open apps, pan and scroll with two fingers, and right-click by tapping those two fingers. You can also access the phone’s keyboard to enter text—as well as the mic, which I found to be pretty handy for dictating text. The touchpad is simply an app, however, so you can slide over to another task if needed.

Continuum on a 60-inch display — A Windows 10 Mobile phone projected onto a 60-inch screen.

In Continuum, Windows apps scale to fill your entire display. That’s a key difference: Android tablets, for instance, can connect to an HDMI monitor via an MHL connector—but you’re forced to view the screen inside a narrow rectangle, which mirrors the tablet you have in front of you. The Windows 10 approach is much more useful.

The image stretches a bit awkardly on a widescreen monitor, but it looks very nice while connected wirelessly to the Surface Book. Note that to minimize or close an app, you need to slide your cursor to the top-right corner—there are no visual cues telling you otherwise.

Windows 10 Mobile Continuum apps — When using Continuum, expect to see some apps grayed-out.

I was very pleased at how I could sit down, open a Word file, begin taking notes on my experience, then return to my desktop PC and pick up where I left off, because everything is saved in the cloud. There’s one major limitation: Continuum works only with universal apps for now, such as Outlook/Mail, Messaging, Word, Excel, and Calendar. And there’s a minor one, too: while Edge displays a fullscreen experience, it can’t run Flash, unlike Edge for Windows 10 PCs.

Microsoft Wallet: maybe a little too convenient?

Microsoft Wallet may have been years late to the NFC tap-to-pay game, but it’s made up for it with its ease of use in the revamped version of Wallet, Wallet 2.0. I tried out Google Pay and Android Pay ages ago, and the small hitches—does the phone need to be unlocked? Do I need a PIN?—drove me to spent that extra second to pull out my wallet instead.

microsoft wallet another edit crop — Windows 10 Mobile finally adds tap-to-pay with Microsoft Wallet.

Microsoft Wallet eliminates that needless waste. If you’ve already uploaded a credit card for app, music, movies, and other purchases within the Microsoft Store, Wallet asks you if you’d like to use that card to make purchases as well. (If the Wallet app doesn’t ask for a payment card, you either don’t have the AU or you need to update the Wallet app.) All you need is a compatible, NFC-enabled phone like the Lumia 950, and at the store, the “contactless payment” icon at the cashier. Older phones that lack an NFC chip won’t be able to tap-to-pay, regardless of whether they’re running Windows 10 Mobile.You can store loyalty cards on the phone, too, though they’re not automatically applied to a purchase.

When it comes time to pay, tap the phone on the reader. The phone must be powered on, but the screen can be off and even locked.

Microsoft also wants you to validate your purchase, so as a second step you’ll need to use Windows Hello or a PIN to authenticate the transaction. Currently, Windows Hello on Windows phones is limited to iris recognition (Lumia 950 and HP Elite x3) and fingerprint recognition (HP Elite x3). I used the iris scanner on my Lumia 950 to validate the transaction, then tapped the phone again.

I’ve used Wallet at several stores, and tap-to-pay works well. On one occasion my payment was rejected, but a second attempt succeeded. The broader implications are more important: Tap-to-pay is now an established way of paying via Android and iOS. This is a must-have for Windows phones.

Be warned, however—the ease with which Wallet makes purchases means that you need to make sure you don’t lose your phone. Ensure you use a hard-to-guess PIN or password to unlock it, too. If you do lose your phone, you can use Microsoft’s existing “find your phone” service to remotely lock it down.

Windows Hello: A cantankerous convenience

The Windows 10 AU doesn’t make any obvious changes to existing hardware as far as Windows Hello is concerned, though fingerprint readers, such as on the HP Elite x3, are now supported. It does seem that Hello’s iris recognition has marginally improved on the Lumia 950, allowing me to log in more frequently than in months past.

Windows Hello eliminates the need to constantly retype a PIN code by allowing the phone to visually recognize you. It’s Microsoft’s answer to the fingerprint readers built into the latest Nexus or Apple iPhone. In general, though, I found performance to be a mixed bag.

Windows Hello Windows 10 Mobile — Windows Hello looks for your eyes to identify you.

Microsoft’s recent Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book use special camera modules that scan your face to create a custom image to compare against the faces the camera subsequently sees. On the desktop, Hello authenticates you almost instantaneously.

The Lumia 950 and 950XL, on the other hand, scan the irises of your eyes to authenticate you. Setup requires allowing the phone’s front-facing camera to scan your eyes for several seconds while it creates a reference image. After that, logging into the phone is as easy as looking into the camera’s lens.

win phone eye scan — Windows Hello setup requires gazing soulfully into the Windows phone’s camera for a few seconds.

When Hello works, that’s all it takes to unlock the phone. But if you’re not holding the phone just so, or the light is a bit off, or you’re too close or too far away, then simply tapping your phone’s four-digit PIN is sometimes the only thing that works. I gave Hello a second or two to work its magic, and if it didn’t take, I just entered my PIN.

Under-the-hood UI improvements

Windows 10 uses the same Live Tile interface as Windows Phone 8.1, but with a more muted style that emphasizes wallpapers rather bright colors. Menus and options are much more organized, with a nice array of quick-action shortcuts that slide down from the top. Dedicated hardware buttons have been replaced with soft icons that slide in from the bottom.

win phone hand main — My Windows 10 Mobile home screen.

Windows 10 AU introduces a number of conveniences to the main Windows 10 Mobile UI, some of which we’ll sum up here:

The Quick Actions grid of shortcuts can be rearranged, so you can pick the four most frequently accessed actions. It’s slightly odd to realize that the bottom four grid icons are those most frequently accessed, though.
A new Battery setting (replacing Battery Saver) is actually a slight step backward, as Windows refuses to show you which component of your phone (the screen, the CPU, etc.) consumes the most juice. Displaying the battery life in hours and minutes, rather than guessing the time your phone will turn off, is needlessly obtuse.
An option to automatically switch the audio of a call from the headset to the speaker when pulling the phone away from one’s ear makes perfect sense.
Frustratingly, “chaseable tiles” still aren’t implemented. For example, the Photos app tile on the Start page won’t let you jump to the specific image it’s displaying when you click it.
Sharing webpages in Edge to Cortana finally works, allowing you to mark a page with a Cortana reminder to check it out. Swiping a webpage to go forward and back in Edge now works, too, though it can become confused by similar “swipe” navigation elements within a specific webpage.
Provided you have a Windows 10 AU PC, notifications can be dismissed on your phone and they’ll disappear from your PC as well, at least after a few seconds.
You still can’t place a call from a Windows PC via a connected Windows phone, though you can send texts. (This works with Android and iOS, too, with the Cortana app.)