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0 pointsocdtrekkie9y ago0 comments

Windows 10 Mobile gets OS updates directly from Microsoft. Verizon does not support Windows 10 Mobile at all, but my four year old Verizon Lumia Icon got Windows 10 version 14393.1198, which released yesterday, yesterday.

Microsoft has chosen to drop a lot of older models from the Creator's Update, but is still providing cumulative/security updates to the Anniversary Update right now, which is supported on all phones which run Windows 10 Mobile.

At least, at present, if you have a Windows 10 Mobile device, you have recent security updates, regardless of make or model.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

kyriakos9y ago· 3 in thread

One thing Microsoft does well is Long term support and backwards compatibility. I guess this applies to their mobile OS as well.

toast09y ago

Unless your mobile OS is Windows Phone 8.1, or Windows Phone 7, or Windows Mobile 6, etc which got very little in the way of updates once a new major release was made; and many phones are not upgradable from one major release to the next (or the upgrade wasn't pushed to users without intervention, which is effectively the same thing).

I would say, Microsoft has a reputation for long term support and backwards compatibility, but it seems like it's something they're trying to get away from.

ocdtrekkieOP9y ago

I would more characterize it as failures in their mobile space. Microsoft has rebooted it's mobile product line a bunch of times. But, as noted, my Lumia Icon was a Windows Phone 8.x device, and it runs yesterday's release of Windows 10 Mobile. A pretty large number of 8.x devices are capable of 10.

The manual intervention to upgrade to 10 is because, as noted, the big change is that Windows 10 Mobile upgrades are handled by Microsoft, so the update servers had to be changed. Prior versions to 10 had the same carrier-based update issues Android had.

I'd argue that change alone points to the fact that Microsoft is getting better at long term support, not worse.

flukus9y ago

> (or the upgrade wasn't pushed to users without intervention, which is effectively the same thing)

No, that's a good thing. Pushing major updates and new features instead of just patches is what makes users (and IT departments) disable automatic updates.

sxates9y ago

I have a Nokia Icon in a drawer (relented and went back to iPhone last year) which I booted up the other day and had tons of updates waiting. It does seem the Win10 Mobile platform is still alive and well, though there are few signs of it in the broader market. Good to see they're still at it, I've always loved Win Phones.

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