Microsoft last pushed Windows 10 Mobile Redstone Build 14356 to Insiders in the Fast Ring. You can read the official changelog by clicking here and we also explored and found some unreported changes which you can read here. So time for our evaluation and hands-on demo of the build. Watch our Hands-on unreported UI changes, performance, multitasking and navigation demo of the Build 14356 and read our Installation experience and Impressions.
Build 14356 Installation Experience:
The Installation experience has been good in case of the Build 14356. It took around 50-55 minutes for the build to get downloaded, installed, data migrated and the devices getting up and running on one of the device. While we didn’t face any issue with Data migration post installation of the update, you may face it and best is to wait and let it do its thing and finish data migration. In case it takes too much time try a soft reset and it may work finally. You can refer to our common issues and errors fixing guide for more.
You will be usually notified for a restart when the download has completed in background. It may require up to 1 GB of free storage. So, check the storage before you upgrade and you can check our tutorial on how to prepare for upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile.
Build 14356 Hands-on Impressions (Performance, Multitasking, Battery Life & more):
Here is what you can notice in our hands-on video demo.
- During our hands-on with the Build 14356 we found it to be generally fast and responsive during start-screen navigation, apps list scrolling, opening and closing of settings.
- Microsoft Edge seems loading pages bit faster as compared to last Build and swipe navigation is really impressive. Though we saw one of the tabs disappearing in background
- Native apps like Microsoft Edge, Camera, Outlook Mail & Calendar etc work fine
- Mobile Data and Wi-Fi works fine and without any issue
- Video streaming and playing also works fine without any issue like flickering faced on earlier builds.
- Generally Multitasking works fine and apps resume really fast from background. But apps crash at times during multitasking.
- Battery Life seems promising so far during our hands-on usage of the Build and our Lumia 640 XL lasts 24-26 hours on average with heavy to moderate use.
- Bluetooth seems working fine on Build 14356
Major Bug & Issues:
- Microsoft needs to improve the RAM management on Redstone. The issues of Apps crashing in background is still there and seems more prominent when you multitask with a game opened in background.
- Bluetooth functionality needs a UI and connectivity overhaul.
- It is surprising to see the option of “set photo as background / wallpaper” removed from the native Photos app
So, Build 14356 is impressive in terms of performance and multitasking but with the issue of Apps crashing in background during multitasking persisting it needs improvement in handling Apps. In our opinion Microsoft needs to fix these nagging issues around multitasking that directly affect user experience. We also want to make it clear that it is our hands-on experience with the build and your experience may vary and may be better or worse than ours.
We must mention that we haven’t done hard reset on our devices but we recommend if you are facing lots of issues. You can read our guide to fix commonly known Windows 10 Mobile upgrade, installation and usability issues.
