Anniversary update for Windows 10 Mobile (Redstone)

The major Windows 10 update is now released for supported mobile devices, following the big Windows PC release about a week ago.

The list of changes is not as big as on the PC side, but there are some nice additions nevertheless:

  • New Skype client built on the UWP platform.
  • Camera shortcut and media controls on the lock screen.
  • Improved Settings app.
  • Updated Edge browser.
  • Bug fixes.

Perhaps the most important part is whether the Redstone improves the quality issue that the original Windows 10 Mobile suffered of. On the PC side there are reports of vastly improved Edge browser performance, so I decided to give it a spin on mobile, using a Lumia 930 before and after the update.

Before results:

Octane: 4933 (average of 3 runs)
JetStream: 32.967

After results, with Anniversary Update installed:

Octane: 5226 (average of 3 runs)
JetStream: 32.278

The Octane benchmark results show performance improvement of ~6% on this aging hardware, which is a nice result. For some reason however, the gains are not reproduced on the JetStream benchmark, where the results are almost identical, with no statistically valid gains. In fact the results are a bit worse, but that is most likely due to environmental issues.

The Edge browser has suffered from numerous bugs and rendering issues, including the notorious screen corruption. The test indicates that the rendering engine has definitely been updatet, but it remains to be seen how the update impacts stability.

After using the Anniversary on mobile for some time as a daily driver, it is obvious that this is the best Windows 10 Mobile release up to date. Not perfect, but to me the W10M is now usable for the first time - the previous TH1 release contained way too many issues and problems. Now Microsoft has finally reached a level of software quality they should have had at time time of the OS launch on mobile, but unfortunately the popularity of Windows Phone/Mobile has collapsed while waiting. With WP8.1 they had a small but rather loyal market share, but since Microsoft ramped down their 1st party mobile device business, it is now virtually zero.