Earlier this week the first new Windows 10 Creators Update build of 2017, 15002 for PCs, was released to Windows Insiders after the end of year and holiday hiatus at Microsoft. That 34 day gap between builds was expected and not an issue.
Just three days later, on the 12th of January 2017, the second Creators Update build of 2017, 15007 for PCs, was sent out to Insiders and it was accompanied by the first Windows 10 Mobile build of 2017 - also Build 15007.
The time between this release and the last Windows 10 Mobile build for Insiders was 43 days - that was when Windows 10 Mobile Build 14977 hit Insider handsets.
Of course, when 15002 was released earlier this week, the lack of a mobile build caused some consternation among Windows 10 Mobile enthusiasts but the announcement blog post for Build 15007 reinforced some comments I made on social media yesterday about the work happening on Windows 10 as a whole - including mobile.
Those tweets basically said that even when a mobile build is not released alongside a new PC build, work is happening on the mobile version of Windows 10 as well. Windows 10 is now OneCore across all platforms so that allows the Windows development and engineering teams to accomplish work alongside each other. We will never know the specific reasons why a mobile build is not released at the same time as a PC one, but suffice it to say Microsoft is not just going to release a build for the sake of releasing one. They understand Insiders want to be trying out new features across all devices but they are also not going to inflict unnecessary hassles upon Insiders either with a bad release.
There is no better proof that development with Windows 10 Mobile has paralleled the desktop work than the nine references to features added in previous PC builds that are now in the latest mobile build. Just read the What’s new in Build 15007 for just Mobile portion of the Build 15007 announcement blog post and you will see their effort to tie in the new mobile features that were previously seen in desktop build releases 14986 and 15002. Those two builds are the builds that were released for desktop and not mobile since the last mobile release - 14977 on 01 December 2016.
OK - with all of that explained let's take a look at Build 15007 for PC and Mobile.
First - the issues I have seen so far:
- Desktop icons continue to forget their layout and alignment
- Start Screen tiles and groups continue to go missing randomly
- In Microsoft Edge, any attempt to open the Settings Menu from the ellipsis (three dots menu) causes the browser to freeze up.
- The process of downloading and preparing to install this build on PC from 15002 seems to lock up and stall. I did two reboots and ultimately plugged my test device, the HP Spectre x360, in and that seemed to knock things loose and the update completed. I saw multiple reports of this on social media as well.
- The Taskbar still has some occasions where it seems unresponsive but there is no pattern I can discern or a specific cause.
- The LastPass extension still prompts me for MFA each time I open Microsoft Edge.
- Any attempt to setup Windows Hello Facial Recognition fails - the Get Started dialog never opens once I click that option to continue the process. I tested this with both the Intel RealSense DevKit and Razr Stargazer cameras.
Be sure to take a look at our Windows 10 Redstone 2 Trackers for PC and Mobile to see the official list of fixes and known issues.
This gallery contains screenshots from some of the new features in Build 15007 and one I found that was not listed by Microsoft.
But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.
