Gadgetory

interface enhancements office upgrades and media options to level the playing field you've been waiting long enough for this so let's just jump right in I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is your quick look at the Windows 10 technical preview for phones keep in mind folks this is a quick video tour not a review and this is a pre-release technical build not a finished product consider this a very early advanced look at a few of the new features that will eventually come to Windows 10 we'll be going in order of coolness or potential coolness according to me you may disagree with my order if so feel free to watch another hands-on for the record I'm testing this preview release on a Lumia 830 for a list of supported devices visit Microsoft at the link in the description below number one new voice command input for literally years Google and Apple have eaten Microsoft's lunch in voice dictation which a lot of people use so this improvement could be huge Microsoft sticks to its guns and technique here you can't manually do punctuation by speaking period comma exclamation point like you can on other platforms but at least the parsing seems to be improved Cortana doesn't really get punctuation yet she just kind of tosses in periods after a long pause but it's better than it was on 8.1 and at least you can pause to think for a second with this version also as I will keep reminding you this is just the technical preview number two Action Center changes be real for a second not being able to dismiss individual notifications on 8.1 was a pain in the limited number of quick toggles up top sometimes felt pretty limiting to the toggle issue is easily fixed in ten just by adding more of them above an invisible expansion slot and thankfully you can now remove individual alerts rather than clearing a whole group and then there's the quick reply feature when you get a text just swipe down on a toast notification to call up the keyboard and reply it doesn't work for email or a third party messenger apps like Facebook at the moment but it's possible those will be added later number three the settings screen hey remember that endless list of identical-looking options with nary a hint of iconography or a categorization what's gone now and holy hell is it easier to find things also there's more granular control over things like brightness it might have taken you five years but Bravo Microsoft number four the keyboard cursor remember the little eraser like nubs that IBM and lenovo laptops used to have the new Windows Phone has it too this has barely been mentioned in the official talk but it's here and it's awesome to have an alternative to the traditional tap directly on the text approach which still works by the way the execution is just fine on a horizontal movement but it gets a little wonky when you're jumping vertically between lines of text hopefully this can be attributed to the early preview build number five the bits and pieces all these little nuggets deserve further exploration and in some cases explanation and they'll get it and follow-up pieces at pocketnow.com the preview build is very obviously an early one with plenty of slow animations and dropped frames that's no surprise and I expect it to get fixed going forward but there are also big aesthetic inconsistencies that setting screen has little in common with the older UI elements just like the new photo hub menu has little in common with anything else on the phone different apps appear to be optimized for different screen resolutions there's a lot of seemingly random enforcement of white elements instead of black white in the email keyboard white in the brightness menu white on the Cortana landing page also while I started off with the same transparent tiles I had on 8.1 after the update I wasn't able to get them back once I tried out the new Windows 10 look since it's obviously possible for tend to support the old transparent tiles I hope we're at least given the option to retain that look in a future bill and hopefully the cosmetics will get more unified as we go forward I'd hate to think that this way out-of-the-way location for overflow handles will become standard on Windows Phone as it regrettably has on and Android hey you may have noticed I'm missing a few headliners here while the Lumia camera has indeed replaced the old Microsoft camera as the default shooter other upgrades like the new browser new maps and the new office and outlook apps are absent from my eight-thirty with all the stuff pending in the software in such an early state obviously it's not the time for conclusions of any kind I just wanted to give you Windows Phone fans a quick look at what's in store from Microsoft till then I'll say goodbye and like Windows 10 I'll urge you not to forget your next appointment whatever that may be we'll have more in depth impressions as well as the newest info on Windows 10 for phones just as soon as we can get it out to you folks keep your browser pointed to pocketnow.com and keep your thumbs ups coming to this YouTube page till next time this has been michael fisher with pocket now captain to phones on twitter reminding you to keep your windows insider app updated there are new discoveries waiting to be made we'll see you next time