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Microsoft Delays Windows 10 Mobile Rollout to 2016

The over-the-air Windows 10 Mobile update will be released to existing Windows Phone users early next year, instead of December as Microsoft had previously indicated.

That information comes from a report Thursday by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, who got confirmation of the delayed rollout from a Microsoft spokesperson.

"The Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will begin rolling out early next year to select existing Windows 8 and 8.1 phones," the spokesperson told Foley.

Microsoft had indicated back in October via a Facebook post that existing Windows 8.x users would receive the update starting December. Brand-new devices such as the Lumia 950, which was released in November, already run the official "release to manufacturing" build of Windows 10 Mobile, build 10586.

In the last few weeks, Microsoft issued two "cumulative updates" to that RTM build. Build 10586.29 was released in early December, though Microsoft had to temporarily remove the download this week to resolve some installation issues before shortly reissuing it. Build 10586.36 was released on Thursday.

New builds notwithstanding, Windows 10 Mobile is essentially feature-complete at this point. Most of the recent test builds, including those two cumulative updates, have been focused on bug fixes and stability improvements.

At any rate, Microsoft does not plan to release any new Windows 10 Mobile builds -- whether they're incremental test builds or the final gold release -- until next month, according to Gabe Aul, head of the Windows Insider program and vice president of engineering in Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group.

"This time of year many of us take the opportunity to spend time with family and take some vacation time, so the engineering team will be running at a slower pace and many of our key people who drive our flighting process will be out (including me)," he wrote in a blog post. "This means we won't be releasing any new builds to Windows Insiders until January, for both PC and mobile."

About the Author

Gladys Rama (@GladysRama3) is the editorial director of Converge360.

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