Latest Windows 10 Mobile Preview Includes New Cortana, Edge Features

Members of Microsoft's Windows Insider program received a new beta of Windows 10 Mobile on Friday, just a day after a similar preview build hit Windows 10 PCs. Labelled build 14267, the new mobile version preview includes many of the same features introduced for PC users, namely improvements to digital assistant Cortana and the Edge browser. Microsoft is still promising a Q1 release for Windows 10 Mobile, so it's nice to see things are progressing.

Cortana's new features include the ability to listen and identify music that's playing in the background. The interface for the voice-based assistant now includes a music note button in the upper-right corner. Give it a tap, and Cortana will present details on the song after identifying it. This essentially bring the popular iOS app Shazam, which pioneered live song identification, to Windows 10's native interface.

As for Edge, the browser is now capable of text entry via the Word Flow keyboard, which allows users to draw a continuous line over each letter of what they're writing, with the need to lift their finger each time. Also new is a dedicated button for launching a new InPrivate tab, with the icon located just to the right of the standard new tab button. It's been made clearer when downloads are in progress as well, so users can quickly cancel something that's too large or was initiated by accident.

A number of bug fixes are included in the new preview build, including the issue of Edge ignoring every second word entered through shape writing, the inability to hide the navigation bar in certain Windows Phone 8.1 apps, and the loss of quality for videos saved to a SD card.

Unfortunately, the beta does introduce a new issue that Microsoft is aware of, and that's a lack of Visual Voicemail notifications. The company notes that users will need to simply call their voicemail to check manually, as we used to do so long ago.

SOURCE Microsoft