Windows 10 on Lumia 830 : yes or no, is it ready, any major bugs?

[fgaudet]

With the Windows 10 Mobile public release coming out Soon[SUP]tm[/SUP] to a carrier near you, I have to ask :

Do you think Windows 10 Mobile is ready, stable enough, functionnal enough, to adequately replace today Windows 8.1 on the Lumia 830 ?

I've tried W10 a few times before but had to rollback to 8.1 everytime, it was just too buggy/slow/etc.
I'd like opinions of people who have been running the W10M public release for at least a week: you can't evaluate battery/stability unless you've had it at least a week. (yes battery drain will be very bad while it's working to update everything, I don't care about that).

Let me know what works better in W10, what works better in W8.1, and what doesn't work in W10 !
How's Bluetooth, mutliple email account tile notifications, performance, resumes ?

 

[Jack Neill]

Its very smooth, but it needs a few days to update everything and then its fine. I would do a hard reset after upgrading

 

[pizzaboy192]

I updated to 10 preview January 1st of this year, and have installed all the stability updates available to the release preview ring. I'm on build .163 right now.

Battery life is terrible. Only system apps are allowed to run in the background and I'm lucky to get 8 hours before the phone says it's to low (20%).

GPS is iffy. It used to work pretty decent in 8.1, but it struggles getting and keeping a lock now. It's much improved from before, but still iffy.

No issues with alarms, but some issues with Cortana reminders firing on time. Usually delayed until I unlock the phone after the reminder is supposed to fire.

I have not, and will not hard reset my phone, as that's not a realistic expectation for an actual consumer. It is stable and all major bugs are gone except Cortana crashing randomly, but that happens even to people who hard reset after an update, so I'm assuming it's a problem with cortana's backend and not my updated phone.

 

[KefKef]

Battery life is terrible. With all background services disabled I get average consumption about 3.75% per hour over 7 days period. Compared to 8.1 with same use and settings, it is about 2.25% per hour. When the screen is on, the drain is alarming. Cannot get through the day without recharging if I use the screen a lot, because then the drain goes easily over 15% per hour...

Every now and then I see my Location Icon turn on, although the Location is turned off, and no app is aloud to use Location. That never happens on 8.1. So much for privacy on Windows Mobile 10...

Besides that, the screen turns completely off every now and then, which is even more annoying than battery drain. The font on Glance screen is to small and tiny and very hard to see in full light conditions. If I enlarge display fonts to see them easier on Glance screen, some of my apps stop working properly. Glance was already bad enough on WP8.1, but on WM10 it is ridiculous.

I would certainly not recommend upgrading to WM10 to anyone yet, except for experimental purposes.

BTW, I am running one of my L830 on WM10 since the release on 18th of March, and the other L830 (my main phone) was reverted to WP8.1 after 10 days.

 

[thron]

I've been on 10 with my 830 since the beginning of March and I will never go back to 8.1; I love 10. Very smooth looking and I feel better overall performance than 8.1. The only problems I've had is with Redstone (Slow or Fast ring build from the Insider program), once I got back to Release build - everything is working as expected again.

Battery life is improved from 8.1; though I see many saying the opposite - it may depend on what apps you use or have running in the background. For me, personally, I switch off everything that isn't a necessity to the phone (like Messages) and I don't use Cortana.

If you upgrade your 830 to 10, stay with the release build and do not touch Slow or Fast rings from the Insider program.

No issues with Bluetooth or GPS, though Groove still has some bugs; nothing that cripples functionality.

Every now and then I see my Location Icon turn on, although the Location is turned off, and no app is aloud to use Location. That never happend on 8.1. So much for privacy on Windows Mobile 10...

Do you utilize "Find My Phone"? If so, that app is what's triggering it. You can turn it off in the phone settings and also see the results in your Outlook account.

 

[fgaudet]

I've read you need to disable the Skype integration too, that it's a huge battery hog...

 

[fgaudet]

Battery life is terrible. With all background services disabled I get average consumption about 3.75% per hour over 7 days period. Compared to 8.1 with same use and settings, it is about 2.25% per hour. When the screen is on, the drain is alarming. Cannot get through the day without recharging if I use the screen a lot, because then the drain goes easily over 15% per hour...

I've seen extremely strange battery behavior with 8.1... Charging rates under 3% when they usually are around 20% to 30%, discharge rates over 80% followed by charging rates over 160%...

Win10 reports seem to be both good and bad in this regard. In any case my carrier hasn't released the update yet, so I'm not under any pressure to upgrade right now

 

[KefKef]

Do you utilize "Find My Phone"? If so, that app is what's triggering it. You can turn it off in the phone settings and also see the results in your Outlook account.

I do not use nor have I turned on "Find my Phone" and Skype integration is turned off since I don't use nor need Skype. Still, the battery drain remains about 30-35% over that on WPh8.1.
I first suspected the battery, but interchanging them from one phone to the other the drain did not change.

 

[niutu]

I just reverted back to 8.1. a few days ago.

Camera quality was worse on W10M .164, the now standard Lumia Camera algorithms produce dull photos. Not to mention 'adding final touches' procedure slows down picture taking in W10M. And like in the above comments glance is worse with a smaller font. Integrated maps app was nowhere near HERE apps.
That said the start screen's customization options were great with 'show more tiles' option being back. The settings menu was simple enough and it was great being able to reply to comments from the action center.
Edge browser was pretty okay as well.
Overall I'd wish W10M would get more attention, maybe in the future I'll test it again.

 

[KefKef]

You did not mention random "Screen blackouts". Did you not have them?

For me it is absolutely the most annoying "feature" of WM10 on Nokia Lumia 830. A "feature" that I expect will not be resolved, since it looks like it is a Firmware issue, and to expect a fixed firmware (on Nokia Phone!) from Microsoft is for me science fiction...

 

[pankaj981]

Is the "Start Screen Tear" still present on the final build?

 

[raycpl]

The only bug I find that seriuously irks me is the video playback... flashing screens!!..This is has to be fix by next build, never had this problem before. The rest were just minor irritants

 

[thron]

I do not use nor have I turned on "Find my Phone" and Skype integration is turned off since I don't use nor need Skype. Still, the battery drain remains about 30-35% over that on WPh8.1.
I first suspected the battery, but interchanging them from one phone to the other the drain did not change.

Find My Phone was enabled by default for me and that's what turns on the GPS whether or not you have location services enabled.

For those of you with battery drain, take a look at the most popular apps you utilize and that'll likely be your culprit (I suggest 'most popular' because a lot of people are saying they have battery issues). The only "popular" apps I use are Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, UC Browser and Ebay. I can go almost a day and a half without needing a charge and how I use my phone hasn't changed since I was on 8.1.

Also check and see if you have the latest firmware.
Mine is: 02040.00021.15235.53001 and according to the Windows Device Recovery tool, this is the latest version for my device.

Is the "Start Screen Tear" still present on the final build?

Since downgrading from Redstone, I no longer have it (I'm on 10.0.10586.107)

You did not mention random "Screen blackouts". Did you not have them?

Pixel smears? It happened intermittently on Redstone, but not the build I'm currently on.

 

[Sab2468]

I found that on my 830:
1) The battery life is terrible im lucky to get atleast 7hrs out of the phone.
2) I did find that apps crash alot more frequently on build 14295, to be honest i found the whole build really buggy but there have been better builds prior to this and they have been quite stable and you get alot of resumes but performace is okay .
3) My screen flickers black for a few seconds for some reason and REALLY ANNOYING flashing screens whilst playing video.
4)Random reboots
5) It can get hot though.
6) On the current build only, apps which should be on the task switcher, when you open an app are not there so the app is closed and you have to go on it again if you press back.

If I was you i'd probably wait for a more stable build because i found this build really buggy, a huge contrast of stability between the previous builds but if you can deal with these issues then i'd guess it'll be alright, I use it as my daily driver.

Hope this helps.

 

[thron]

I found that on my 830:
2) I did find that apps crash alot more frequently on build 14295

Redstone. All that needs to be said. :wink:
Avoid it like the plague!

 

[Krystianpants]

Production .164 works great on my 830. It's actually faster than when it was on 8.1. I think that they optimized it well for this phone as this is the phone Satya used to use before the 950xl.

 

[fgaudet]

Yeah, I'll definitely not try the insider version, I'll wait for the carrier vetted version. Fido's OS update page says "Soon(tm)" for W10M on the 830.

 

[thron]

My 830 is a Fido phone. I got tired of waiting, I installed the insider app. You can reach the production version of 10 by choosing "Release" build. and then switching to "production" (or staying on Release); it is my understanding they're the same thing... Slow & Fast are also the same thing and are to be avoided.

 

[fgaudet]

Is there not also a firmware update, or do you also get that through insider?

 

[thron]

Insider is just for OS updates, firmware is an entirely different beast.

I got my firmware update from the Windows Device Recovery Tool, which involves completely wiping your phone and starting from scratch. So back up anything important before you go that route. I think Fido may have completely forgotten about these phones, my firmware was incredibly out of date.

If you you do the recovery tool, run that first (it'll take you to the latest of 8.1 and once it's done setting up, download the Insider app and get W10 Release from there.) The entire process takes about an hour to an hour and a half if I had to estimate.