14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft abandoned Windows phones, the community didn’t, and here we are checking out unofficial ports of Windows 10 installed on Lumia models.
While Microsoft shows basically no interest in bringing the full Windows 10 version on phones (at least not until the alleged Surface Phone – we hope – sees daylight), the skilled developers in the Windows Phone community want to do that by all means, so the project that puts Windows 10 on ARM on Lumia evolves remarkably fast.
As we reported last week, Windows 10 on ARM was already installed on Windows phones, but the whole experience got stuck with a number of errors that prevented the operating system from booting.
One major limitation of such a port was the lack of touch support because this is the main input method on a smartphone. Until today, that is, as Twitter user @imbushuo demonstrated Windows 10 on ARM installed on a Lumia phone with working touch.
Windows 10 on ARM running on phones
As you can see in the video embedded below, the touch support enables scrolling in apps running on the screen. The developer says other features are currently in the works with the focus on fixing bugs preventing them from running, including network connectivity.
Again, while it’s quite a challenge to bring Windows 10 on ARM fully up and running on a Lumia phone, the benefits of such a project aren’t exactly something to go over the moon about. With proper support from Microsoft, however, such an idea could really be a hit, though at this point it looks like developers in the community are on their own to make this happen.
For what it’s worth, it’s believed Microsoft itself might be working on a new mobile device that everyone hopes to be the Surface Phone. Leaks have shown that it could actually be a Courier-like device with the focus on note taking, but also with support for LTE.
Thanks for the tip, Matthias!
Progress pic.twitter.com/NxtAAPHlu6 — Ben | imbushuo (@imbushuo) January 21, 2018