14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has rolled out Windows 10 Mobile build 14977 for insiders enrolled in the Fast ring to finally bring EPUB ebook support for Microsoft Edge on smartphones.
One important mention is that no PC builds are being released this week “due to a blocking bug that could result in broken apps after updating to a new build,” as the company itself explained, but this is alright given the fact that previously, only PC insiders got an update.
In terms of new features, Windows 10 Mobile build 14977 only comes with EPUB ebook support for Microsoft Edge, a feature that was previously introduced on PC as well.
“When you open an unprotected e-book in Microsoft Edge, you will be taken into a customizable reading experience where you can change the font and text size and choose between 3 themes: light, sepia, and dark,” Microsoft explains.
“As you read, you can leave bookmarks. To navigate through an e-book, you can use the table of contents or seek bar at the bottom of the browser. And you can also search for words or phrases and use Cortana to define specific words.”
With this change, Microsoft is basically making Edge not only an advanced browser but also a pretty powerful document reader, as it can already handle PDF documents and other common formats. And starting today, it’s also possible to read EPUB ebooks without any other tweaks.
Known bugs and more improvements
There are obviously some other fixes and improvements, and you can read details about all of them in the box below, but there is one thing that everyone should have in mind when updating to this build.
Microsoft says that you should by all means avoid installing new languages, keyboards, and speech packs on your phone because these downloads could get stuck and not finish downloading.
This is a known bug and Microsoft says that users who already installed these in previous builds shouldn’t experience any issue, so the workaround is to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 10 Mobile, install the keyboards or languages you need and then update again to this build.