The company confirms it’s now putting the finishing touches

Jan 5, 2016 12:26 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft rolled out the first Windows 10 Redstone preview build in December, but it only brought small changes and improvements, with the company promising to introduce more features in January 2016.

Fortunately, January 2016 is here already, and now everyone waits for Microsoft to push the green button and release a new preview build.

According to Gabe Aul, head of the Windows Insider program, the Windows team is already working on a new build of Windows 10 Redstone, and the release is expected to take place very soon.

“We’re working to get one out pretty quickly,” Aul explains.

Windows 10 Redstone is the first major update that Microsoft’s new operating system will get in the summer of this year, and it will bring significant improvements, including support for Edge extensions, as well as several other new features.

Faster release cadence

Microsoft has not yet confirmed the Redstone update, but the latest preview build released to insiders has already switched to the rs1_release channel, so the chances are that the company is indeed working on this big update for Windows 10.

Starting with this upcoming build, Microsoft is also expected to accelerate the preview build release cadence and bring out updates at a much faster pace. Gabe Aul has already warned users who do not want to get builds faster and with more bugs than before that moving to the slow ring is the only solution, as the company is set to give fast ring insiders the chance to try out more experimental features.

“We are re-evaluating the ring promotion criteria to allow more builds to reach Windows Insiders. The new criteria will be much closer to our criteria for flighting to our internal rings, which means more builds will pass it and be released externally to the Fast ring. This also means however that the builds we release to the Fast ring may include more bugs and other issues that could be slightly more painful for some people to live with. It’s a tradeoff - as the thing that throttles the rate of builds is the promotion criteria,” Aul goes on to say.

There’s no release date for the new build at the moment, but given the fact that it should be here soon, expect it to land in the first half of the month.