Windows 10 for phones preview: First look

Apps

The first and most notable new app is Photos. It defaults at your camera roll, but it is also capable of aggregating all of your OneDrive photos and listing them along with your camera snaps. You can turn on/off the OneDrive picture support from settings.

It is very easy to select, delete and share multiple images. A limited editing option is available as well with support for rotation and crop. For advanced image editing you should go for the Lumia Creative Studio.

The new Photos app

The Photos app will offer a new Album view, which is coming with some of the next Windows 10 updates. It will allow you to quickly organize, edit and share multiple pictures or albums with your friends and family. Tight integration with the Windows 10 for Desktop and Xbox are yet to come as well.

Viewint a single image • editing options

Folder view will be also launched with an update later on.

The Clock app has a new tabbed interface. Outside of the makeover, it works just like before though.

The new Clock app

Here is the new more powerful Calculator, which now includes an easy to use unit converter.

The new Calculator app with advanced features

The new Outlook app is expected to premiere very soon, but we didn't have access at the time of this preview.

Conclusion

We know it's early days, but even now it's abundantly clear that Windows 10 is moving in the right direction. The company has done a huge step forward with this latest release and while we can't really say if it is actually big enough to justify skipping a number before the final version has arrived, it's clear that its mobile platform has never been more competitive.

And that's not just based on the progress we've seen so far. For the first time ever the Redmond-based software giant is doing a beta testing campaign fully opened to the public. And as far as early signs go it is carefully checking all the feedback and fulfilling as many of those requests as possible.

Forget the whole unifying thing - universal apps are cool and all, but they don't make a great smartphone platform. Windows 10 for Phones has a lot more going for it and while it's not quite catchy enough to be the focal point of Microsoft's PR campaign, it does make a difference in everyday usage.

We've used this very early preview on Lumia 630 - a rather basic smartphone. And even at this stage the OS ran smoothly most of the time and didn't crash once. This is a lot more than we've expected. We are really excited to see how Windows is changing and we really hope Microsoft won't stop until it has achieved a truly polished platform. Did anyone say three-horse race?