This Friday, participants in the Microsoft Windows Insider program got a brand new beta version of Windows 10 Mobile, arriving as build 14267.
The release came only a day after a similar preview build landed on the PC variant of Windows 10.
The mobile version packs a lot of features that can be found on the PC installment. Specifically, we refer to improvements to the Edge browser and Cortana digital assistant.
As Microsoft aims to launch Windows 10 Mobile during the first quarter of 2016, this is a great opportunity to see how close it is to actually accomplishing it.
Cortana borrowed a neat functionality from iOS and Android apps that are able to listen and identify background music. This means that the acclaimed and extremely downloaded app Shazam will appear on Windows 10 as a native function. In case you forgot, Shazam was the flag bearer of live song identification and birthed many prodigies.
Cortana's interface now has a music note button that is located at the upper-right corner. Simply tap it and Cortana will identify the song. Additional details, such as artist and track name should also appear on the screen.
Microsoft's Edge browser also gets some improvements, aiming to enhance the overal experience.
Thanks to improvements to the Word Flow keyboard, Edge now lets you enter text in a more streamlined manner. Specifically, users may now draw a continuous line over each letter, without lifting the fingers off the screen.
Edge also got a smarter bundling of tabs. In the latest build, the button for opening a new InPrivate tab sits to the right of the default new tab button.
Users will keep better tabs on downloads in progress, so you can easily stop a download you started by accident.
From the bug fixes included, a few deserve special mention. One of Edge's problems was that the browser ignored every second word written via shape writing, but it's now fixed. Some Windows 8.1 apps, which denied users the possibility to hide the navigation bar, got fixed as well. Video files that users saved onto a SD card also suffered a drop in quality, but Windows 10 Mobile build 14267 took care of that.
One problem that we hope Microsoft will resolve before the final release is the lack of Visual Voicemail notifications. The only way to check your voicemail, Microsoft explains, is to dial the voicemail number manually.
Previous Windows 10 Mobile builds brought different sets of upgrades to Microsoft's mobile OS, and you can check out our earlier coverage for more details.
