Hands-on with Windows 10 Mobile build 10581

Earlier today, Microsoft released yet another build of Windows 10 Mobile for Insiders on the Fast Ring. Build 10581 is now ready for you to try out.

The good news? Well, there is plenty to go around. For one, for the first time since the last two builds you do not need to rollback to Windows Phone 8.1 first, which gets rid of a pain point. Additionally, performance is outstanding with this build, building on top of the excellent gains earned in build 10572. Indeed, there are some smoother animations like the fade in effect when the lockscreen clears that make using this release more enjoyable.

We've only spent a few minutes with this release, but you can see it in action on our Lumia 1520. For what it is worth, our Hey Cortana would launch for training, but we never got much further than that. Perhaps an app update will come along to address that, or we'll have to wait until the next release. Your mileage may vary.

Finally, we're excited to hear that battery drainage problems should be mostly resolved. We'll have to spend the next few days with it to verify, but it sounds promising.

Let us know in comments your thoughts on build 10581 and if think Microsoft has done a good enough job thus far.

Here's what's been fixed and what still broken in Windows 10 Mobile build 10581

Need more help? Jump into our Windows 10 Mobile forums and sound off in comments about your experience with Windows 10 Mobile build 10572. Is this the turning point? Let us know!

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.