Microsoft has just pushed Windows 10 Mobile Redstone Build 14291 as the latest Redstone build to Windows Insiders in Fast Ring and rocking a supported Device that shipped with Windows 10 Mobile. Time for our Installation experience, Hands-on and first Impressions of the Build 14291 now!!

You can read the official changelog for the Build 14291 by clicking here. We also explored the Build 14291 and we could see some unreported changes that were not covered in the official changelog. We have posted our first hands-on of this build demoing both official and unofficial changes.

Installation Experience:

The Installation experience is smooth with the Build 14291 and depending upon the network conditions and connection speed, it took around 50-55 minutes for the build to get downloaded, installed, data migrated and the devices getting up and running. For a Redstone build this is pretty neat stuff by Microsoft. You will be usually notified for a restart when the download has completed in background. It may require up to 1.20 GB of free storage. So, check the storage before you upgrade and you can check our tutorial on how to prepare for upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile.

Hands-on & Impressions:

We have demoed the Build 14291 on a Lumia 550 and it is perhaps the best device to give Build 14291 a spin on being the only low-end device supported yet.

  • As you will note in our hands-on demo, Build 14291 feels every bit faster and smoother than many recent Threshold and Redstone builds.
  • The overall UI navigation, Lock Screen, Settings all feel sorted out. Even the app list scrolling is faster.
  • It shows multitasking improvements with Fast Resume working even better than before.
  • It gives a fair idea of how Microsoft is still keeping Windows 10 Mobile optimized for the budget-end devices in Redstone Phase. Credit to them!!
  • While Build 14291 has its share of known issues, during our hands-on time with this build it didn’t crash or freeze, while one expect that to happen on initial builds.
  • Coming to bugs that we noticed till now, we can see Windows Insider option in Update & security settings that crashes on tapping
  • Microsoft Edge also doesn’t have crashing or freezing issues and renders pages fine

So, it has proved to be a fast and smoothly operating Build so far and if it offers such experience on Lumia 550, we can expect it to be blazing fast on Lumia 950 and 950 XL. We also want to make it clear that it is our hands-on experience with the build on a Lumia 550 and your experience may vary and may be better or worse than ours.

We must mention that we haven’t done hard reset on our devices but we recommend if you are facing lots of issues. You can read our guide to fix commonly known Windows 10 Mobile upgrade, installation and usability issues.