It's out! The first build of Windows 10 Technical Preview for Phones

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Many of you have been waiting for this and it finally out!

We're super excited to announce that our first build of Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones is available now for Windows Insiders!

Since we’re building Windows 10 to be the same core platform for PCs, tablets and phones, it should be no surprise that participating in the program for phones will work pretty much the same way it has been working for PCs.

  • Join the Windows Insider Program
  • Register your device to receive builds as over the air updates
  • Builds will come to you automatically as they are ready, after being validated by engineers at Microsoft and used on their own phones
  • Use the built-in Windows Feedback app to send us problem reports and suggestions
  • Updates will continue all the way up to the final build that goes out to all customers
  • You can roll your phone back to the previous OS any time you’d like

Since it is a shared codebase, you should expect that builds for PCs, tablets and phones will be generally timed to come out at the same time, but they may not always be the same day or same build number, since sometimes a bug will affect one but not the other and we may take another build to fix it.

What’s included

There’s a lot to love about this build, including familiar features and small improvements, as well as some great new capabilities. Take a look at some of the highlights for this first preview build:

  • Full-size Background Image for Start: We believe phones should be intensely personal – so we’ve added another option to customize the start screen with a full-size background image.
  • More Quick Actions in Action Center: We’ve increased the number of quick actions available to you. Windows Phone 8.1 has four programmable quick actions – but with Windows 10 you also get an expanded view that can now have up to three rows.
  • Interactive Notifications: Notifications are now interactive, allowing you to take action directly like dismissing an alarm, or seeing images for maps. For example, for text messages, when the toast pops, you can quickly reply inline via text or voice.
  • Significantly enhanced speech-to-text capability: You can talk to virtually any data field you choose. Your words show up as you speak them – and punctuation appears automatically.  This feature is smart enough to understand when to use ‘two’ – the number — instead of ‘too’ as in ‘also’.
  • More powerful Photos app: From your very first launch, Photos will show the aggregated set of all your local photos and all your OneDrive photos

Here's a video where Joe Belfiore takes us through some of the highlights of Window 10 for Phone:

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckzhX1O6Lto]

Here's a detailed blog post by Gabe Aul from our Windows team which gets into deep details around known issues, eligibility, how to get started and more! I highly recommend you read this: https://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/02/12/announcing-the-first-build-of-windows-10-technical-preview-for-phones-2/

Thank You!

We are super excited about the way Windows 10 is taking shape across some many form factors and we are humbled by the passion and excitement we have seen from our Windows Insider community. You are truly helping shape Windows 10!

For those who haven't yet become a Windows Insider. Instructions on how to join the Windows Insider program and get your phone set up are available on the Windows Insider website at https://insider.windows.com