Acer Liquid M220 Win10 Update

lassergunner

is there a way to update it?

xong

I don't think ignoring a message that has 6.742 views, is good for business...

brutus1

Why my acer M220 is not supported for the update to windows 10.

unichips

There are a number of technical reasons which might be relevant.

 

1) The Z220 was sold in two variants. One had 4GB of internal storage and 512MB of RAM; the other had 8GB of internal storage and 1GB of RAM. Microsoft was initially unclear about storage and memory requirements for Windows 10 Mobile, but around the time of release they decided to only support devices with a minimum of 8GB storage and 1GB RAM. That would exclude the 4GB/512MB variant of the Z220.

 

2) Windows for phones has something called a navigation bar (Back, Start, and Search buttons). In general, these butttons can either be rendered in software on-screen, or else they can have dedicated hardware (ie touch-sensitive areas on the bezel of the phone). Windows 10 Mobile requires a minimum display resolution of 480x800 pixels if the navigation bar has dedicated hardware, or else 480x854 pixels if the navigation bar is rendered in software on-screen. The Liquid Z220 uses on-screen software rendering of the navigation bar, but it only has 480x800 pixels - below the minimum requirements for Windows 10 Mobile.

 

About (2): In Windows Phone 8.1, the Liquid Z220 works around limitations with respect to minimum display resolution by providing a special gesture to hide the navigation bar when it isn't needed, maximizing the amount of screen real estate available to Apps. It's possible that this workaround is no longer technocally feasible in Windows 10 Mobile, or else it was totally taken out of Acer's control due to Microsoft's increased role in actively maintaining the OS through rolling updates.

unichips

Update: The 8GB Storage + 1GB RAM variant of the Liquid M220 can now obtain Windows 10 Mobile via Microsoft's Windows Insider program. This is an official program offered by Microsoft for the public to beta test their software. I'm trying it out right now.

 

Note that Microsoft doesn't recommend people to use Windows Insider preview builds on their primary day-to-day cell phone. It may still contain bugs, and you may be forced to downgrade back to Windows Phone 8.1 to recover full functionality. However, this is a strong sign that work is probably underway behind the scenes for an official release fairly soon.

asdfasdfasdf

Bought this phone for my mother, because I heard that Windows Phones are easy to operate (I bought the Plus version).

They even advertised that this phone is supposed to be one of the first phones to receive the Win10 Mobile upgrade...

Are there some official statements from Acer? And would it be false marketing if it will never get the upgrade?

unichips

I've successfully been running my 8GB+1GB Liquid M220 with Windows 10 Mobile since my previous post.

 

After installing the initial upgrade using the Windows Insider program on the "Release Preview" ring, I immediately switched to the production version by existing the Insider Program. From that point on, I've been receiving production builds of every cumulative update that's been released from Microsoft, including the Anniversary Update. As of this morning, I'm running the current build 14393.321.

 

Note: The phone is not officially supported if you go through this route. You're really still running software that is not really supported for this device, but it is running mostly smoothly for me.

 

There's one notable issue that might be a dealbreaker for some users: There seems to be some fairly severe backward-compatibility problems with apps that were origianlly compiled for Windows Phone 8.X. Some of them (most notably the Adobe PDF Reader) work correctly, but most of them (such as Opera Mini) will crash immediately upon launch.

 

Any apps I've tried which were compiled natively as Windows 10 UWP apps (such as Facebook's new first-party app, and Microsoft Skype) work just fine.