Microsoft Abruptly Yanks Your Phone Android App From Windows 10 Public Testing
Microsoft made a mistake in making available an early build of its Your Phone app for Windows 10, which is a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) application that enables users to access text messages, photos, and other notifications from their smartphone on their PC. For a brief period yesterday, it was available for all users to download from the Microsoft Store, but that is no longer the case.
Prior to being available to the public, the unfinished app landed for Windows Insiders earlier this month in the Windows 10 Insider Preview Built 17728. As we noted yesterday, however, users who are not part of Microsoft's Windows Insider program were able to download and use the app for Android devices. Later that same day, Microsoft head of program management for mobile, Vishnu Nath, stated on Twitter that is Your Phone is not yet ready for public testing.
#YourPhone folks on 1803, we aren't quite ready for you yet. We will be back once we are! For now we would love your feedback on WIP.
— Vishnu Nath (@VishnuNath) August 15, 2018
It will make an eventual return, though Nath did not say when. He also did not say why it appeared briefly to the public, though Roberto Bojorquez, lead program manager at Microsoft, clarified it was in fact mistakenly made available.
#YourPhoneApp is currently intended for Windows Insiders. We got a little ahead of ourselves and it was inadvertently made available to a small number of Windows users outside of Insiders. We look forward to making it available to others soon. Apologies for any confusion created.
— Roberto Bojorquez (@bojorchess) August 16, 2018
When it becomes available again, Android users will be able to wirelessly share their most recent 25 Android phone photos to their Windows PC, which is much more convenient than sending them to themselves via email. While it is just as easy to upload a photo to social media directly from a smartphone, it can be handy to plop them on a PC first and edit them in Photoshop.
The same functionality does not extend to iPhone users, unfortunately. What they can do, however, is share web pages being browsed on the phone.
There really is not a ton that Your Phone supports in its current iteration. That is expected to change over time though, and could become more like Dell's similar (and proprietary) Mobile Connect software. In any event, if you want to try it out right now, you have to join the Windows Insiders program.
