The iPhone revolutionized the smartphone business 13 years ago and forced everyone to quickly adapt to a new way of making smartphones. Google was the fastest, killing its BlackBerry-like Android OS project and retooling the mobile operating system to work on touchscreen devices.

Since then, we’ve witnessed an incredible number of breakthrough innovations in the mobile landscape, with iPhone and Android making every other platform obsolete. Inevitably, Android makers and Google copied Apple, and Apple appropriated features from Android for iOS. Fans of either side would tell you the OS they’re loyal to is the best, and that the iPhone or Android hardware they’re using is superior to the competition. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But, ultimately, the relentless competition between these two sides is what drives innovation, and consumers win in the end.

Not all features are easy to migrate between platforms, though. Take Apple’s iMessage, a must-have instant messaging app that has no true rival on Android. And it’s not just software. Android has a feature that I’ve envied for years: Fast charging technology that eclipses the iPhone’s 18W wired charging speeds, as it can go all the way up to 120W. But a new revelation has made me reconsider that stance.

Several smartphone makers are already toying with wired-charging speeds that can get close to 100W and even surpass it. Lenovo is the latest addition to the limited number of Android device makers exploring such charging rates. But Android phones that can charge at 65W already exist. They’re made by Oppo, and the technology is called SuperVOOC, a marketing term that you might already be familiar with.

Oppo is part of the same conglomerate as OnePlus, and the latter is rumored to bring the same charging speeds to future smartphones. The newest handsets support fast charging as well, but speeds go up to 30W for wired and wireless charging, as opposed to the lightning-fast speeds we’ll see in the coming years.

Responding to a tweet detailing the rumor that OnePlus phones could support 65W charging, AnandTech’s Andrei F. revealed that fast charging is bad for the overall battery life of the device. The revelation isn’t really a surprise, but it’s something I hadn’t stopped to consider before. Fast charging puts a strain on the health of the battery and could prove to be problematic in the future.

Battery health should be a critical detail to anyone planning to buy a new flagship and hold on to it for a number of years. My 18-month-old iPhone X’s battery is at 86% health, and it’s behaving better than expected. I figure it has plenty of time left until it will require a replacement battery. I’ve mostly used a 12W power adapter with it, although the iPhone X can support 18W charging, just like the newer models.

If you plan on upgrading your Android phone frequently, then you shouldn’t worry about battery health in the first place. Fast charging can definitely come in handy. But if you’re not interested in yearly upgrades, then you might consider a more conservative power adapter for your device, and only use fast charging speeds when absolutely necessary. The other alternative is having the battery replaced once it degrades, but that means having access to an authorized repair center that will be able to guarantee the water-resistance of your phone after the battery is serviced. Because, yes, most flagships come with water and dust resistance ratings that are good until you crack the screen or someone opens the device for repairs without knowing what they’re doing.

Upgrading the iPhone every year doesn’t make sense for most people. Every new iPhone generation is guaranteed to last several years without significant performance issues. Unlike Android, all new iPhones will receive years of iOS updates. You’d be lucky to get even three years of Android updates on an Android flagship. That, by the way, is one good reason to upgrade Android phones more often than you would an iPhone.

With all of that in mind, I’m happy to wait for new fast charging technology to emerge that doesn’t hurt the health of the battery, even if that means having to envy those incredible fast charging speeds Android devices are getting. As for the iPhone 12 series, it’s unclear what sort of charging speeds they’ll support, but the 12 Pros will surely get bigger battery packs, because they’ll both be bigger than their predecessors.

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, Apple a few weeks ago posted surprisingly strong earnings for the March quarter.

When the dust settled, Apple posted $58.3 billion in revenue and earnings of $2.55 per share. Investors were encouraged by the results and shares of Apple have been rising steadily ever since.

Looking ahead, Apple’s financial future in the near-term remains a bit uncertain. This was underscored by Apple’s reluctance to provide investors with guidance for the current June quarter. To be fair, Apple’s decision makes sense as there are simply too many unknown variables for the company to account for. For instance, there’s no telling if a new wave of coronavirus cases will sweep the country, prompting Apple to keep its stores closed for even longer. And even if all of Apple’s retail stores open up sooner rather than later, the economic impact of the coronavirus may see a huge drop-off in demand for Apple products.

Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, however, believes that the forthcoming iPhone 12 release will provide Apple with a much-needed boost and that the “eye of the storm is in the rear view mirror for Apple from both a demand and supply chain perspective.”

To the latter point, Apple during its recent earnings conference call said that its supply chain is essentially operating at full capacity.

“On the supply side,” Apple CEO Tim Cook explained, “we suffered from some temporary supply shortages during February, but we’ve been extremely pleased with the resilience and adaptability of our global supply chain, as well as its ability to get people back to work safely when circumstances allow.

“Our operations team and manufacturing partners put forth an extraordinary effort to restore production quickly,” Cook added, “and we exited the quarter in a good supply position for most of our product lines.”

That said, the demand side of the equation remains up in the air. Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup looks compelling and the inclusion of 5G support will undoubtedly attract buyers. Still, it remains to be seen the extent to which the downtrodden economy impacts iPhone sales come October and November.

Ives, though, is optimistic that Apple is already on the road to a strong recovery:

iPhone 12 should start the road to recovery for Cupertino. We conservatively assume only the installed base consumers currently in the window of an upgrade opportunity that have not upgraded their iPhones in more than 42 months purchase a new phone over the next 18 to 24 months. Currently we estimate that ~350 million of Apple’s 925 million iPhones worldwide are in this upgrade window, as we model going forward in a more draconian scenario that minimal new smartphone activity takes place in the coming quarters.

Incidentally, Ives anticipates that shares of Apple — which are currently trading in the $318 range — may reach as high as $350 in the coming months.

As for the iPhone 12 itself, the device looks to be the most compelling new iPhone we’ve seen in quite some time. Aside from improved camera performance and a 120Hz ProMotion Display, Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup will include a smaller notch, improved Face ID performance, faster internals, and last but not least, support for 5G. There are also rumors that the pricing for the iPhone 12 will be slightly cheaper than it was for the iPhone 11. If this turns out to be the case, the iPhone 12 will offer users more bang for the buck than any other iPhone we’ve seen since carriers starting eliminating subsidies.

The mobile industry’s oft-cited savior for slow smartphone sales, isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire — especially here in America.

In fact, if anything, it appears to be doing just the opposite: 5G is actively acting as a negative asterisk to otherwise fine phones and encouraging people to avoid them entirely. And really, who can blame ’em?

Let’s back up for a sec and set the stage to this story — because there’s a fair amount of context to consider here. Smartphone sales in general, y’see, haven’t been in particularly great shape for quite a while now. And it’s no wonder: In spite of endless efforts to come up with flashy-seeming “innovations” like folding phones and a variety of curving, sloping, and suggestively gyrating screens (okay, so maybe not that last one, but it’s probably just a matter of time), people are hanging onto their perfectly fine old devices for longer and longer.

So the companies that make their money by selling said devices have been growing increasingly desperate for an answer. And most of ’em seemed downright convinced 5G would absolutely, positively, no doubt whatsoever be the magic ingredient that’d have everyone clamoring to open up their wallets and move into some shiny new top-dollar hardware.

Think I’m exaggerating? At a lavish media event in Hawaii just before the start of 2019, a Verizon spokesperson told reporters the carrier “believes customers will pay for utility and value” — going on to say, confidently, that “there will be that, definitely, in 5G.” (“Plus, we know we can tack pretty much anything onto people’s phone bills and get away with it,” the spokesperson presumably forgot to add with a cackle.)

Sprint’s former managers were even more optimistic, telling investors in late 2018 that the carrier would “have a lot of room to increase our price of unlimited” and that it was “looking at 5G as an amazing opportunity for the company not only for the position of the company, but also to charge for the blazing fast speeds.” (Weird how we haven’t seen that in an ad yet, isn’t it? “5G: An amazing opportunity for us to charge you more!”)

Even as recently as this past January, industry analysts were saying 5G would invariably, absolutely, definitely cause smartphone sales to rebound.

And yet here we are.

The 5G flagship reality check

Now, let’s make one thing clear: There’s an awful lot happening at once right now — not least of all that whole global pandemic thing you might’ve read a thing or two about — and it’s impossible to draw any direct connections between any single cause and the broad effects on smartphone sales that we’re seeing. But it also seems impossible not to suspect at least some manner of relationship between the all-in, no-choice-but-to-embrace-5G mentality device-makers are adopting with Android flagships right now and the overall indifference being expressed by mobile-tech users about the resulting products.

So far in 2020, phone sales are, to use the technical term, totally in the crapper. IDC found phone shipments dropped nearly 12% worldwide in the first quarter of the year — the largest year-to-year decrease the firm has ever measured. And among the regions that contributed most prominently to the “drastic worldwide decline”? Yes, indeedly: the United States, where smartphone sales saw a whopping 16% drop from the previous year.

Samsung’s heavily hyped 5G-packin’ Galaxy S20, specifically, is apparently seeing sales that are less than half what the company’s had with its past couple flagships — both in the U.S. and internationally.

And here’s where things get especially interesting: When people are spending money on new Android devices these days, they’re opting increasingly for lower-priced, value-minded models over the top-dollar, flagship-caliber offerings.

Well, consider a few fun facts that seem at least somewhat related to all of this:

1. 5G is raising the cost of flagship phones considerably

This year’s Galaxy S20 started at — started at — a thousand bucks. That’s up $250 from last year’s Galaxy S10 model. Even the typically “value”-level OnePlus priced its 2020 flagship at $700, which was a $100 jump from the somewhat similar (and released just six months prior) previous-generation phone.

In typical times, a thousand-dollar phone would be a tough enough pill to swallow. Factor in the tightened budgets and general uncertainty so many people and companies are facing as a result of the coronavirus crisis, and it suddenly seems like an extraordinarily unfortunate time to have device prices shooting so high.

And no one’s really contesting that the main cost-raising variable in these phones is the added presence of 5G. We knew that was coming when we started hearing about plans for these products last year — specifically, when the company that makes the processors powering most current Android flagships started talking about its top-of-the-line offering for 2020 devices.

Speaking of which…

2. Most Android phone-makers see no choice but to go with 5G for their 2020 flagships

Qualcomm, the aforementioned supplier of most high-end Android phone chips, forced every Android device-maker who wants its top-of-the-line processor to embrace 5G as part of the package for 2020. And that package includes not only the regular chip, which traditionally featured an embedded modem within it, but also a new separate 5G modem component that then requires a more complex internal design.

And guess what? All of that means the associated phones cost more moulah to make. And we all know to whom that added expense ultimately gets passed.

So unless a device-maker is willing to go with a lower-end processor and risk the ire of spec-obsessed reviewers (something a couple of smaller players appear to be considering), there’s no way around accepting 5G as part of the equation for a top-of-the-line, 2020 phone.

3. The presence of 5G doesn’t really provide anything of value to most of us right now

We’ve talked about this before, but it warrants revisiting: High-tech and futuristic as it may sound, having 5G in your phone probably isn’t gonna amount to much when it comes to real-world benefit for you — not now, at least, and probably not too soon into the foreseeable future.

It doesn’t take much digging to see why. Plain and simple, 5G coverage is still more the exception than the rule here in the U.S. at the moment. That seems highly unlikely to change overnight. And even in places that do have it, the short-range and high-interference nature of the technology means it still isn’t actually gonna be available in most areas.

Heck, even when 5G is actively available, the results are often underwhelming. I mean, look at these excerpts from reviews of the 5G-capable Galaxy S20 — that aforementioned $1,000-and-up phone. There’s one consistent trend, and it sure is something.

From Wired:

As for 5G, carriers are still building out the network, so you can’t get connectivity anywhere except for pockets of coverage in certain cities. And when you can connect to 5G, the speeds aren’t much faster than 4G LTE. That’s been the case using a T-Mobile SIM on this phone. I also used a Verizon SIM in my testing, and while I was able to get blazing-fast speeds of up to a gigabit in select areas near a 5G node, I had to go to those nodes and rarely came across them naturally.

From The Verge:

The Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus are the first mainstream 5G phones, and that fact is a huge part of their marketing push. Unfortunately, the carriers I have to test on in the Bay Area — T-Mobile and Verizon — don’t offer 5G service here yet. Even if you do live in a 5G area for your carrier, I’m far from convinced that the extra cost that 5G adds to the phone is worth it.

From Droid Life:

Should you buy this phone, you’ll get a mixed bag of 5G experience and your expectations for what 5G will produce should be low. … The 5G connections I’m getting are not great. In fact, I’m pretty sure my 5G speeds and connections are lower and less stable than the previous 4G LTE connections I had from similar locations. … 5G is here, technically, but it’s nowhere near the future we keep hearing about from all of the parties looking to get rich(er) off of it. Unfortunately, we’re being forced to pay for it now.

You get the idea: By most assessments, 5G is raising the cost of flagship phones while providing little in the way of real-world value. Combine that with the increasingly attractive array of midrange phone options coming out these days — and add in the effects some people and companies are now seeing on their budgets from coronavirus-related cutbacks — and, well, it’s hard not to wonder if this could be the perfect storm that turns folks away from high-priced flagships and onto the more affordable midrange alternatives.

And that’s a dangerous slope to approach — at least, from the perspective of the companies selling these phones.

We talked about this on my podcast last week, and it’s an interesting possibility to ponder: What if, as a result of all of those factors we just mentioned, a significant percentage of the phone-buying public opts to go for a midrange model instead of a flagship phone for their next device, whether on an individual or a company-wide level? And what if, as I contend would happen for the vast majority of people, most of those newly minted midrange-phone-buyers then realize they aren’t giving up anything of great significance and are still getting all the parts of the phone experience that actually matter to them or their employees — only at a fraction of the cost?

The harsh reality is that for most people, the difference between a flagship phone processor and a midrange phone processor is never going to be noticeable. The difference between premium external materials and more mundane plastics is going to be of little to no concern. And the lack of marketing-friendly bells and whistles will quickly be forgotten. As long as they’re getting a capable camera, a commendable user experience, and a respectable level of post-sales software support (something an average consumer may remain ignorant about but that any business user or enterprise purchasing department should certainly be considering), most phone-owners are gonna be perfectly content.

And especially once you realize that a phone like the midrange Pixel 4a effectively costs you $11 a month (assuming you keep it for the full three years in which it’s supported and thus fully advisable to use) whereas a top-of-the-line, flagship-caliber 5G phone like the Galaxy S20 comes out to four times that amount, $44 a month (again, assuming that you keep that device for the full two years in which it’s supported) — well, it’s hard to see most individuals or IT decision-makers thinking that higher lifetime cost is worth their while once they’ve begun to explore the options.

In a sense, then, 5G could end up having the opposite effect of what the phone industry wanted, thanks to the way in which it’s being forced upon everyone before the technology is fully ready. And by the time the tech is ready, it’ll likely have trickled down to those midrange-level devices and become available in a far more affordable and less compromise-laden form.

Funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?

As for the design of Apple’s upcoming new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro models, we can look forward to what will almost certainly be Apple’s sleekest iPhone design yet. The front of the phones will look like the iPhone 11 series, but with a smaller notch at the top of the screen. The back will be similar as well aside from an added LIDAR sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max’s triple-lens rear camera. Then, the edges of Apple’s new iPhones will be flat metal like the iPhone 5 instead of rounded like each of Apple’s new flagship iPhone models since 2014. The new design sounds great and it will be a welcome change considering every new iPhone has looked the same since 2017. That said, there really isn’t anything about Apple’s new iPhone 12 design that sounds particularly innovative or exciting.

Entry-level storage of 128GB is a huge deal for iPhones. This will also be the first time Apple releases a new iPhone series with four different models, which we’ve known since TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told us last year. It’s the first time all of Apple’s new iPhones will sport OLED screens and the iPhone 12 models will also be Apple’s first handsets that support 5G. 2020 will indeed be full of firsts for the iPhone, and yet there still isn’t much to get excited about at this point.

Android flagship smartphones have come a long way since nearly every Android phone company stole Apple’s iPhone X design from 2017. Sure, they all still look almost exactly the same, but at least the design they’re all copying isn’t one that’s three years old. On top of that, a few outliers have adopted nifty new designs, like this crazy smartphone from Xiaomi and the handful of foldable phones we’ve seen. Wouldn’t it be nice if Apple pushed the envelope a bit as well?

We know from patent applications that have been made public that Apple is indeed toying with various foldable iPhone designs behind closed doors. Needless to say, that’s no indication that the company will ever release a foldable iPhone, let alone launch one anytime soon. But a YouTube Channel called iOS Beta News recently dreamt up a foldable iPhone concept it calls the iPhone Flip, and we can’t stop staring at it.

Now, this new iPhone Flip isn’t quite as exciting and futuristic as the “iPhone 12 Flip” video we checked out a few months ago. It’s also not done as well since that earlier video was so realistic. But there’s no question that this new iPhone Flip is a stunner as well, and the design is actually far more realistic than that earlier concept.

This new iPhone Flip video shows a phone that has Apple’s new iPhone 12 Pro camera array on the back of the top half and a secondary display on the back of the other half. This way, people would be able to use the camera and see content with the phone flipped closed. Inside, there’s a massive foldable display with a hole-punch camera like we’ve seen on so many Android phones. The creator of this mockup forgot to leave space for Apple’s TrueDepth sensor array that is needed for Face ID, but we’ll forgive him or her considering how hot this design is. Check it out in the video embedded below.

Despite calls for Microsoft to significantly delay its spring Windows release due to the pandemic, the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, version 2004, is expected to begin rolling out to users in the next few weeks. Industry watchers initially expected it on May 12, Patch Tuesday, but the public release now appears to be slated for the last week in May. Nevertheless, the software is feature complete; what is thought to be the final preview build shipped to Microsoft’s Release Preview ring of Windows Insiders on April 30, and the SDK was released to developers on May 12.

It’s been a year since the last major update to Windows 10, the first time in Windows 10 history that Microsoft has gone that long between significant updates. (The last so-called feature update for Windows 10, released six months ago and known as the November 2019 Update or version 1909, was little more than a service pack.)

So what’s the news in Windows 10 version 2004 — has Microsoft gone big and introduced a host of new features, or has it stayed the course with a loose collection of minor tweaks? I’ve been putting the upgrade through its paces for quite some time as it made its way through development, and here’s what I’ve found.

Hey, Cortana… Where’d you go?

A year ago, in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, Cortana was separated from Windows Search. No longer could you type in a question for Cortana in the search box on the taskbar. Instead, you had to say “Hey, Cortana” and speak your search, click the Cortana icon to the right of the search box and speak, or press the Windows key + C and speak. All other searches were done by Windows Search.

That trial separation between Cortana and Windows Search has turned into a full-blown divorce. Now Cortana is an entirely separate app that runs in its own resizable window like any other app. Previously, it displayed results as a pane just above the search box, in the same way that Windows Search did. Now you do the search in the app, and the results show up in the app.

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There’s another, even more consequential change to Cortana: It’s become less useful and less powerful. Some of what Microsoft calls its “consumer” skills have been taken away, including playing music and controlling home devices. That’s part of Microsoft’s long-term strategy for the digital assistant: rather than being front and center in Windows, it does much of its work behind the scenes, particularly in Office 365 and Microsoft 365, which is the new branding for consumer and SMB Office 365 subscriptions.

It’s still unclear what behind-the-scenes work it will do, though. In a blog post explaining the shift in Cortana, Andrew Shulman, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Cortana, offers only the vaguest of descriptions, saying that the new Cortana will offer “personalized experiences…Cortana helps you stay on top of your day, save time and do your best work.”

There’s been one more change to Cortana as well, and it’s not a good one. You won’t be able to use it if you have a Microsoft school or work account — and not if you use a local account.

So what’s it like to use the new version of Cortana? Pretty much the same as the old version, except that it runs in its own window. It adds no new significant capabilities. Microsoft says in the Cortana blog post I mentioned previously that Cortana now has new features such as checking your calendar and creating emails and events. But Cortana has been able to do those tasks for quite some time — as you can see in this Microsoft help article from 2017 about using Cortana to find your upcoming meetings, this 2017 article about how to use Cortana to check your calendar and create events, and in this 2017 Microsoft help article about using Cortana to create emails.

However, with this update, you can once again type queries or requests into Cortana instead of speaking them — something you were able to do before the Windows 10 May 2019 Update took that capability away. Cortana also now shows a history of your interactions with it.

But the Cortana you see today won’t necessarily be the Cortana you see next month, or the month after that, or after that. There’s one significant potential benefit to Cortana running as its own app — it can now be easily updated on its own schedule, rather than being tied to the once-a-year or twice-a-year Windows 10 feature update schedule. So if you’re a Cortana fan, check back regularly on it to see if it’s got any new tricks.

Windows Search gets tweaked

As I mentioned, Cortana and Windows Search were joined at the hip until their partial breakup in the Windows 10 May 2019 update. The idea behind the breakup was that each could be improved independently of the other’s needs.

So what’s new in Windows Search a year later? Not much. Perhaps the most useful change is under the hood, so you won’t see it, although you might feel it. In order to deliver fast, useful search results, Search indexes your hard drive. That’s useful, but the indexing can slow down your PC. With this upgrade, the indexing only takes place when your computer isn’t too busy, which should theoretically make your PC faster. I can’t say that I noticed a difference in my PC’s performance, but your mileage may differ.

That’s largely it. Microsoft has touted two other changes to Search, but those “changes” also now appear in Windows 10 1909, the version previous to this one. When you put your cursor into the Search box, three buttons appear at the bottom of the screen: Weather, Top news, and Today in history. Click any button to get the information you want. You won’t find that feature only in Windows 10 2004 — you’ll also find it in the latest updates to version 1909.

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Another “new” feature according to Microsoft is the ability to do Windows searches from File Explorer. Do a search in the Search box towards the upper right of the screen, and you’ll get a suggested list of files as you type, as you do in Windows Search. It also searches online files in OneDrive, not just files on your PC. However, those features were baked into Windows in version 1909 and so are hardly new.

The upshot of this? The Windows Search you see today on your PC is largely the Windows Search you’ll see in this update. If you liked it before, you’ll like it now. If you hated it before… well, you’ll hate it now.

New tools for Task Manager

Those who geek out using the Task Manager to find every bit of information about Windows status and performance will find two new nerd tools. The Task Manager’s Performance tab now displays your disk type. Previously, it showed you disk performance information, but not the type of hard disk you have.

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Also on the Performance tab, it will show you the temperature of your GPU. There are a few caveats, though. First, you’ll need a graphics card with a new driver that supports the WDDM 2.4 driver model. And second, it only does this if you have a dedicated graphics card, not an integrated one or an onboard GPU.

Many changes to Settings

You’ll find a whole host of changes in the Settings app, some of which are merely cosmetic, while others either add or tweak existing capabilities. None are dramatic, so I’ll cover the most important ones.

You’ll notice the first one as soon as you launch Settings — there’s a header with your account name and picture on the upper left, and to the right of that, the status of OneDrive and Windows Update. Click your account to manage it, click Windows Update to see any updates in progress, or click OneDrive to launch it.

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The Network Status page, available from Settings > Network & Internet, gets a nice makeover, combining information that used to be found on multiple pages, such as your IP address, current connection properties and data usage.

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Accounts also get a do-over. From Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options you can now eliminate using a password entirely, and instead use biometrics (fingerprint or face recognition). And for those who live to fine-tune performance (including yours truly), the same page offers an option that that lets you disable or enable apps each time you sign in. By default, the setting is disabled. Simply move the slider from Off to On under “Restart apps” to use it.

In Update & Security there’s a nice new feature that lets you reinstall Windows from the cloud rather than from the Windows files on your PC. That’s useful, because it will install the latest version of Windows, rather than the last one you used. To do it, head to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery, click Get Started and follow the prompts.

Also in Update & Security, you can more precisely decide how much bandwidth to use when you download Windows updates. Before the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, you could set a bandwidth limit, but only as a percentage. Now you can specify the exact bandwidth. To do it, head to Settings > Update & Security > Delivery Optimization > Advanced Options.

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 makes its appearance

Linux users, rejoice: the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) gets more useful and powerful. For a start, it uses a real Linux kernel, which means full system call compatibility. The previous version wouldn’t work with Docker, but this one does. The kernel will now get regularly updated through Windows Update. It’s faster as well; Microsoft claims it can unpack a zipped tarball up to 20 times faster. (If you don’t know what that means, you won’t care.) Git clone, npm install, and cmake are also all sped up, the company says. Head here to see the full list of improvements.

Lots of small changes

There are also plenty of small changes sprinkled throughout the update. None of them is particularly earth-shaking, but they’re generally moderately useful. The most surprising may be changes to the ancient Windows application Notepad, which seemingly hasn’t been improved since the time of Noah’s Ark. It’s now easy to zoom in and out, you’ll get a notification if you’ve made changes to a file that hasn’t been yet been changed, and you can now display line and column numbers when word-wrap is enabled. Those who don’t use Notepad won’t care. Those who do may give a couple of muffled cheers, because these are not exactly big improvements.

Those who use virtual desktops will be pleased to see that they can now name virtual desktops, instead of being stuck with calling them “Desktop 1,” Desktop 2,” “Desktop 3” and so on. To do it, when you’re viewing your virtual desktops, click the existing name and type in a new one.

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You can now add a network camera to Windows by going to Settings > Devices > Bluetooth & other devices > Add Bluetooth or other device. Windows will automatically find the cameras, which you can then use using the built-in Camera app or a third-party app. Until now, you had to use software from a third party to find and configure network cameras.

Connecting to Bluetooth devices is a bit simpler in this version of Windows. When there’s a Bluetooth device within reach of your PC, you’ll get a notification that brings you through a streamlined way to pair them. At the moment, this works with only a limited number of devices — notably Microsoft’s own Surface keyboard and mice — but should eventually work with other devices as well.

Finally, those who don’t like MS Paint and Wordpad can now uninstall them and save a bit of hard disk space. Go to Settings > Apps > Apps & features > Optional features and uninstall them if you’d like.

What IT needs to know

There’s not much new for IT in this new version of Windows. IT can take advantage of Windows Hello biometrics logins rather than passwords, by setting that up as the default on enterprise devices. In addition, installing and setting up Windows for others has been made easier thanks to new controls added to Dynamic Update, which can lead to less downtime during installation for users.

IT can also take advantage of reinstalling Windows from the cloud, just like individual consumers can. And a new set of Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) commands and APIs have been added to the reserved storage feature that allows IT to configure a certain amount of storage on each device specifically for installing Windows, so that users don’t have to reserve extra space for installing.

A variety of new commands have been given to PowerShell for Delivery Optimization, a Windows networking service that reduces bandwidth consumption by sharing the work of downloading update and upgrade packages among multiple devices in business deployments. Finally, security for the Chromium version of Edge has been improved, thanks to porting Application Guard to it.

For more details about what this new version of Windows 10 has for IT pros, see Microsoft’s blog post “Pilot new features with the Windows Insider Program for Business.”

The bottom line

So what’s the verdict on this Windows 10 upgrade? Now that Microsoft allows anyone to delay update installations, we can’t see any reason to install version 2004 immediately.

There’s not much new here, and what is new won’t knock your socks off. There are no big new features like Timeline, introduced two years ago with the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, and Microsoft seems to have abandoned its Sets feature, which would have let you group individual documents from different applications in multiple tabs inside an application — for example, creating multiple tabs in File Explorer for a single project, one with an Excel spreadsheet, another with a Word document, and so on. Microsoft has multiple times planned to include Sets in an upgrade, and multiple times abandoned it. So don’t expect to ever see it.

In fact, don’t expect to see anything big and new in Windows 10 upgrades for the foreseeable future. Microsoft has bet on the cloud, not on Windows, and so it’s not worth the company’s effort to spend a great deal of developer time on the operating system. Expect incremental upgrades as far as the eye can see.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Steady, small changes are a big improvement over the days when one never knew whether a new Windows upgrade would blow up on you. So welcome to the new Windows 10, same as the old Windows 10.