Microsoft pledges entry-level Windows Phone 10 support

Microsoft has indicated that its upcoming technical preview of Windows Phone 10 will be available to users of existing Windows Phone 8.1 handsets with as little as 512MB of memory.

Although Microsoft has already released its Windows 10 Technical Preview, it has done so only for x86 devices - primarily desktops, laptops and some tablets. While the company is making much of the convergence of Windows 10 and Windows Phone 10 - which will, confusingly, launch as simply Windows 10 despite sharing only a subset of features with its desktop-oriented equivalent - it has so far kept users of its smartphone operating system away from the opportunity to test out the release due later this year, something the company is promising to change in the near future.

In a pair of messages posted to social networking site Twitter and spotted by Microsoft-watcher Neowin, Microsoft's Gabriel Aul has confirmed two facts about the upcoming Windows Phone 10 preview programme. The first is that even low-end devices will have a chance to upgrade: 'Yes,' he wrote in response to a question, 'we'll have 512MB devices [supported] for 1st prvw [preview].'

The second was that users who upgrade to the technical preview will, in theory at least, have an easy way to restore their phones to the previous operating system if something goes wrong. 'We'll share more details later,' Aul wrote, 'but ability to rollback if you hit an issue is very important to us.'

Thus far, Microsoft has shied away from offering a release date for the preview despite having shown it off live on stage late last month. It has also not indicated which of its handsets will be eligible to upgrade to the test release, although given the 512MB memory support it seems likely the the majority - if not all - of the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices it inherited from Nokia will be included in the programme.