Yes, you will be able to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 after upgrading to Windows 10 Mobile

Laurent Giret

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It’s now been a few weeks since Microsoft started to roll out Windows 10 Mobile to select Windows Phone 8.1 devices. We previously did a poll to ask you if you were happy with the launch of Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, and only 67% of you said “Yes”. This did not really surprise us for several reasons: first, only half of Windows phones are currently capable of running Windows 10 Mobile according to AdDuplex, and Microsoft has dropped plans to include more devices in a second wave. More, those of you who chose to upgrade may be aware that Windows 10 Mobile has dropped support for several Windows Phone 8.1 features such as Notifications on contact tiles, Me Tile and Me Card and tasks management in Outlook calendar. Last, we can’t really deny it, Windows 10 Mobile still has some rough edges and the upgrade process can not go very well in some cases.

However, if you think that Windows 10 Mobile is not so much of an improvement over Windows Phone 8.1, you should know that Microsoft has you covered: according to report from Windows Central, a Program Manager on the Windows Insider Engineering team at Microsoft explained on Twitter that all users who upgraded their Lumia to Windows 10 Mobile will be able to roll back to Windows Phone 8.1 in the future.

So, if you’re currently not satisfied by Windows 10 Mobile on your old Windows phone, you will still be able to use Windows Device Recovery tool to flash a Windows Phone 8.1 recovery image on your handset. We’re glad that Microsoft is giving some choice to Windows Phone users, and we agree that if you own a low-end handset then Windows 10 Mobile may not be the most pleasing experience for you. Also, it’s still not clear if Microsoft plans to bring every Windows Phone 8.1 deprecated features back on Windows 10 Mobile in the future. Did some of you already roll back their Windows phone to Windows Phone 8.1? Please tell us about it in the comments.