The future of Windows 10 Mobile has been a popular topic among fans and critics ever since Microsoft announced that development of Windows 10 Mobile would be moving to a new "feature2" branch and remaining there. While Microsoft has said this change is insignificant, my sources paint a different story; that Windows 10 Mobile development has been separated from the rest of Windows 10 on other platforms. But why?

Microsoft has separated Windows 10 Mobile development away from the rest of Windows 10 because Windows 10 Mobile is no longer needed for what Microsoft is planning next for Windows on mobile devices. My contacts suggest that Microsoft's next mobile device (codenamed Andromeda) will be running something internally referred to as Windows Core OS; a version of Windows that aims to be modular enough to run on any form factor, and as a result removes the need for a separate "Windows 10 Mobile" SKU.

Because of this, Microsoft no longer needs a phone-specific version of Windows 10, which means Windows 10 Mobile is now redundant. This is great news, except for one crucial detail; existing Windows phones won't be getting an upgrade to this "Windows Core OS." So what's next for existing devices? Well first, it's important to understand what the feature2 development branch is actually for.

The feature2 branch

According to my sources, the feature2 branch exists to continue supporting existing Windows phone handsets over the next year and a half. The feature2 branch's main goal is to continue servicing Windows 10 Mobile devices through 2018 with bug fixes, security updates, and new Enterprise specific features. I'm also told Microsoft may backport some UWP APIs that are introduced in Redstone 3 and Redstone 4 on PC over the next year. Microsoft itself has also confirmed that it will be bringing new APIs to Windows 10 Mobile.

The reason these APIs are being "backported" and not natively introduced is because the feature2 branch is technically Redstone 2 under the hood. When Microsoft branched off Windows 10 Mobile into the feature2 branch, it also froze OneCore development at Redstone 2. Now, considering Windows 10 Mobile won't be rejoining the rest of Windows 10 development, this means Windows 10 Mobile will be keeping with Redstone 2 for the remainder of its life.

So, to compensate for this, Microsoft will backport some UWP APIs that get introduced in Redstone 3 and Redstone 4. This means that if an app developer is targeting any new UWP APIs that get introduced in the next couple of Windows 10 releases, those apps will continue to work on Windows 10 Mobile. This should give Windows 10 Mobile an extra push of life through the next year or so.