We’re rapidly approaching the release date of Windows 10 Mobile, and Microsoft is hard at work to finalize the operating system, but the builds that the company releases to insiders come with all kinds of unexpected changes.

One such change is the removal of Project Astoria from build 10549, which is the newest version of the preview that was released by the company to fast ring users last week.

In order to address the lack of apps that had such a big impact on Windows Phone adoption figures, Microsoft is introducing the Android subsystem in Windows 10 Mobile with the help of Project Astoria. This basically means that Windows 10 Mobile devices will be capable of running Android apps just like any other native apps, and recent preview builds have shown that this is indeed possible with just few steps.

As WBI reports, in build 10549, which is the latest released to insiders, Project Astoria is no longer available, which makes many wonder whether the functionality of running Android apps can actually be available in the final version of the operating system.

Possible reason for the removal

In the last few weeks, several insiders have reported an unexpected issue on Windows 10 Mobile devices running preview builds: phones became slower after several weeks even though no big changes were made.

Microsoft itself confirmed that it was aware of the issue and promised to investigate, so the removal of Project Astoria from build 10549 makes many believe that the Android subsystem was actually at fault. It’s not a secret that phones running older versions of Android became slower over time, a thing that has reportedly changed with the latest updates, and it seems like the same problem affected Windows 10 Mobile too.

Redmond is yet to confirm this, but it’s pretty clear that the company is experimenting right now to check if the Android subsystem is indeed slowing down Windows 10, so it’ll be interesting to see how the company copes with this issue if it’s the one at fault.