A little piece of information popped up today which may well be of interest to those who like to keep track of Microsoft"s many development codenames for its seemingly endless array of products - and it looks like one of those codenames will be sticking around for a while longer.
Windows 10 has moved to a continuous development model, with cumulative updates bringing fixes and minor improvements each month, and major updates delivered on a less regular basis. The most recent example of the latter was the Anniversary Update, part of the Redstone 1 Development Branch of the OS. Its arrival followed the earlier rollout of Threshold 1 (the original Windows 10 release in July 2015), and Threshold 2 (the November Update).
Last month, Microsoft announced that the next major update, previously known by its Redstone 2 codename, will come in early 2017, and will be known as the Creators Update. Beyond that, we"ve also heard rumblings of a third Redstone update coming later in the year.
But Windows Central reports that there"s a fourth Redstone update on the Windows 10 roadmap too, which will show up in 2018. Of course, it"s no surprise that Microsoft is planning to deliver further major updates in the year after next - that cycle of periodic updates is the new normal, after all, and we"ve been expecting Microsoft to settle into a new cadence of two major updates a year - but it looks like the Redstone codename will be with us for some time to come.
Windows Central"s Zac Bowden speculates that Microsoft"s much-rumored "Surface Phone" may not arrive until around the same time that Redstone 4 is released. That aligns with a report from Mary Jo Foley on ZDNet last month, after well-placed sources revealed to her that the new Windows handset is unlikely to launch before "late 2017 or maybe even not until 2018".
Source: Windows Central