One of the nice surprises arriving from the 'Fall Creators Update' arriving in the 'Release Preview' ring was discovering that Microsoft has allowed a number of classic Lumias, including the 735, 830, 930/Icon, and 1520, to stay on the Creators Update and essentially acquiring full 'production' status, in the manner of a Lumia 650 or 950. This is notable as it will keep such handsets going and supported for much longer, until Spring 2019 at least.

The situation up until recently was this generation of Nokia Lumias - the 735, 830, 930/Icon, and 1520, had been deemed not to be eligible for Windows 10 Mobile Creators Update (branch 1703, a.k.a. Redstone 2, builds in the 15063 range) by Microsoft. Somewhat nonsensically, since the latter two models outperform the likes of the Lumia 550 and 650, but we guessed it was to do with the age of the phones, plus the 'Nokia' name, perhaps?

Anyway, thankfully, Microsoft did allow all these Lumias onto the Creators Update ('CU') via the Insiders programme, letting them jump on the Release Preview ring. This is the situation as it has existed for over six months (I did a tutorial back in April) and all has been well, with my test Lumia 830 and 930 handsets running very well under the Creators Update on this ring. But now the Release Preview ring has jumped ahead across the board to branch 1709 and build 16299.15 - which currently only exists for the Desktop. Meaning that millions of Lumias which had been relying on this Insiders ring to get their Creators Update er... updates, will have been left high and dry (without future updates).

Which is why Microsoft has now made certain to provision these Lumias (again, 735, 830, 930/Icon, and 1520) to get full 'production' builds and fixes on the 1703 branch, i.e. as if they were full Creators Update-approved phones. And so, after opting out of the Insiders Programme, my Lumia 830 and 930 have both now received the latest production build of Windows 10 Mobile, 15063.674.

"What?!" I hear you exclaim, "these Lumias are all now official CU-approved phones? That's HUGE news!" Well, that's not entirely accurate, but can be thought of in those terms. However, there's a catch. You see, the status is only effectively for phones which were already on Creators Update (typically, via the Release Preview ring), so it's a graceful fallback from an Insider ring to this semi-official status.

Now, for most of the AAWP community, this is the case, so it's all well and good. For anyone with a Lumia 735, 830, 930/Icon, and 1520 that's still on the Anniversary Update ('AU', branch 1607, builds 14393.1770 typically) then this remains the Microsoft-recommended final resting place for these phones. (UPDATE: some people are reporting that the 'Slow ring' for CU is still in place - for now, so try that for phones still on AU and then leave the programme/reset as needed. Worth a try, and all bets are off in terms of the actual sequence, but be quick as who knows for how long this will work? At any point Microsoft is going to switch 'off' the Slow ring provisioning/loophole...)

In short, the status of these classic Lumias depends mainly on what branch they were on before this week. Staying on AU won't be a problem for general users - if they weren't tech-savvy enough to have upgraded to CU via the Insiders programme by now then they're not going to miss it. But being able to stay on CU without being left in an unsupported, unpatched state, on a RP ring which has left the hardware behind, is indeed notable for those in the know.

You'll remember my various tables documenting the status of each Lumia in terms of OS build/branch? Here's the latest version, now with old Windows Phone 8.x columns and older phones filtered out, for the sake of clarity:

So - you have a Lumia 735, 830, 930/Icon, or 1520 and it's been on the Creators Update via (typically) the Release Preview ring? Here are the (trivial, but hey) steps to dropping back to 'production' status and starting getting updates again (hopefully the first of at least 18 months of regular 'Patch Tuesday' updates):

Stopping Insider builds now involves reading this slightly confusing set of instructions - the one you want is the last one, with the 'fast forward' icon - bizarrely!

A confirmation and restart follow...

...And then the latest production update will appear - you're now back on track on your Lumia 830, 930, etc. to updates and fixes until well into 2019!

Good news all round then, for these venerable Lumias. Is it just me whose heart skips a beat when I pick up the 930 or 1520? It's amazing to think these 2013/2014 phones will now live on for a while yet. The 1520 will end its supported days, in Spring 2019, after a five and a half year supported life-span. An absolute eternity in the smartphone world of today. 

PS. As per previous occasional articles, it's possible to hack the Windows registry to make a phone pretend to be something it's not... I even tried this myself here - but it's not recommended, unless you're 100% sure you know what you're doing and you're prepared for some things not to work properly. Be warned.