If you been following the Windows 10 space from couple of months, the number of updates rolling out for apps and OS has been staggering. They had increased over period of time, specially for the Windows Insiders. While this is all towards “Windows as a Service”, but these many updates significantly hit on bandwidth as well.
Today Microsoft shared about its “Update” Platform –UUP–The Unified Update Platform which brings “Differential Downloads” aka only get the updates, and not entire fleet with it. So for example when you update an app, they are usually of less size than their original size, usually.
Windows Blog detailed this out on how it works :
A differential download package contains only the changes that have been made since the last time you updated your device, rather than a full build. As we rollout UUP, this will eventually be impactful for PCs where users can expect their download size to decrease by approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another. We’re working on this now with the goal of supporting this for feature updates after the Windows 10 Creators Update; Insiders will see this sooner.
The next improvement with UUP all impact mobile devices. Instead of devices asking what updates the want, the processing is now being moved on the server-side. The Windows Update service will evaluate which updates are needed by a given device and then return these updates to the device for download and install. This will speed up the whole experience.
No Sequential Updates for Mobile Devices:
Usually for mobile devices, updates are sent out in sequence. So if you missed any of the update in between, you need to still follow the queue. This is changing, and getting inline with PC. A major bandwidth saver if you ask me. Now you can directly update to latest version thanks to UUP.
When is UUP coming to Windows 10 ?
Its coming with Creators Update for Public Release later in 2017. If you are an insiders you should start experiencing it with the latest insiders update.