- Windows 11S 25H2 update is now in the release test Channel
- This is the last phase of testing, which means its arrival is imminent
- It doesn’t offer much in the way of exciting new features – which feels like a miss the opportunity to persuade people to upgrade from Windows 10
Windows 11 Version 25H2 is now in its last test phase before the annual update for this year is rolled out, which should mean that the upgrade is close.
But if you get excited about what it might mean for Windows 11, I would temper these expectations as this update will not pack much in the way of new features.
Microsoft just announced the arrival of Build 26200.5074, which is the 25H2 update, in the release test channel -which, as the name indicates, is the last channel of preview -Builds before being released.
However, no new features are mentioned in the blog post. In fact, all Microsoft conversations about a few things are being removed are, namely PowerShell 2.0 and some other bits and pieces that will only be worrying about Windows 11 Power users and businesses and not for the average consumer.
Does that mean nothing is being introduced with Windows 11 25h2? No, with a word as Microsoft will have some new features and these will be led to Windows 11 PCs before the release of 25H2.
As we already know, the 25H2 update is delivered as an activation package, which means that the works for the new features are in place in the background of Windows 11 – and all update does when released is to flick the contact as it was to send these skills live.
Analysis: A strange timed fizzle of an update?
So even though we don’t know what the new features will be exactly, what we know is that the update won’t be a big one. Activation packages are used as a way to ease minor updates, so 25H2 doesn’t have any big features – but it will carry a lot of adjustments and some additions (you couldn’t have an annual update that did nothing but bug fixes, of course).
There will probably be nothing worth shouting about, and it is a fair venture that the more important features-like they are-will be AI-related and only for Copilot+ PCs, which means most people do not get them.
In some respects, it feels like a weird time to come out with a relatively whining of an update, given that Microsoft is currently on something of a crusade to get Windows 10 users upgrading to Windows 11.
From this perspective, it would have been smart to detach an update with something that really grabbed the attention of the people facing Windows 10’s end of the support deadline and wondered what to do. A kind: “Hi, get Windows 11 and you will take advantage of this truly cool feature” to help persuade some of the fences out there to take the plunge.
This feels like an unanswered opportunity for me; But of course, Microsoft has a software development plan to be observed, and I guess that’s exactly how the dice happened to fall.
Given the free (with a small catch) extra year of support for Windows 10 offers, I assume that it is also possible that Microsoft could plan to make 26h2 something very beef owners -as the Freebie Support extension will take people for next year. Maybe it may even be the launch of Windows 12, or whatever it might be called (though I somehow doubt it).
On the flip side, the good point of a minor update is still that unlike Windows 11 24h2 – which did some great work below the operating system’s surface and was actually a buggy release – an update like 25H2 should not cause too many problems in the way of glitches.
Whatever the case, the short -term news is that Windows 11 25H2 is almost here and we can even see that it was released in October. In fact, I think it is very likely, although of course it depends on how tests go.
