Rolling back to Windows Phone 8.1 could brick these devices

Apr 16, 2015 14:02 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft launched Windows 10 build 10051 for several new phone models last week with much fanfare, but it turns out that there’s an issue with the downgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 that could brick a number of devices.

Lumia 520, 525, and 526 are all affected by this bug, according to complaints posted on Microsoft Community forums (via WindowsCentral), and it appears that Redmond has decided to pull this Windows 10 build completely for these phones until the issue is fixed.

“We are seeing some reports of failures on Lumia 520/525/526 devices when trying to roll back to Windows Phone 8.1 using the Windows Phone Recovery Tool. We are pausing build availability for these devices temporarily while we investigate the issue and work with customers who have reported problems,” a Microsoft engineer said in a short post.

Bricked by Microsoft’s official downgrade tool

Interestingly, users who installed Windows 10 build 10051 on one of the three aforementioned models and actually bricked their devices used the Windows Phone Recovery Tool to downgrade, a method that was until now supported and recommended by Microsoft for those who wanted to go back to the stable version of the OS.

Right now, it’s not very clear whether the company will find a way to fix these bricked devices, but in the meantime, no one with Lumia 520 can download Windows 10 anymore. If you’ve already gotten it and plan to downgrade to Windows Phone, you’d better stick with Windows 10 a little bit longer, until this issue is fixed.

Lumia 520 is currently the number one Windows Phone device on the market, so it’s easy to see why the company needs to work at full speed to address this issue. At this point, it’s hard to estimate how many devices have been bricked after turning to this downgrade method, so we’re still waiting for more information from Microsoft on this new trouble.