Ask Paul: April 24 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s to an early start to the weekend in this never-ending cascade of days that all bleed into each other anyway. Also, an impromptu iPhone SE rant.
Windows Feature Experience Pack
cwfinn asks:

Weird question I guess but what does Windows Experience Feature Pack actually do? Not much in my experience but I'm often wrong!

Not a weird question, at all: This naming just appeared in Windows 10 recently with zero explanation from Microsoft as usual. The Insider Program strikes again, with terrible communications as always.

For those unfamiliar with the issue, those on Windows 10 version 2004 (and possibly other versions by now) started seeing the “Windows Feature Experience Pack” name appear in Settings > System > About, under Windows specifications, back in December. It’s listed alongside the product edition, version, installed date, and OS build number. On my NUC, it says Windows Experience Feature Pack 120.2202.130.0 (I’m running Windows 10 version 2004 outside of Insider Preview, so I’m getting the public cumulative updates (CUs).

As for what it is, we have to speculate. Since, again, no communications.

My guess is that it’s similar to what Google did earlier on Android, where it separated out some system components from the OS so that they could be serviced separately (and more frequently). If you’re familiar with what’s happening with WinUI, where Microsoft is separating the Windows 10 user interface components from the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) so that they can be updated more often than twice yearly (on the Windows 10 feature update schedule) and, in doing so, eliminate some serious versioning issues for app developers plus make this technology available to those who do not write UWP app, this may be related to that. It could also be related to the modularization efforts that led to Windows Core/Core OS and Windows 10X.

But again, we won’t know for sure until Microsoft speaks up or something definitive leaks.
Budget smartphones
davidD asks:

Would/have you considered revisiting the budget smartphone comparison you did about 3 years ago? (with 2020 phones - I remember one phone was a Moto G5+, which I had just purchased at the time by sheer coincidence, can't remember the other 2 phones) It would be interesting to see how much budget phones have progressed in your view 3 years on, especially in light of increasingly expensive high end phones since 2017.

I’d like to, and this is something I think about a lot. But I can’t do this effectively without actually buying devices and I’ve decided not to spend my own money on new hardware of any kind until this crisis has passed. My wife is currently on unemployment and unless something wonderful happens, I’m sure further financial hardship is on the way. This is not the time to be spending money on things I don’t need, sorry.

 
Wi-Fi issues
davidD also asks:

Ever since our router was replaced a few ...