Microsoft officially unveiled
the latest revision of its mobile platform - Windows Phone 8.1. The new
release brings a lot of new features and improvements to the OS. Most of
those you already know from the numerous leaks through the pre-release
SDK, but here's the full list.
Cortana – Windows Phone’s personal virtual assistant
Windows Phone 8.1 brings its own virtual personal assistant called
Cortana. With Android having Google Now and Apple boasting Siri, it was
about time Microsoft also joined the native personal assistant to
Windows Phone.
The Bing-powered Cortana plays an important role in WP 8.1 letting
you set reminders, calendar events, call people, give you information
about places you have or plan to visit. She also knows sports, gives
weather info and basically everything you would expect from a virtual
assistant. She’s going to be accessible through the Search key and
features advanced voice recognition. This allows you to ask Cortana to
search the web as well.
Cortana is also able to feed you custom notifications based on your
personal information and usage data, should you allow it, much like
Google Now. At launch, Bing and Foursquare are going to be feeding
Cortana with information for places and events, but more online services
will follow soon.
Joe Belfiore confirmed Cortana will be available in the US at first
with the UK and China second. Other countries will follow later on.
Action Center
Windows Phone 8.1 finally gets a dedicated notification center called
Action Center. It holds customizable quick setting toggles, which
include brightness adjustment, location settings, rotation locks, Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth on and off among others. Below that you get a notification
drawer with a full list of ongoing notifications such as email, text
messages, missed calls and even notifications from Cortana.
Updated lockscreen and custom tile backgrounds
Thanks to new open APIs, Windows Phone 8.1 allows applications to
take control over the lockscreen and change the theme or alter its
functionality altogether.
Joe Belfiore demonstrated a bunch of cool lockscreens, which displayed custom calendar entries with nice designs.
The other great customization feature is the option to set up custom
backgrounds for the Start screen tiles. Small, but totally needed
feature to make Windows Phone truly personal.
Another UI change means that you will now be able to select whether
to have a third live tile column on the Start screen. Previously, this
was set only by the phone manufacturer, so it's cool Microsoft lets the
user make this decision in WP 8.1.
Internet Explorer 11
Windows Phone 8.1 ships with the latest version of Internet Explorer.
IE 11 brings reading view, which grabs websites and extracts their text
for easier reading. It also comes with a tuned up password manager,
which will sync your passwords across multiple devices.
There’s also an InPrivate mode enabling incognito browsing. It
doesn’t make you invisible on the web, but rather disable history
storing and cookie information is deleted once an incognito tab is
closed.
Users are now able to upload files through IE 11, with the browser also supporting WebGL and YouTube’s HTML5 video player.
Enterprise and security
The latest instalment of Windows Phone comes with VPN support. Now,
you can punch in your VPN settings into the phone and surf the way more
securely. WP 8.1 also supports S/MIME, which allows you sign and encrypt
your email.
Sense apps
Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about its Sense apps and has added a few
cool features to them. Battery Power Sense is the familiar app that
tracks what software uses the phone’s resources most and gives you a
handy overview of how your phone’s battery gets drained. Naturally, you
can do something about it thanks to the Battery Saver option, which has
app exclusion list.
Data and Wi-Fi Sense will give you greater control over how you use
your network. Wi-Fi Sense is a cool new addition that gives you the
ability to share the internet connectivity of your secured Wi-Fi
networks with your Skype, Facebook and Outlook contacts without having
to give the password. It also allows you to find and connect to free
open Wi-Fi networks automatically.
Misc features
On-screen keys
Just as a couple leaked screenshots suggested earlier, Windows Phone
8.1 now features on-screen software keys – Search, Start and Back. This
means the requirement for hardware keys below the screen is a thing of
the past
Quiet hours
Now in Windows Phone 8.1 you can set any period of the day when
you want only a certain group of people to be able to reach you. This
feature is called Quiet hours and is accessible from the Settings.
Wordflow Keyboard
A new option in the Windows Phone 8.1 keyboard is called Wordflow
- a Swype-like input method allowing you to quickly input words by
swiping through the letters. Joe Belfiore says it's so good that in fact
it has set the new Guinness World Record for fastest writing on a
smartphone, dethroning the Galaxy S4.
Availability
The Windows Phone 8.1 update will be officially released in a few
months (that's as specific as Microsoft got), while new devices running
it will start shipping in late April/early May. It's not specified which
WP8 handsets will be treated to the update at this point, but we guess
the list will be quite extensive.
And if you are registered Microsoft developer, you will be able to get an early glimpse on the update as early as April 10.
Developing...
