What’s in Windows Phone 8.1?
Windows Phone 8.1 is now being pushed out to compatible Windows Phones.
Some changes of interest to Office users.
- Password protected documents are now supported in the Office apps – at last.
- S/MIME is available to secure and identify emails – again long overdue.
- Calendar now has a Week view
- Action Center centralizes the notifications from various apps and the phone – a ‘catch-up’ to the same feature in Apple and Android devices.
- Skype is integrated into the phone dialer so you can choose to call via the mobile phone network or Skype from the one screen. Nice – now if Microsoft would get around to the simpler job of integrating Skype into Outlook.
- Cortana – the Microsoft answer to Apple’s Siri. Speak to the phone and get an answer or it’ll take the action you say. It can start an email or make a note in OneNote with the right words. Cortana requires an Internet connection. At first, only for US users and it’ll be rolled out to other countries later in 2014 and into 2015.
- A ‘Word Flow’ keyboard option is available described as “Write, when I swipe through letters” , in other words, the equivalent of Swype on Android.
You may see a prompt to download the update or go to Setting | Phone Update. It’s best to download and update when connected to Wifi and external power.
On our test device the whole process of downloading and install took about an hour. In our experience the ‘5 to 10 minutes’ is an severe underestimate even for the post-download process.
As you can see, there’s an option to Postpone the update after downloading.
After installing the 8.1 Update you then have to restart the device and go to the Store to update many apps.
