Microsoft has just unveiled Windows Phone 8.1 at its build conference. It comes with a lot of new features including the Cortana personal assistant akin to the likes of Siri and Google Now. Alongwith that Microsoft also announced two new partners Microsoft and Prestigio, who will be making Windows Phone 8.1 devices.
Cortana
Cortana is the new digital assistant ready to take on Siri, she learns from user behavior and responds in a more human way. She can do pretty much everything on your phone from making calls to taking down notes. You can also mention your interests in the "Notebook" which Cortana keeps with herself to know more about you and then gets real-time information based on them. You can even ask Cortana to remind you of something when you are talking to a specific person. So next time, when you are in a call or chat with the person, she will remind you what you wanted to share with him/her.
Cortana is not a laid back assistant like Siri, instead she is pro-active like Google Now and will give you the required information at the right time so you don't miss out on anything. Be it live scores of your favorite team, you meeting, agenda for the day or the thing you wanted to be reminded of, she takes care of everything. Microsoft may have just created the perfect virtual assistant. Its currently in Beta.
Action Center
There's a notification center in Windows Phone 8.1 as well, called the Action Center which you can access by swiping from the top to bottom. Here you will find your notifications like email, social networking stuff, missed calls and the likes, alongwith toggles for WiFi, Bluetooth etc.
Lockscreen and Tile Backgrounds
The lockscreen on Windows Phone 8.1 too has gone through an upgrade which now allows other apps to take control of it, change its theme as well as functionality. You can now also customize the start screen tiles with your own wallpaper.
Then you can also choose whether to have a 3rd column of tiles instead of letting the manufacturer decide.
So there's definitely a lot more customization in Windows Phone 8.1 UI.
On-screen buttons, WordFlow Keyboard
Now OEM's can get rid of the capacitive buttons found on WP devices and have on-screen buttons for Start, back and search.
There's also a new WordFlow keyboard which is a Swipe style keyboard for Windows Phone allowing you to type words by just swiping through the letters. Joe Belfiore added that it has broken the record for fastest typing on a smartphone beating the Galaxy S4.
Internet Explorer 11
IE 11 on WP 8.1 is a major update with a new Password manager and inPrivate incognito mode which allows your browser history and cache not be saved. The new password manager allows you to sync on multiple devices.
IE 11 mobile also supports file uploads alongwith better compatibility with WebGL and HTML5.
WiFi Sense
Microsoft has added a new app to Windows Phone 8.1 which senses for secure hotspots and connects to them automatically when in your vicinity. It allows for a streamlined jump accross mobile and WiFi networks.
Security
Windows Phone 8.1 comes with Enterprise level security, VPN support as well as S/MIME support which allows for signing and then encrypting your emails.
Availability
Windows Phone 8.1 will be coming in the next few months, although as we have heard before the final build has already been sent to OEM's for testing.
It is not known whether all Windows Phone 8 handsets will be upgrade or not, but on a previous outing Joe Belfiore had said that all handsets running WP8 would get the new Windows Phone 8.1 update. Nothing like that was said today, so we will keep our fingers crossed.
