The most anticipated (and most talked about) feature in Windows Phone 8.1 is without a doubt Cortana, Microsoft's new virtual assistant. Cortana manifests herself as an app that you can pin as a Live Tile to the home screen. When you speak to her, or she's processing a query, Cortana's graphic of concentric circles (colored to match the theme you picked on your handset) expands and contracts until she pulls up the results. To access Windows Phone's assistant, you just tap the Live Tile, then tap the speaker button to voice a query or type out a question. When you first open Cortana, you can begin teaching her some of your interests. I told her I was interested in technology, science, and news, gave her my name, and gave her permission to read through my emails. I also synced up access to Facebook. But this is a lot of trust for a first date with a personal assistant. Microsoft is sensitive to the fact that you may not want to give Cortana access to your whole digital life up front. As such, it gives you granular controls over your interests, as well as what personal data she has access to. You can also switch her off altogether in the app's settings. Open up Cortana and you'll see a short list of top headlines for the interests you have selected. But as you use her more, she starts bringing up more data that's relevant to you, like the weather in your location, or travel times to and from work. Cortana was able to successfully identify where my work address was and asked if I wanted it to remember that location. A day later, she identified my home address and asked if I would like her to remember that too. I thought it was smart of Microsoft for Cortana to learn the less personal of the two addresses first. Like Siri and Google Now, Cortana can perform different 'assistant-like' activities. She can check your calendar, as well as schedule appointments and reminders while also looking for conflicts. She can pull up the weather, or find directions to a location, and you can do this using normal, conversational language, with follow up questions to get extra information. Compared to Google Now and Siri, Cortana offers far more customization and privacy controls. But Google Now still wins on providing the information you're looking for in the most easy to glean manner. For me, Siri still wins on convenience. Too often Cortana resorted to Bing search results when I felt like there could have been some sort of Card-like quick answer for my question. Cortana also had trouble discerning my voice in situations where there was a significant amount of background noise, like in the car, or at a Starbucks. In the car, I tried asking if there was traffic on my route, and my question was misheard as a request to send a Facebook contact a message. Cortana is in beta though, so hopefully she'll get better at her job over time.
Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
The most anticipated (and most talked about) feature in Windows Phone 8.1 is without a doubt Cortana, Microsoft's new virtual assistant. Cortana manifests herself as an app that you can pin as a Live Tile to the home screen. When you speak to her, or she's processing a query, Cortana's graphic of concentric circles (colored to match the theme you picked on your handset) expands and contracts until she pulls up the results. To access Windows Phone's assistant, you just tap the Live Tile, then tap the speaker button to voice a query or type out a question. When you first open Cortana, you can begin teaching her some of your interests. I told her I was interested in technology, science, and news, gave her my name, and gave her permission to read through my emails. I also synced up access to Facebook. But this is a lot of trust for a first date with a personal assistant. Microsoft is sensitive to the fact that you may not want to give Cortana access to your whole digital life up front. As such, it gives you granular controls over your interests, as well as what personal data she has access to. You can also switch her off altogether in the app's settings. Open up Cortana and you'll see a short list of top headlines for the interests you have selected. But as you use her more, she starts bringing up more data that's relevant to you, like the weather in your location, or travel times to and from work. Cortana was able to successfully identify where my work address was and asked if I wanted it to remember that location. A day later, she identified my home address and asked if I would like her to remember that too. I thought it was smart of Microsoft for Cortana to learn the less personal of the two addresses first. Like Siri and Google Now, Cortana can perform different 'assistant-like' activities. She can check your calendar, as well as schedule appointments and reminders while also looking for conflicts. She can pull up the weather, or find directions to a location, and you can do this using normal, conversational language, with follow up questions to get extra information. Compared to Google Now and Siri, Cortana offers far more customization and privacy controls. But Google Now still wins on providing the information you're looking for in the most easy to glean manner. For me, Siri still wins on convenience. Too often Cortana resorted to Bing search results when I felt like there could have been some sort of Card-like quick answer for my question. Cortana also had trouble discerning my voice in situations where there was a significant amount of background noise, like in the car, or at a Starbucks. In the car, I tried asking if there was traffic on my route, and my question was misheard as a request to send a Facebook contact a message. Cortana is in beta though, so hopefully she'll get better at her job over time.
Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
View the gallery in full screen to read more about our favorite Windows Phone 8.1 features.
With each version of Windows Phone, Microsoft's mobile OS gets better and better. The 8.1 update is no exception. This latest upgrade brings convenience and productivity features that finally make the mobile OS competitive with its older, more experienced rivals, iOS and Android. Considering it's been over three and a half years since Microsoft's serious push into the smartphone space with Windows Phone 7, it's about time.
But it would be a disservice to imply that the new features in Windows Phone 8.1 are merely 'me too' additions. As the mobile OS has evolved, it's continued to develop a personality of its own. A drastically different UI and home screen, as well as a true focus on personalization, means Windows Phone 8.1 does a lot of things, and does them with a unique flair all its own.
We've been playing around with a Nokia Lumia Icon loaded up with the developer preview of Windows Phone 8.1 for the past few weeks. Rather than review pre-release software, which will continue to change over the next few weeks, we've decided to highlight some of 8.1′s more notable features and explain how they work.
No comments:
Post a Comment