It's also easy to get to the full settings menu, thanks to a small button at the top of the Action Center. Below the settings, you'll see all of your notifications from your apps, such as text messages, missed calls, and new emails.
You can swipe away each app's notifications individually, or clear all of them at once if you want. Given that Android had this feature from the start and iOS adopted a notification menu in with the release of iOS 5, it's surprising that it took Windows Phone this long to add such a useful feature. Of all the additions in 8. Gesture typing, another feature that Android has had for several years, has made its way to Windows Phone in 8. The stock keyboard that comes with Windows Phone now lets you swipe your finger around the keyboard to type.
It's faster than pecking the keys and just about as accurate. You just place your finger on the first letter in the word you want to type and then drag your finger to the other letters.
You don't have to be completely accurate, because the keyboard guesses what you want and shows predictions as you swipe, which means you can swipe quickly to type. However, if I was too sloppy with my swiping, I'd get a lot of misspellings. In my experience, using Swiftkey's Flow gesture typing for about a year, the Windows Phone gesture typing is just slightly less accurate.
Your phone can now automatically connect to open public wireless networks with the help of Wi-Fi Sense. This feature is tucked away in Wi-Fi settings app, and will passively agree to the terms of service that most public Wi-Fi hotspots ask you accept before you can connect on your behalf. You can also enter in other common details that networks ask from you, including your email and phone number. Wi-Fi Sense also allows you to share private wireless networks with your friends, without needing to give them a password.
You can share the network with your Outlook contacts, Facebook friends, and Skype contacts, but they'll only be able to connect to the network you share if they have a Windows Phone and also use Wi-Fi Sense. The newest version of Microsoft's mobile browser, Internet Explorer 11, makes its debut in 8. It gets just a few new features in the update, most notably Reading Mode and InPrivate browsing.
Reading Mode strips out ads and other design features on a webpage so that you can read with fewer distractions. InPrivate browsing is similar to Chrome's Incognito mode and Firefox's private browsing, in that it won't track your browsing history or cookies while you move around the Internet.
Another interesting addition to IE 11 is that you can now pin websites to your Start screen. The live tile shows the most recently published articles and headlines from that website, which is particularly helpful on news sites.
The downside here is that if you tap the live tile when it is showing a particular headline you want to read, IE11 will only open to the website's homepage, not that particular article. Windows 8. On top of that, SkyDrive users are given more flexibility in how compressed their photos are when they're uploaded -- pics are uploaded in "good quality" by default, but you can change the settings so your shots will be pushed to the cloud in full res "best quality" as long as you're connected to a hotspot.
You can also use NFC once again to your advantage by sharing your pictures and videos with others. As for the Photos Hub, the panels are all the same; the galleries, however, now come with a much-needed multi-select button so you can delete, share, save or star more than one at a time.
We already know the Zune brand is yesterday's news , but it seems as though Windows Phone is doing everything it possibly can to place itself as far away from the old brand as possible. Perhaps the best new feature is the phone's deep integration with the cloud. Purchases you make within the Music Store will automatically be stored there so that you can listen to these songs on all of your Microsoft-branded devices i.
Every song or video associated with your Microsoft account will show up in your collection, and you can choose to stream them or download them so that you can listen later. Playlists receive the same treatment. This feature is supposed to let you stay up to date on the latest news connected to that artist by showing Twitter feeds, news feeds and images related to them. As of this writing, Microsoft has not enabled the feature; we've been told to expect it sometime soon after launch.
If there's one thing that Microsoft can't deny, it's the fact that the gaming experience was lacking on Windows Phone 7, despite the company's efforts to market its Games Hub in connection with Xbox Live. Fortunately, the folks in Redmond seem to have realized that this needed to change in order for WP8 to gain more momentum -- when most of the top games are going straight to iOS and Android, Windows Phone has struggled to attract popular titles like Words with Friends until now.
That's definitely a cause for concern. Of course, games don't a good OS make, but it's one of the factors that many people take into consideration when looking for a new smartphone. With that in mind, let's look at how Microsoft is addressing this issue.
First, it hopes that its integration with Windows 8 and use of native code will attract more big-name console developers that weren't previously willing to drain unnecessary resources into something like this.
Adding the extra support will theoretically entice devs because it should be easy to port Windows titles over to the mobile OS and vice versa. Office :-It also included Microsoft office using which we can edit and read documents, Spreadsheets and presentations.
Batter Saver :-Battery saver smartly conserves battery by suspending unwanted applications and turning off services. It turns on automatically when the battery level is critical. Though the OS scans smartly and displays the files accordingly in the proper apps file manager is a necessity.
Windows Store :-Windows phone store lacks some popular apps and this is the main concern of the OS. On December 14 , Google announced that it would drop Exchange support and the date is now extended to July 31 st. If it happens the OS will face a major tragedy as majority of the users depends Google. Cloud based services: — The OS is moreover cloud based as the backup and other stuff goes to cloud services like SkyDrive.
Without a data connection the OS loses its attraction. Core multitasking: -Core multi-tasking is absent. The apps move into a suspended state when we switch to another app and resumes only when we return back. Microsoft explains this as to prevent unwanted battery power consumption and virus attacks. Power user :-The user does not get a power user experience as in android.
User cannot customize more in the OS. In start screen it is limited only to the resizing and color of tiles. Before, there was a gutter down the right side and an arrow to tell you where to find the apps list. Now, it's tiles everywhere. Another update, though not one you'll see directly on screen, are the chassis requirements.
These are what determine screen resolutions, compatibility with multi-core processors and so on. These mean the hardware can be much more capable, with some early Windows Phone 8 handsets, like the Nokia Lumia and HTC 8X having screens that are higher-resolution than the iPhone 5 's Retina display. There are improvements to lots of core features on Windows Phone 8. The lock screen, for instance, now gives you a range of photos to see when you turn on and there is a wider range of apps which can provide notifications to the lock screen, too.
For emails you can choose between black and white inboxes. The new black inbox has white text on a black background. If this sounds a rather petty upgrade, it pays dividends if you have an AMOLED screen which, unlike regular LCD displays, uses more power for brighter, ie whiter, screen images.
Kids Corner is a new parental control feature which allows children to access the apps, music and video you've selected for them. They flick left from the lock screen rather than up. A password screen stops them from getting full access to your phone and if they try to unlock it, the phone won't automatically wipe its data after a series of wrong password inputs. Which is a relief. There's also Wallet, which is a place to find loyalty cards, boarding passes and more — a bit like Passbook on iPhone — and which will work with NFC as a payment option.
But it has to wait for the credit card companies and other providers to catch up. Maps have been given greater usability by being downloadable in advance so you're not racking up data charges when abroad.
0コメント