Rumors are that Microsoft is preparing to ship Windows Phone 8.1. The new OS, which will apparently be detailed at the company’s BUILD conference in April, will finally add a notification center as well as a Siri-like personal assistant.
Tom Warren from The Verge state that the new notification center will have two views. A “short swipe” from the top will reveal settings and a “long swipe” will reveal a full notification history. The addition of a notification center is long overdue, if not exactly surprising. Last year it came out that what seemed like a huge product oversight in Windows Phone 8 was in fact intentionally left out because Microsoft “ran out of time.”
It is also said that current betas of Windows 8.1 have a built-in personal assistant. Previous rumors suggest that this voice assistant will sound like Cortana, the AI character from Halo. There are also more missing features like the ability to separately control the volume of media playback and your ringtone.
If this is true, the new additions to Windows Phone 8 amount to some significant catch up with the much better Android and iOS alternatives. Unfortunately, they’re pretty late fixes for the glaring absences in the existing Windows Phone product. It seems like we’ll have to wait until BUILD to find out if Microsoft has any get ahead features in waiting.
Thank you Gizmodo for providing us with this information
If true (which I believe) it’ll be good. I like Win 8 on mobile devices. Pity I don’t feel the same about the desktop version