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windows 10 features on phones
Windows 10 features for phoneinclude full-size art for the Start screen, an inproved Action Center, interactive notifications, better speech-to-text and an improved Photos app. Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for smartphones, tablets and PCs. As you would expect selected Lumia handsets currently running Windows Phone 8 are included.
Cortana
Microsoft's digital assistant called Cortana is a little different on the Technical Preview. In fact, it's limited to US-only and English-only and some of existing features available via Windows Phone 8.1 aren't yet enabled in the new codebase.
Eventually, Cortana will be 'more powerful and capable' with more skills and language support. We're hoping dictation will be opened up to more uses such as email. The blue circle which represents Cortana on the screen will also change depending on what you ask and different situations – the aim being to give it 'personality'.
Improved Action Center and Interactive Notifications
We were glad of the arrival of the Action Center on Windows Phone 8 and Microsoft has made some nice improvements in Windows 10 for phones.
It's a little buggy on our Technical Preview but there are more Quick Actions available so when you pull the bar down from the top of the screen you see the usual set of four but there's a new expand button which shows eight additional ones when clicked.
Windows 10 for phones preview: App updates
Outlook/Mail
Outlook is one of the first Universal Apps, meaning it will run across PC, laptop, phone and tablet with the same experience and synchronise everything seamlessly. As long as you're connected to the internet in one way or another it means all the information will be updated instantly. You could, for example, start replying to an email on your laptop then finish it on your phone while you're on the go. In general this will be the same for any Universal App.
As you'd expect, Office is a part of Windows 10 on phones just like it was in Windows Phone 8. When it arrives, Word will be part of Outlook meaning you can format your emails nicely, even on a phone, and add things like tables. Swiping left and right on messages deletes or proritises them.
There's full Gmail support as well as other webmail service across phones, tablets and PCs. In fact, there's much better support for all webmail services, so you don't have to be an Outlook user with an outlook address to benefit.
Office
Although they are not included in the Technical Preview which we're running, Microsoft has confirmed its Office team has built new features into new universal apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
They are optimised for touch-based input and will include the Office Ribbon which desktop users have become familiar with. Your recent documents list will also be available across all your Windows 10 devices.
Calendar
Along with some others, Calendar will be a Universal app as you might expect and it will be integrated into Outlook, too. It's not part of the Technical Preview build but the app will synchronise across all your Windows 10 devices so it doesn't matter which one you enter an event on, it will show up everywhere.
One view in the Calendar app will give you an over view of the week, indicating how busy easy day is with details of specific entries below in chronological order.
Photos
The updated Photos app is another Universal App and has been improved with better editing and management tools. It makes it easier to find the snap you're looking photo and give it a few tweaks before sharing. It can automatically enhance photos and remove duplicates too.
The usual apps menu sits to the right of the Start Screen and still shows all of your apps in alphabetical order. However, a new section will appear at the top called 'Recently Installed' showing you recently installed apps which is quite handy.
New Settings menu
Long suffering Windows Phone users will be pleased to hear that the Settings menu has received a much needed overhaul. The existing one it split into 'system' and 'applications – not a bad thing in itself but the massive list of options on the former was extremely difficult to navigate with no apparent order or method.
The new Settings menu is divided into ten sections for things like system, personalisation, accounts and privacy. It makes much more sense and under each heading you can see what type of things you'll find there. What we'd like is the ability to search the entire menu like you can do with the apps so hopefully this will be added for the final build.
Project Spartan is Microsoft's new web browser and will eventually replace Internet Explorer although that it what remains in the build currently. The new browser is design for the modern web and has a new look and feel.
New features include the ability to annotate articles before sharing them. There's also a customisable reading mode which supports PDFs and a reading list which will show up on all your Windows devices. Last but not least is the Cortana integration which will help you find things on the web easier and faster.
Windows 10 for phones preview: User interface changes
Many of the changes with are apparent in the Technical Preview of Windows 10 for phones relate to the user interface. As mentioned already, it's not a massive departure compared to Windows Phone 8 so existing users will have no problems finding their way around but will benefit from the tweaks and improvements listed below.
New tile art
Since smartphones are personal Microsoft has made various improvements to the Start Screen on phones to make it more customisable. With Windows 10 for phones you can select an image which will appear full-screen behind the tiles and the apps menu. Tiles which don't have a solid colour go semi-transparent so you can see the image behind.
New keyboard with joystick
The keyboard is largely the same in Windows 10 for phones compared to Windows Phone 8 but there's a new feature which you might not even spot at first.
If you remember the way old laptops (and some still) had a tiny joystick in the middle of the keyboard for moving the cursor – often called a nipple – well that's exactly what Microsoft had added to Windows 10 for phones in a virtual way.
Maps
The current situation for mapping on Windows Phone 8 is somewhat confusing with both Maps and HERE Maps (developed by Nokia) onboard. Going forward things will be different in Windows 10 with a Maps Universal App.
The experience will be the same across all Windows 10 devices and Bing Maps will be leveraged for its search results, Streetside views 3D imagery and navigation features.
Messaging and Skype
There's a big change when it comes to messaging because Microsoft has decided to effectively combine phone calls, text messages and Skype (both messages and calls). There's a new dialer but Messages is the focus for Windows 10 on phones.
In a similar way to iMessage and Google Hangout, the Messages app will display all the content in one conversation thread view – whether it's a regular SMS message or from Skype. Users can also quickly exit the thread and call the person easily.
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