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Nokia's Lumia Black update coming to your phone now

The update brings app folders and a new glance screen to most Lumia devices, starting today.

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Sarah Mitroff is a Managing Editor for CNET, overseeing our health, fitness and wellness section. Throughout her career, she's written about mobile tech, consumer tech, business and startups for Wired, MacWorld, PCWorld, and VentureBeat.
Expertise Tech, Health, Lifestyle
Sarah Mitroff
2 min read
Nokia's Lumia Black update adds app folders to your Windows Phone homescreen. Nokia

Nokia today started its worldwide roll out of its Lumia Black update, which brings a few noticeable new features to Lumia phones. The news was announced both on Microsoft's Windows Phone blog, and Nokia's blog.

Lumia Black is a firmware update that tweaks a few features of the Windows Phone operating system and adds new apps that launched with Nokia's Lumia 1520 phablet in 2013.

There are seven major changes in this update, but two of the most eye-catching are the home-screen folders and a new glance screen. On your Windows Phone's home screen, you can now group apps together into a folder, much like you can do in iOS and Android. In fact, the design looks very similar to iOS because it shows a small grid of app icons to note which apps you placed in the folder.

The glance screen gets a design update and adds more icons. This screen shows up on your phone when you lock your home screen and shows you the time, date, and new notifications. With the update, you can now add up to five apps of your choosing to the screen to see notifications from your e-mail, calendar, text messages, and more.

Other features of Lumia Black include:

  • Bluetooth LE: You can sync your phone with low-energy Bluetooth device, such as fitness trackers.
  • Nokia Refocus: An app that changes the focus on photos for different effects.
  • Nokia Beamer: This sends photos, documents, and more to any HTML5-enabled screen.
  • Nokia Storyteller: This app organizes your photos into collections based on date and location.
  • Nokia Camera: Combines Nokia's two camera apps, Smart Camera and Pro Camera into one app.

The Lumia 1020 was the first phone to get the update in December 2013, followed by the Lumia 925, and now its rolling out to most Lumia devices.

Your phone should receive Black in the coming weeks, but you can also manually check for the update in your phone's settings menu.