Why You Can Trust CNET Windows Phone 8.1 review: Windows Phone is better than ever, but still falls short on app selection
Microsoft's mobile operating system revs up in 8.1 with the addition of voice assistant Cortana and a notification center.
The latest version of Windows Phone, version number 8.1, brings a slew of new features to Microsoft's smartphone operating system. We get home screen wallpapers, an extra column of live tiles, a notification center, and, the star of the show, voice assistant Cortana, which is just like Siri and Google Now.
Windows Phone 8.1
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
More than just a handful of upgrades, Windows Phone 8.1 elevates the entire operating system to a higher level, where it can better compete against iOS and Android. If you're a first-time smartphone buyer, Windows Phone is looking better as one of your choices because it's very user-friendly. That said, it still has some way to go before it will lure anyone away from iOS and Android, because it still cannot deliver as robust as an app store as its rivals nor can it bring as many features, like customization or file management.
Windows Phone 8.1 will roll out to devices over the next few months. Any Windows Phone currently running version 8 of the operating system will get the update. Brand-new devices will launch with it in late April and early May.
Windows Phone 8.1 brings a modern design, notifications, and Cortana (pictures)
See all photos
From 8 to 8.1
Version 8.1 is the fourth generation of the Windows Phone OS, and it replaces Windows Phone 8. That version was updated in October 2013 with Windows Phone 8 Update 3, which set the stage for many of the features in 8.1 by adding a new row of live tiles to the home screen on larger phones, task-switching, and a hands-free driving mode.
Meet Cortana
The most interesting addition to 8.1 is Cortana. Like Siri, Cortana is a female voice assistant who can help you search the Web using Bing, set reminders, get directions, create new calendar events, call or text your contacts, verbally jot down notes, and play music on your phone, to name a few.
You do all of this by by tapping the search key on your phone to open Cortana, and then either type in what you need or tap the microphone to speak it. Or, you can simply hold down the search key until Cortana opens and start talking immediately.
Like Siri and Google Now, you can ask Cortana questions and get answers. For general questions, such as "Who's the CEO of Microsoft?" or "What's the capital of Australia?" Cortana will speak the answer back to you, if she has it. Otherwise, like Google Now and Siri, you'll just get a list of search results.
For questions with more detailed answers, including "What's the weather like in London?" and "How did the San Francisco Giants do last night?" Cortana will not only speak the answer, but also show you a page with helpful information, such as a weekly forecast or stats from your favorite team's most recent game.
Instead of asking a question, you can just run a basic Bing search by typing in or speaking a few keywords (think "chocolate chip cookie recipes"), and you'll only get a list of search results -- Cortana won't talk to you.
You can also talk back and forth with Cortana to complete a more complex task, such as setting a reminder or creating a new calendar event. You can start by saying "new event" and Cortana will ask you questions to get all the details it needs on time, location, and description.
Beyond voice commands and search, Cortana also shows you a dashboard of information, called Notebook, it thinks you want to see, such as weather conditions and news stories. Open the app, and swipe down to see your personalized Notebook, which is broken into sections for weather, traffic, news, sports, and more. You can manually program each section in the settings menu.
The differences between Cortana, Google Now, and Siri is in the details. While all three services can set reminders, create new calendar events, and take notes, Cortana has a few extra tricks. One of them is setting a reminder for the next time you call one of your contacts. That reminder will show up on the call screen below the person's name. Cortana can also control your phone's quiet hours, when notifications and your ringer are turned off.
Microsoft (and voice actress Jen Taylor) gave Cortana a strong dose of personality, and she's far more fun to talk to than Google Now's nameless assistant. She's also more witty than Siri. By that I mean, when I asked Siri, "Do you love me?" her response was, "I don't know." Asking Cortana the same question, I got, "There's certainly a spark," and another time she said, "Y'know, I'm not really ready for love. I'm still working through serenity and apprehension." If I ask Google Now the same question, it will heartlessly just search Google.
So far, my biggest gripe about Cortana is the design. When you open it, there's a large circle in the middle of the screen that looks like where you would tap to start talking. Instead, you tap the tiny microphone in the corner, which is hard to press without looking at your phone. You also cannot start voice search with a verbal command, like you can with Google Now, which means Cortana is not completely hands-free. You can, however, just hold down the search hot key on your phone to launch voice search, which is helpful.
Cortana is still in beta, that means some features don't yet work as advertised and there are a few bugs. For instance, there are some issues with setting reminders, as Cortana sent me into a loop of asking what I wanted to be reminded and where over and over. Microsoft says Cortana will continue to learn how humans talk and interact with her, so that the natural language processing gets smarter and you have an easier time using the feature. Keeping in mind that Cortana is still being developed, I think the feature works remarkably well.
Aesthetic enhancements
Just glancing at the Start screen, you'll see a difference in 8.1. There's now an extra column of Live Tiles, so you can fit more of them on the screen, not matter your screen size. In previous versions of the OS, you only got that extra column if you had a large phone with a 6-inch and bigger screen.
To accomplish this, the live tiles have shrunk down to fit, but the size will vary slightly based on your phone's screen size. You can now have three large size tiles side by side, one wide tile and one large tile side by side, or six small tiles in one row. Compared to Windows Phone 8, the Start screen now looks more modern, with less wasted space.
Taking some inspiration from Android and iOS, you can also now set a wallpaper on your Start screen to add some personality your phone. Just like before, there's still a white or black space between the tiles (depending on the theme you choose), but instead of a solid color background on each tile, you'll see a piece of the larger wallpaper image. You can pick from several stock images from Microsoft or choose your own photos.
The wallpaper shows up in the background of your live tiles and scrolls as you swipe up and down on the start screen. However, you'll only see the image you pick in certain live tiles, mostly the pre-installed system apps such as the phone dialer, messaging app, Outlook, and Internet Explorer. Any apps where the developer creates a specific live tile design, such as Office or Pandora, won't show the wallpaper.
A place for your notifications
Finally, Windows Phone gets a place to organize all of your notifications. When you received a new message or email in earlier iterations of the operating system, you'd see a small banner at the top of your screen that would disappear in a few seconds. There was no way to recall that information once the banner was gone.
Now, you can swipe down from the top if your screen to reveal Action Center, a brand-new menu that gives you quick access to common settings and all of your notifications. The design is very similar to the notification drawer you see on most Android phones.
At the top, there's a row of customizable control toggles that switch on or off common settings, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and brightness. You can change those options in the settings menu, but you're limited to four total toggles (though the Nokia Lumia 1520 has five toggles). I really like this feature, because it puts all the most common settings within easy reach. 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. Similar to the Notification Center in iOS, you can customize which apps' notifications show up in Action Center.
Given that Android had this feature from the start and iOS adopted a notification menu in 2011 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 8.1, I believe Action Center is the most useful.
Swipe to type
Gesture typing, another feature that Android has had for several years, has made its way to Windows Phone in 8.1. 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.
What can you sense?
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.
Internet Explorer 11
The newest version of Microsoft's mobile browser, Internet Explorer 11, makes its debut in 8.1. 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.
A handful of extras
Windows Phone 8.1 also adds a bunch of smaller features that aren't as noticeable, but are still useful.
Additional features added to Windows Phone 8.1 include:
- Two separate volume controls: one for ringer and notifications, one for media and apps.
- A redesigned calendar app.
- A new version of Skype.
- VPN for secure browsing.
- S/MIME support for encrypted emails.
Windows Phone versus iOS and Android
Windows 8.1 absolutely makes Microsoft's OS better and more capable of competing with Android and iOS. However, it also shows Microsoft is still late to the party with the top features that smartphone users have come to expect on their phones, including a notification center and a voice assistant.
What's more, while 8.1 finally delivers to Windows Phone most of the features that you'll get with the other mobile operating systems, it's still lacking the deep customization options from Android and the attention to detail and easy approachability of iOS.
But those are mere quibbles compared to the app deficit. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, the Windows Phone app store is still missing titles that Google Play and the Apple App Store have had for years. Even though in the six months leading up to 8.1, Windows Phone got Instagram , Vine , and Waze, many of those apps aren't as full-featured as their iOS and Android versions.
Meanwhile, other must-have apps are cobbled together by third-party developers -- or worse. You'll find a decent Dropbox app, but it was cooked up by a developer named ly2314. Want a dedicated Gmail app? You'll need to sort through this list of spammy apps -- with no official Google version to be found.
It's not all bad news though. Windows Phone remains a great choice for first-time smartphone buyers because it's both easy to use and has enough customization options without being overwhelming. And frankly, more than a few excellent smartphones run it.
Looking at the big picture of design, features, ease of use, and app selection, Windows Phone still hasn't reached the point where it's going to lure away those who already own an iPhone or Android phone, but it's edging closer.