Cortana Will Arrive In India On The Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 By Next Week

Microsoft’s personal digital assistant Cortana will finally be making its way to India on the Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1. Joe Belfiore, the corporate vice president and manager for Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft said on the Windows Phone blog that people in the country have shown a lot of enthusiasm for Cortana and keeping this in mind they shall be including Cortana in the alpha form in the first update for Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview users. Cortana however will not be speaking in an Indian accent because users will have access to either the US or the UK version of Cortana. While developer preview users can expect the update by the next week, rest of us will have to wait for a couple of months. Up until now Cortana could only be accessed in India by changing the region and language settings of the phone. Users in Canada and Australia will also be allowed to Cortana as an opt-in feature.

The Chinese however are receiving an improved version of Cortana known as Xiao Na. This version of Cortana will have a different visual appearance, animations and sounds. The app gives its users specialised suggestions such as air quality information, driving restrictions and is able to track local celebrities and TV shows. The UK version of Cortana speaks in the regional accent and will be rolled out on the beta form.


Microsoft has added Live Folders to the operating system’s start menu. Previously, users had to use the App Folder option to keep all their apps in one tile. This however prevented any Live Tile updates from the apps. With the Live Folders a user can see all the updates even when the apps are in a folder.


Messaging on a Windows Phone smartphone was rather tricky because it did not allow users to select and delete specific messages. This problem has been solved with the new update. The Store app Live Tile is able to show information regarding a new app and updates it every six hours. Other improvements include an updated Xbox Music app, Apps Corner and the ability to create a virtual private network.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#