1. go to settings then select language (if you have English US make sure it is listed at the top of the list, you need to long press it and choose move up if it is at the bottom, if you only have one language then you don't need to bother moving it, if you don;t have English US then select add languages and choose English US).. if it doesn't work you may need to delete the English US and add it again selecting add languages you will be asked if you want to install the language just say install or ok, also it should look something like this (RESTART PHONE)
English (United States)
Phone Language: enabled
Regional format: enabled
Speech: enabled
Keyboard: english
2. go to settings and then select region and change country/region to United States and you must also set regional format to United States (RESTART PHONE)
3. go to settings and then select speech and then select speech language and change to English United States (RESTART IF NEEDED)
then restart the phone and Cortana should be working great with the search button
Got cortana working but it does not like my northern accent.
Yep, my experience was the same - it didn't understand me very well (and certainly less well than the standard WP speech recognition when UK English is selected). So it's all well and good changing the settings to get Cortana here early, but ultimately it's not going to work very well.
On update 2 at the moment, I think Cortana is US only is it not?
Cortana will launch in the U.S. first as a “beta,” and then will launch in the US, the U.K. and China in the second half of 2014 with other countries to follow afterwards into 2015
I was wondering is there an app to check how much ram you have left?
I know how to check how much storage is left but not ram.
Not as far as I know but you don't need to, the OS manages RAM as needed.
In 8.0 they had fixed memory (minimum?) allocations of 150MB per app and in 8.1 they are moving to dynamic allocation which improves things for 512MB devices.
You can always force-close apps if they are hanging or crashing otherwise you should leave the OS to do its thing around memory allocation.
Not as far as I know but you don't need to, the OS manages RAM as needed.
In 8.0 they had fixed memory (minimum?) allocations of 150MB per app and in 8.1 they are moving to dynamic allocation which improves things for 512MB devices.
You can always force-close apps if they are hanging or crashing otherwise you should leave the OS to do its thing around memory allocation.
Thanks for the reply
All it was I was adding a load of apps and all of a sudden i got a message come up...Not enough resource
so i was wondering if my Ram had run out or was very low
I noticed one glitch with my L1520. Sometimes I cannot wake up the phone/turn on the display by pressing the on/off switch. I have to press the camera button and then the phone wakes up immediately.
I've got a Lumia 1020, 925 and 1520 - and decided to do the 925 as I didn't want to mess up my 1020 with beta software.. and the 1520 I rarely use as it's just too big!
But once I installed it, added a nice wallpaper, changed to add more tiles, and set everything else up, I realised that my 1020 was suddenly unusable!!
I looked at it and those big single colour tiles and thought 'this is is hideous'!!
So now I've done the 1020 too, and to hell with the bugs, and I think it might actually make me want to play with the 1520 again too!
Just the permanently on status bar is a MASSIVE improvement and I can't believe it was never an option at least before. That and pull down notifications has transformed WP, and a few more tweaks could make it something that a hardcore Android user could actually imagine being able to migrate to.
I upgraded a 925 that i had lying around at work and have to say I love it. The whole OS has been transformed and looks beautiful with a scrolling background. Action centre was a much need addition although it would have been nice to be able to add more then four toggles.
The status bar being there permanently is a huge plus that used to drive me nuts when a 920 was my main handset, the WiFi icon actually shows your signal strength and is no longer static. Its a shame you still have to swipe down to see what type of data connection you have and what the percentage is on your battery.
They still need to do a lot of work in the settings menu it is a mess, whenever I need s setting I continually scroll up and down trying to find it, this is one area where they need to have icons or at least have separate sections to make it easier to find things.
Love the swipe style keyboard that is how I enter text on my S4 and it is nice to see WP8 get something similar. I really hope they port this to their tablets.
Like the fact that a back up and restore now does app data and restores your start screen configuration. I reset my 920 so many times manually updating firmware that I got fed up with rearranging my start screen.
The OS has come on leaps and bounds I really liked it in my first try and still dig it, I just can't make it my main phone due to the lack of apps. Still no HSBC banking app, no HulloMail, Virgin media Tivo, FB messenger is nowhere near as good as the Andorid version and I am not a gamer but every now and then a new one grabs my attention and it is a shame that some simply never come to Wp8.
Great update and still tempted to by a cheap handset to use as a back up device.
I feel the exact same way. It's brilliant on so many levels, but then lacks certain things that, to me, are deal breakers.
Even some of the official apps are inferior to their iOS/Android counterparts, but I get the feeling that 8.1 will reinvigorate developers and many problems can be solved. More enhanced tiles, which will one day become every bit as advanced as Android widgets, would be a point when I could probably feel comfortable to only go out with a Windows Phone in my pocket.
This should also, in turn, encourage more and more WP development as it inevitably gains marketshare - and through sales of higher end models than the Lumia 520 which is probably the bulk of WP users these days.
Plus, the settings menu is a joke isn't it? It's ridiculously long and hard to remember where everything is as you flick up and down. It has to have clearly defined sections like you'd expect on any phone or computer. And more options for the status bar would be a must, although it's not too bad that a quick pull down shows the network status (3G, 4G etc) if you're connected via Wi-Fi.
The Wi-Fi toggle is weird. To turn on is a simple click, to turn off the click goes to Wi-Fi settings where you can turn it off. I can see why they did it (so you can use it to change connection) but it should have been like Android where you can tap or tap and hold to toggle or go into settings.
I agree with all the above. I did try the background thing and it was pretty but I went back to solid colour accent for visibility purposes - everything is just more glanceable although less pretty.
^^^ if you use a background with one dominant colour and some structure it's both pretty and readable. I use the stock orange/yellow one on my yellow L1520 and it's pretty pretty
Yeah, the patterns on the sample wallpapers are probably always going to be better than your own personal photos (e.g. of people) - given that so much of the image may not be visible depending on your layout.
I think it adds a totally new dimension though, and it's fun to experiment.
That sounds like something a third party app should be able to do, but this does mean Microsoft having to open up the OS a little.
I know MS wants to protect its own interests, but the way forward is to actually allow people to install their own keyboards, for Google to produce Chrome browser (and have it set as the default) and give consumers a choice.
If MS can offer better apps and services than Google, people will use them. As it stands, people won't likely move until they have the freedom.
I've always wished that users could customise the phone more than now. The limited choice of accent colours was really, really limited. Sure, native Android devices don't allow that much customisation - but many other phones do, from HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony etc.
People have always liked customising their devices. Even feature phones usually allowed you to change loads of elements.
Comments
She is still in America where she lives. We might get a visit from her later in the year.
8.1 is nice. The wall papers are cool. IE is a bit better.I need to have a play around to see how much has changed. Oh i swiped this reply.
1. go to settings then select language (if you have English US make sure it is listed at the top of the list, you need to long press it and choose move up if it is at the bottom, if you only have one language then you don't need to bother moving it, if you don;t have English US then select add languages and choose English US).. if it doesn't work you may need to delete the English US and add it again selecting add languages you will be asked if you want to install the language just say install or ok, also it should look something like this (RESTART PHONE)
English (United States)
Phone Language: enabled
Regional format: enabled
Speech: enabled
Keyboard: english
2. go to settings and then select region and change country/region to United States and you must also set regional format to United States (RESTART PHONE)
3. go to settings and then select speech and then select speech language and change to English United States (RESTART IF NEEDED)
then restart the phone and Cortana should be working great with the search button
Yep, my experience was the same - it didn't understand me very well (and certainly less well than the standard WP speech recognition when UK English is selected). So it's all well and good changing the settings to get Cortana here early, but ultimately it's not going to work very well.
Cortana will launch in the U.S. first as a “beta,” and then will launch in the US, the U.K. and China in the second half of 2014 with other countries to follow afterwards into 2015
Wallpapers are nice. I wasn't sure when I saw it in videos, but when you get the right picture and rearrange the transparent tiles it's rather nice.
Not had a problem with her yet (East Midland accent). She understands me a lot better than what Siri did when I had an iPhone 4s.
I was wondering is there an app to check how much ram you have left?
I know how to check how much storage is left but not ram.
Not as far as I know but you don't need to, the OS manages RAM as needed.
In 8.0 they had fixed memory (minimum?) allocations of 150MB per app and in 8.1 they are moving to dynamic allocation which improves things for 512MB devices.
You can always force-close apps if they are hanging or crashing otherwise you should leave the OS to do its thing around memory allocation.
Thanks for the reply
All it was I was adding a load of apps and all of a sudden i got a message come up...Not enough resource
so i was wondering if my Ram had run out or was very low
I have the Niokia Lumia 925 its got 1G of Ram.
If it doesn't is there a default app that plays local videos?
I just checked, the Video app shows my videos from SD card as private. I could play a few I tried without problem.
Thanks for the confirmation
I've got a Lumia 1020, 925 and 1520 - and decided to do the 925 as I didn't want to mess up my 1020 with beta software.. and the 1520 I rarely use as it's just too big!
But once I installed it, added a nice wallpaper, changed to add more tiles, and set everything else up, I realised that my 1020 was suddenly unusable!!
I looked at it and those big single colour tiles and thought 'this is is hideous'!!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kp9qth7cni9fduf/1020v925.jpg
So now I've done the 1020 too, and to hell with the bugs, and I think it might actually make me want to play with the 1520 again too!
Just the permanently on status bar is a MASSIVE improvement and I can't believe it was never an option at least before. That and pull down notifications has transformed WP, and a few more tweaks could make it something that a hardcore Android user could actually imagine being able to migrate to.
The status bar being there permanently is a huge plus that used to drive me nuts when a 920 was my main handset, the WiFi icon actually shows your signal strength and is no longer static. Its a shame you still have to swipe down to see what type of data connection you have and what the percentage is on your battery.
They still need to do a lot of work in the settings menu it is a mess, whenever I need s setting I continually scroll up and down trying to find it, this is one area where they need to have icons or at least have separate sections to make it easier to find things.
Love the swipe style keyboard that is how I enter text on my S4 and it is nice to see WP8 get something similar. I really hope they port this to their tablets.
Like the fact that a back up and restore now does app data and restores your start screen configuration. I reset my 920 so many times manually updating firmware that I got fed up with rearranging my start screen.
The OS has come on leaps and bounds I really liked it in my first try and still dig it, I just can't make it my main phone due to the lack of apps. Still no HSBC banking app, no HulloMail, Virgin media Tivo, FB messenger is nowhere near as good as the Andorid version and I am not a gamer but every now and then a new one grabs my attention and it is a shame that some simply never come to Wp8.
Great update and still tempted to by a cheap handset to use as a back up device.
Even some of the official apps are inferior to their iOS/Android counterparts, but I get the feeling that 8.1 will reinvigorate developers and many problems can be solved. More enhanced tiles, which will one day become every bit as advanced as Android widgets, would be a point when I could probably feel comfortable to only go out with a Windows Phone in my pocket.
This should also, in turn, encourage more and more WP development as it inevitably gains marketshare - and through sales of higher end models than the Lumia 520 which is probably the bulk of WP users these days.
Plus, the settings menu is a joke isn't it? It's ridiculously long and hard to remember where everything is as you flick up and down. It has to have clearly defined sections like you'd expect on any phone or computer. And more options for the status bar would be a must, although it's not too bad that a quick pull down shows the network status (3G, 4G etc) if you're connected via Wi-Fi.
The Wi-Fi toggle is weird. To turn on is a simple click, to turn off the click goes to Wi-Fi settings where you can turn it off. I can see why they did it (so you can use it to change connection) but it should have been like Android where you can tap or tap and hold to toggle or go into settings.
I think it adds a totally new dimension though, and it's fun to experiment.
(Except here they would focus on wallpapers that work underneath the tiles).
I know MS wants to protect its own interests, but the way forward is to actually allow people to install their own keyboards, for Google to produce Chrome browser (and have it set as the default) and give consumers a choice.
If MS can offer better apps and services than Google, people will use them. As it stands, people won't likely move until they have the freedom.
I've always wished that users could customise the phone more than now. The limited choice of accent colours was really, really limited. Sure, native Android devices don't allow that much customisation - but many other phones do, from HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony etc.
People have always liked customising their devices. Even feature phones usually allowed you to change loads of elements.