Starting today, the Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphone family will receive the Lumia Cyan software, the new Windows Phone 8.1 update and Lumia features upgrade that will make your Lumia an even more personal, fun and indispensable part of your life.
Windows Phone 8.1 is a must-have – those of us who have been running the developer preview thing know that quite well. The update will come to Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices over the coming weeks in Microsoft’s usual staggered rollout. I haven’t seen any information yet regarding non-Microsoft Windows Phone devices.
Worldwide release? lol I could only find one that is marked available on the Nokia website: Finland for the 925. A few for T-Mobile in the US marked Not Available and most everyone else marked as under testing.
Well at least we know it is on its way.
Title of this article gives a bit too much hope. 😉
Same here. Both 1020 and 1520 (and basically everything everywhere) is “under testing”.
8.1 is running very well and added so much goodness. If only the developer preview would allow me to get the entire Cyan update already. Continuous auto-focus is my main desire.
I love the 1020, that camera is amazing! I wish I could have afforded to buy it off contract, but I just couldn’t spend the money so I bought a 620 for like $50. It is a decent phone for low end.
I would be happy with the black update. My carrier took the black update from testing to not available. Hope they don’t do the same for the Cyan. It would have been nice if the firmware updates were included in dev preview. However, since they are separate updates I can understand why they don’t.
Here’s to hoping they release the update for my carrier and phone this time.
I think Black (8 Update 3) is a requirement for Cyan but I am not sure about that. However, if your carrier/provider blocked Black they will probably also block Cyan. Get your phone unlocked and all those problems go away
My understanding is that Cyan is all inclusive, but I could be wrong.
I don’t think they blocked it as such. It was in final testing when they announced 8.1, so perhaps they decided to skip it and go right to Cyan.
About getting it unlocked, I thought that just made it so you could use it with other carriers. Does it change the updates too? My carrier, can unlock it as I have met the requirements.
Thanks for the info.
Cyan is all inclusive indeed. They removed the requirement for Black as a prerequisite a while ago and I didn’t notice. I hope your explanation about why they skipped Black and would go straight to Cyan is right. But I would never expect an update from a carrier that didn’t provide the previous update.
When you have a carrierlocked phone you get (or don’t get) the update from your carrier. When you have an unlocked phone you get it directly from Microsoft and without and carrier customisations. I only buy unlocked phones and use tiny subscriptions or prepaid cards (much cheaper in The Netherlands) so I have never had to wait for any update
I sure hope it is the case that they just skipped it for time as AIO was in the process of being bought by AT&T and merged with Cricket.
Oh OK, cool. I am going to call to have my phone unlocked then, thanks.
This forum post aims to track the release in real time:
http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-8-1/293096-track-windows-…
So, apart from the US, we’re regarded as 2nd class citizens – this seems to be rolling out without Cortana. Particularly annoying in the UK as the language differences are obviously minimal.
Don’t these companies realise that treating us as second class citizens make us resent them, and increase the likelihood of changing platforms next time round.
Cortana is always included, but hidden if your region is not supported. Currently only the US is supported although other languages already work.
Cortana is not just voice recognition. It is also “local news, weather, sports, finances, etc”. Cortana isn’t as useful in the UK as in the US until they add the Premier League instead of the NBA
Poland here.
No Google search? No phone.
(But maybe that is just me. Others seam to value their cash more
Are these (Windows phones) popular in Europe or something? I know Nokia was big there, but here in the states I have never seen anyone using a Windows phone.
I’m sure they are around, and I know carriers have them, but I just haven’t really heard anything about them from normal (not advocate) people.
Apart from my own of course, I see at least one every time I’m out and about, and I live in a suburban town several miles outside of Atlanta I mostly see them used by teenagers, but also adults from time to time. When I don’t see them, I hear them; the default Windows Phone ringtones and alarms are unique, and just this past Sunday I heard one going off in a crowded room. I instinctively reached for my phone, thinking my alarm was going off.
I catch a lot of hell from my Android-using friends of course; “blaspemy” and “toy” are most often the good-natured insults they throw my way whenever I pull out my phone. But at least one friend has started liking his work-supplied Lumia more and more every day, and he’s otherwise a die-hard Android fan.
I’ve seen two in the wild. One co-worker who drinks windows flavored cool aid these days, and one random stranger who bought it for unknown reasons.
I received a 1020 as a christmas present from work
My wife choose the 1520 because of the amazing screen, speed, battery and great camera
We don’t see many other people using them, but I see other models occasionaly. I would say the 5% marketshare sounds about right.
They are much more popular in Europe than in the US where their market share has dropped and continues to do so.
No, they are much more popular in countries where you buy a phone.
In many countries you buy a subscription and receive a phone “for free”. In those countries the difference between a high-end phone and a mid-level phone is often negligible so high-end phones are very popular.
Nokia’s market share comes mostly from the lower end phones (although I prefer their higher end phones personally)
Example: A 1520 is cheaper than a iPhone 5 (all variations, even the 2 year old ones) but offers a much bigger AND better screen, camera, battery, more storage, more RAM when you buy them as a phone.
But when you buy them in a subscription the iPhones suddenly become “free” while it is actually difficult to find a subscription with a 1520.
I have one device with the 8.1 Developer Preview (DP) stream, and some of the showstopping bugs are still present even in the latest update. So I’m wondering how the final RTM release is different from the latest DP version.
Which showstopping bugs are you talking about?
8.1 went RTM about 3 months ago. The DP is the final version of 8.1. In the last 3 months several small updates have appeared (comparable to patch-tuesday hotfixes). 8.1 Update 1 is almost finished and should roll out to people who activated the DP
Cyan is 8.1 + Nokia Firmware. The Nokia firmware is not part of the DP
Showstopping bugs on a Nokia Icon:
1. Spotty Wi-Fi behavior; connections have to be manually reset in time intervals that range from an hour to just a few minutes.Sometimes it refuses to reconnect altogether unless you power cycle the unit.
2. When juggling between apps using location services the phone locks up almost without fail requiring a reboot.
3. The main tiles screen crashes randomly when the phone is locked, the phone will then proceed to eat battery like there is no tomorrow. If you catch this on time you may be able to reboot the unit before it drains the battery completely.
5. The phone tends to lock up if left overnight doing nothing but just charging, in fact the phone tends to lock up on long idle periods for apparently no reason.
4. It takes a few seconds for the phone to wake up from when the wake button is pressed. So during that time you don’t know if the phone is OK or if it had crashed again given the fore mentioned behaviors.
It is not HW issues, since I exchanged the phone already and the same behavior has surfaced with the 2 units. I have gotten so used to reboot a WP device by now, that I would recommend MS adds a dedicated reboot button. I have not been able to use the unit for more than 2 days without a power cycle.
Luckily I have other phones and this unit was more of a novelty, I tried to use it as my daily driver for a week but the urge to throw it against the wall in frustration was not worth it. This is Verizon’s WP flagship BTW, hopefully a firmware update may address some of these issues.
WP 8.1 on this device is such a subpar experience to be almost not funny. The camera is good though, so it has that going for it… which is nice.
Edited 2014-07-16 18:26 UTC
I have never seen an Icon in person (not available in Europe) but this sounds like a horrible experience. Give up on that combination of hardware and software and go back to 8 (where you didn’t have these issues I assume) until Verizon pushes out Cyan. This must be a Vendor/Model combination issue because these issues would NEVER survive any testing.
I expect that you have an app that is causing problems with 8.1. You should have a look in Battery Saver to see if some app is causing problems (often resulting in eating up battery)
I have only noticed one thing that was a problem with 8.1 (actually with IE11) and that was 1 specific website that worked before but now crashed (tweakers.net). That actually got fixed in one of the post-RTM fixes.
My wife noticed that putting apps on the SD-Card is possible but not all apps like it (and really, why would you do that?). Moving all other things (music/video/podcast, photos, downloads) to the sd-card works just fine.
My phone (1020) only ever reboots when I install OS-level updates (once per month or so). Same experience for my wife (1520) although she reboots sometimes because she is still making System-level changes (switching languages, regions, SD-card settings)
I got this device specifically to play with 8.1. So I’m not particularly interested in downgrading the device to an OS which is even more gimped (functionality wise).
Luckily I have other devices so I don’t have to depend on this one. But if this is MS’s best smart phone effort and runs like this on one of their flagships… count me unimpressed.
Oh well…
Edited 2014-07-17 17:18 UTC
You seem to be having just about every issue anyone has ever had with the 8.1 update…on 2 phones? That really makes me wonder if it is something in your settings or apps. Please don’t think this is normal behavior!
http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-81-review (done on the icon)
Maybe you should read a bit over here to see about your problems: http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-8-1-preview-developers/27…
I have already checked the forums. Loads of Icon users report similar issues… it’s consensus that the wi-fi functionality is basically borked on this model.
App wise, I’m mainly using the built in or Nokia apps. Switching between either maps/here maps/here drive or local scout is guaranteed to crash the device.
The main tile screen crashing is an OS issue, not an app issue. Since the crash has been repeated when no apps were running in the background (other than whatever state it is they are when updating live tiles, I guess).
All in all mine is a device pretty close to a stock install of 8.1. The buggy behavior was somewhat “tolerable” because I assumed the DP stream was still not finalized. But if you’re telling me this is the shipping version of the OS then, at least as far as the Icon is concerned, it’s not quite ready for prime time.
Edited 2014-07-17 21:14 UTC
The DP version is the RTM version, but since than several patches have come out (and more will follow) that you have also received if you are part of the DP program.
You can compare the DP to a regular Windows (or ServicePack) and those later updates to “Patch Tuesday hotfixes”
What you didn’t receive yet is Cyan, the firmware update. You can compare this to a BIOS-update + some low level drivers.
As I mentioned the WPCentral 8.1 review was done on an Icon and didn’t have the problems that you mention. Also, very critical Microsoft watcher MJFoley uses the Icon and never mentioned any of these problems. So no, these are not very widely-spread issues and the fact that you have all of them on multiple phones is just crazy
Do you own this same device?
No, as I mentioned
. I own a 1020 (company-provided) and my wife owns a 1520 (her own choice). I just want to help you figure out what is wrong because this is NOT normal and should be fixable. I found that 8.1-on-Icon-thread to see if this was more widespread. I got the general impression that people were happy but there were 3 problems that popped op:
* Reduced battery life, mostly resolved by not putting Cortana on the homescreen
* Power button not working or working slowly, mostly resolved by turning off Wifi/BlueTooth
* Wifi not working, mostly resolved by Disabling Wifi, ‘forgetting’ the connection and then setting up the connection again.
Other problems seem to be resolved by soft-resets or app/settings resets. But this post gave a solution to basically all problems: http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-8-1-preview-developers/27…
From what I understood the Icon is MOSTLY the same as the 1520, but in another form factor. Just like most people my wife has had no problem at all with the 8.1 update and is loving all the new features. This really was a gigantic update that fixes all the missing features and just for the keyboard and notification center alone I would get this update
A simple “no, I don’t own the device” would have sufficed.
In any case, thanks for your “help.” Rest assured next time I take a vowel movement I’ll contact you and your wife, so you guys can let me know what its consistency is actually like. Thank goodness for fanbois and their superpower to override other people’s first hand experiences, lord know us poor sap customers can’t be trusted with them!