One of the things we love best about Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone is that we’re always discovering fantastic little features we didn’t know about.
Whether it’s a new camera trick, a clever software innovation or a little update that makes a big difference, these constant marvels always put smiles on our faces. To share some of this childlike glee with you, we’ve showcased some features, you might not yet have noticed. Get your Nokia Lumias at the ready!
1. Make your music sound better
Nokia Lumias are famed for being amazing music making machines. But did you know that if you pop in your headphones you can adjust the sound quality via the audio option under general settings? You have the option to choose a selection of pre-determined settings, or fiddle about with the equaliser yourself. Otherwise, you can go full DJ and enable Dolby playback by swiping right and hitting playback. Nokia Music just got even funkier!
2. Create a Group Live Tile
Groups are a brilliant way to mange your social networking stuff and stay in touch with the people who matter, whether that’s your footballing buddies or your family. When you create a Group, it shows up at the top of your contact list. Tap it, and you’ll see the Group members’ Live Tiles and social networking updates, along with options for group email, texting, and chat. You can also pin it to your Start screen. What’s more, it’s super simple to create. On your Start screen tap People, flick to All, tap New and then tap New Group. Tap a contact name then Save and you’re off and away!
3. Change your text size
No matter how big the screen size, sometimes it’s nice to have your font a little bigger too. If you want to resize your Nokia Lumia’s text, simple Go into Settings then Ease of access and you’ll find five different size settings for the text. You need never squint again.
4. Share your location in a text
Meeting a buddy in a bar or hooking up with your girlfriend for afternoon coffee, but they don’t know how to get to your location? Don’t worry. Write a text message and you can add a map of your location. Just tap the paperclip icon and choose location. If your buddy or girlfriend has a Nokia Lumia it will open your location in their HERE Maps, otherwise it will open in their browser.
5. Hide your caller ID
Sometimes you’d just rather not have people see your caller ID. If you happen to be in one of those situations you can change your settings with in a couple of taps. Just go to caller history, tap the fullstops icon at the bottom right, and hit Settings. Then choose who gets to see your caller ID by default, everyone, your contacts, or no one at all.
6. Get a room
Imagine if you could get a digital room where all your nearest and dearest could share pictures, chat, make appointments or broadcast their locations to everyone inside. Well, imagine no more. Go to the People Hub on your start screen, side swipe and you’ll find the word together. From here press the ‘+’ key at the bottom and then select room choose a name and hit the floppy disc save button at the bottom. Windows Phone 8 will now set the room up. When you’ve added everyone you want to include, press the tick and your friends with Nokia Lumias or other Windows Phone 8 devices will now be invited to join.
7. Search a web page
Find the info you need from a web page isn’t always a straightforward task, especially if you’re using a smartphone screen. Fortunately, with Windows Phone 8, within the browser, is a search tool called find on page. When in Internet Explorer, press the fullstops icon and select find on page towards the bottom of the list. Type in your search query and press enter. Hey presto! All text found in the search will show up in your chosen accent colour, and there’s an arrow key to scroll through all the findings at the bottom of the display.
8. Make searching simpler
If you’ve got a lot of friends in the People Hub or a lot of apps in your apps list it can sometimes take time finding what or who you want. For quicker navigation you can just tap the header letter of a section, the “a” at the top, for example, and get a large overlay of all the letters in the alphabet. Tap one and hop over to that section for all your contacts beginning with each letter. It really makes searching simple.
These are just a few of the cool features that you might not have known about. If you have any others you’d like to share, please drop them in the comments below.
image credit: Martin Abegglen