blue

The first screenshots of what looks to be the next major build of Windows Phone 8.x have been revealed. We show you what's new.

A reddit thread posted just over 8 hours ago tells the story of a user who has purchased a Nokia Lumia 920 from eBay only to discover they are in possession of a device that seems to have once belonged to a Microsoft engineer.

Said user has posted several screenshots from the device which appear to show off a brand new calendar design, the ability to organise apps by frequency of use, and perhaps most interestingly: a notification center.

Whilst we can’t be 100% certain of this information, the quantity of screenshots that have been provided, as well as the presence of what appear to be internal apps still in development definitely lends some credibility to this rumour, in fact we're going to go ahead and give this a 7 on the rum-o-meter. Check below for a few of the screenshots and a list of the revealed features so far, or head over to flickr to see the originals yourself.

There is speculation that with the Windows 8.1 update users will have the option to boot up directly to the traditional desktop view. The 8.1 update, code named Blue (that will also impact Windows Phones), will still have the hot corner functionality for access to the Charms and Start Screen.  The option will simply launch the desktop view on the computer at boot up.

No word on whether or not the Start Button will be making a comeback (wouldn't hold your breath) but it will be nice to have the option to go straight to the desktop view. Especially for those who prefer the more traditional Windows view.

Source: The Verge

With the big leak of Windows Blue build 9364 arriving over the weekend people have been furiously going through it to find any new, unannounced features that are presumably coming later in the year. For Windows Phone users, it’s even more interesting because we know that Windows Phone Blue is an analogous project that the Windows Phone dev team is undertaking at this moment.

To what extent Windows Blue, Windows Blue RT and Windows Phone blue overlap is still not known, but it has been strongly suggested that this is one of the first attempts to bridge the OSs, including a common Store.

Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, and Microsoft has a promise. While we wait for a true personal assistant on Windows Phone, we can look forward to this leaked video of how voice searches might work on Bing in the near future.

We've lightly touched on the proposed batch of updates, codenamed "Blue" that will affect multiple Microsoft platforms and service. Yesterday a job opening at Redmond was spotted and has confirmed that Microsoft will indeed be targeting the holidays, when plans to release the next major version of Windows Phone will be put into play.