update

Microsoft took the opportunity at the JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom conference today to talk about Windows 8.1 (or "Windows Blue" as it has been referred as). The update will be dished out to consumers for free, which is music to ears after the heavy discount Microsoft had in place for Windows 8 when the operating system launched last year.

The team behind the new Facebook app for Windows Phone, which is currently in beta, has released a small update. Bumping the available version up to 5.0.1.1, we're looking at better support for special characters when entering text as well as a few other minor improvements.

Nokia has updated its protest app, #2InstaWithLove with yet another filter. As the name suggests, the company is shouting out to Instagram, who still have not released an official app with all the bells and whistles for Windows Phone. The new filter is Nightshot, which (again, as the name suggests) is an effect that makes a photo look like it was taken in low light conditions.

The personal assistant for Windows Phone, Indigo has only been available in the store for a few days, but that hasn't stopped the team rolling out a small update to squash some bugs. While no change log is available, we've reached out for information on what's included in the latest release and were able to confirm that only minor bug fixes were bundled.

The official National Rail Enquiries app for Windows 8 has been updated. The app was previously bumped to include numerous new features that consumers could take advantage of. The change log remains the same on the store listing, so we can only speculate that this latest release is a minor update to fix some bugs and implement improvements.

Earlier today we shared with you guys news about Microsoft looking to add more live tiles to Windows Phone. It would allow the interface to look better on displays with larger and higher resolutions, something that Windows Phone 8 currently might not excel at. A reader sent a quick mockup of what that would look like. We figured we’d share it with you all.

We've already covered rumours of Microsoft looking to add 1080p support for Windows Phone later this year with the GDR3 update (this is all before the anticipated "Blue" update), but now the company may well be addressing the larger real estate issue that will occur with Live Tiles. Should you own a Samsung ATIV S, the three columns of tiles can appear to be rather limited at times, but Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet has learnt that the Windows Phone team is looking at a solution - to add more tiles. 

UC Browser has been updated for Windows Phone. The popular third-party web browser offers unique functionality that's not offered by the default Internet Explorer. We last looked at the app back in January when optimisations and synchronicity were added in a previous release. So what's new in this latest update?

Ever wondered if Microsoft improved the performance in the Windows Phone 7.8 update? It has certainly been considered, but many have naturally assumed that since the company has failed to shout about optimisations present in the latest version of 7.x, that there's little difference between 7.5 and 7.8.

Windows tutorials and resource website 7tutorials has published an in-depth performance comparison between Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 7.8. The plan was to see if there were any signs of performance improvements in the latest software version for first generation hardware. Turns out, there's barely any difference between the two, but we weren't expecting much, right?