Paul Thurrott's Windows Phone 8 1.05.pdf

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Paul Thurrott’s

Windows Phone 8 Version 1.05

By Paul Thurrott

Contents are copyright © 2013 Paul Thurrott. All Rights Reserved

This book is dedicated to Windows Phone users around the world

Who this book is for Paul Thurrott’s Windows Phone 8 was written for current and future users of Windows Phone 8. It was written for real people—users—not technical experts, or those who need to manage mobile devices in a corporate environment. The book makes no assumptions about your experience with prior versions of Windows Phone, but by this point in time, I do assume that you have at least some experience using a smart phone in general. If you are already at least passingly familiar with Windows Phone, you can use the book as a reference and pick and choose from the various topics. Otherwise, you should read the first two chapters in sequence and then branch out from there. There’s no need to read the book in sequence, though you may of course do so if you wish. For the few times in which you need to connect your handset to a computer, I assume that the computer will be a Windows-based PC, preferably using Windows 8 or RT. Those with older versions of Windows should be able to follow along. (Those with Macs are on their own. Just as in real life.)

This book is… Free. Paul Thurrott’s Windows Phone 8 is free, my gift to the Windows Phone community. You should never pay for this book, nor should you acquire it from any source other than its author and copyright holder, Paul Thurrott. Updated versions of this book are available from Windows Phone Book and Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows. In the future, versions for Kindle and various e-book platforms will be made available as well. Not complete. This book is comprehensive but it is never complete. That is, I will continue updating the book to address ongoing changes to the platform and to add more content. I will keep providing these free updates to this free book for as long as Microsoft and Nokia, its primary platform partner, provide updates to Windows Phone 8. Original. Paul Thurrott’s Windows Phone 8 is an original work, written solely by its author. Not perfect. If you find any mistakes or omissions, or have suggestions for future versions of the book, or ideas for future books, please email me: This book should be as useful as it is up-to-date. Specifically about Windows Phone 8. When Microsoft finally moves forward with a new version of the operating system (Windows Phone 8.1, 9, whatever), I’ll provide new editions of the book (Paul Thurrott’s Windows Phone 8.1 or whatever). These future editions will not be free, but will be priced as low as possible. Think less than a dollar.

About the author Hi, I’m Paul Thurrott, an award-winning technology journalist and blogger and the author of over 25 books. I am a technology analyst at Windows IT Pro and the majordomo of Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows. I also write a daily news column, WinInfo Daily UPDATE, a weekly editorial for Windows IT Pro UPDATE, and a monthly column called Need to Know for Windows IT Pro. Additionally, I record two weekly tech podcasts, Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Mary Jo Foley, and What the Tech with Andrew Zarian. You can reach me via email or on Twitter at @thurrott.

Acknowledgements This book was a solo eﬀort and my ﬁrst attempt at self-publishing a full length technical book. I’m still learning. Thanks to Microsoft for creating and maintaining Windows Phone and to Nokia for really turning things up a notch with superior hardware, software, and services. And thanks to Rafael Rivera, my Windows Secrets co-author, for putting up with my inane chattering about this book. Finally, thanks to my readers and listeners from around the world. I've always thought about my work as a conversation about technology, and that was never truer than during the very public development of this book. Let's keep the conversation going: It's this back and forth that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Contents at a glance Introduction Chapter 1. Getting Started Chapter 2. The Windows Phone User Experience Chapter 3. Store Chapter 4. Search Chapter 5. People + Me Chapter 6. Phone Chapter 7. Messaging Chapter 8. Maps + Location Chapter 9. Email Chapter 10. Calendar Chapter 11. Internet Explorer Chapter 12. Oﬃce + OneNote Chapter 13. Music, Videos + Podcasts Chapter 14. Photos Chapter 15. Games Chapter 16. Security + Networking Chapter 17. PC Integration

Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 27 1. Getting Started ....................................................................................................................................... 28 Conﬁgure your Microsoft account .............................................................................................................. 28 Conﬁgure Microsoft account settings ..................................................................................................... 29 Change your account picture .................................................................................................................. 30 Connect other accounts to your Microsoft account ............................................................................... 31 Choose a Windows Phone handset ............................................................................................................ 33 Understand Windows Phone hardware components and which really matter ...................................... 33 Understand the Nokia advantage ........................................................................................................... 36 Set up your phone ....................................................................................................................................... 37 Complete the initial set up wizard .......................................................................................................... 37 Connect to a Wi-Fi network .................................................................................................................... 49 Set up and conﬁgure accounts ................................................................................................................ 52 Set up a new account .......................................................................................................................... 52 Conﬁgure an account .......................................................................................................................... 54 Update apps ............................................................................................................................................ 56 2. The Windows Phone User Experience ................................................................................................... 60 Basic navigation........................................................................................................................................... 60 Use the multi-touch screen..................................................................................................................... 60 Tap ....................................................................................................................................................... 60 Tap and hold ........................................................................................................................................ 61 Double-tap .......................................................................................................................................... 61 Flick ..................................................................................................................................................... 61 Pan....................................................................................................................................................... 61 Pinch.................................................................................................................................................... 61 Stretch ................................................................................................................................................. 61 Device rotation .................................................................................................................................... 61 Understand the hardware buttons ......................................................................................................... 63 Power button ...................................................................................................................................... 63 Back button ......................................................................................................................................... 63 Start button ......................................................................................................................................... 64 Search button ...................................................................................................................................... 65

Volume Up and Volume Down buttons............................................................................................... 66 Camera ................................................................................................................................................ 67 Understand common software interfaces .............................................................................................. 68 Status bar ............................................................................................................................................ 68 Onscreen keyboard ............................................................................................................................. 69 Copy and paste .................................................................................................................................... 72 Start experience .......................................................................................................................................... 74 Understand the Start screen ................................................................................................................... 74 Understand All Apps................................................................................................................................ 75 Customize Start screen tiles .................................................................................................................... 79 Reposition a Start screen tile .............................................................................................................. 80 Resize a Start screen tile ..................................................................................................................... 80 Remove a Start screen tile .................................................................................................................. 81 Pin an app to the Start screen ............................................................................................................. 81 Apps and Hubs ............................................................................................................................................ 82 Understand apps and hubs ..................................................................................................................... 82 Understand the types of apps and hubs you will see on Windows Phone ............................................. 82 Single screen apps ............................................................................................................................... 82 Pivot apps ............................................................................................................................................ 83 Panorama apps.................................................................................................................................... 84 Understand which hubs are included with Windows Phone .................................................................. 86 Understand which apps are included with Windows Phone .................................................................. 86 Understand common app interfaces ...................................................................................................... 87 App bars .............................................................................................................................................. 87 Pop-up menus ..................................................................................................................................... 89 Personalization ............................................................................................................................................ 89 Understand Settings ................................................................................................................................ 89 Conﬁgure other accounts........................................................................................................................ 91 Change the theme................................................................................................................................... 91 Make text bigger ..................................................................................................................................... 93 Conﬁgure ringtones and sounds ............................................................................................................. 95 Conﬁgure the lock screen ....................................................................................................................... 96 Download apps and games ................................................................................................................... 101

Name your phone ................................................................................................................................. 101 Name your phone using File Explorer in Windows ........................................................................... 101 Download the Windows Phone apps ................................................................................................ 102 Name your phone using the Windows Phone desktop application .................................................. 102 Name your phone using the Windows Phone mobile app ............................................................... 102 3. Store...................................................................................................................................................... 103 Access Windows Phone Store from your PC or tablet .............................................................................. 103 Edit your payment information ............................................................................................................. 103 View your purchase history and reinstall previously downloaded apps............................................... 104 Browse and ﬁnd apps ............................................................................................................................ 105 Launch the Store app ................................................................................................................................ 106 Tour of the Store user experience ............................................................................................................. 106 Browse for apps ........................................................................................................................................ 108 Search for an app ...................................................................................................................................... 112 Learn more about an app.......................................................................................................................... 113 Install, buy or upgrade an app .................................................................................................................. 117 Install a free app.................................................................................................................................... 118 Buy an app ............................................................................................................................................ 118 Install a paid app you’ve already purchased ......................................................................................... 119 Try a paid app ........................................................................................................................................ 120 Convert a trial app to a paid app........................................................................................................... 120 Download an app update ...................................................................................................................... 121 Share an app ............................................................................................................................................. 122 Rate and review an app ............................................................................................................................ 123 Make an in-app purchase.......................................................................................................................... 125 Protect purchases with a PIN .................................................................................................................... 128 Get app and game suggestions ................................................................................................................. 130 4. Search ................................................................................................................................................... 132 Understand the Bing hub .......................................................................................................................... 132 Tour of the Bing interface.......................................................................................................................... 133 Find anything............................................................................................................................................. 135 Understand Bing search results ............................................................................................................ 135 Get instant answers .............................................................................................................................. 139

Learn more with quick cards ................................................................................................................. 140 Find an image or video.............................................................................................................................. 141 Find a nearby place ................................................................................................................................... 142 Find a movie locally ................................................................................................................................... 142 Find and buy a product ............................................................................................................................. 143 Find out which song is playing .................................................................................................................. 145 Find out what you’re looking at ................................................................................................................ 147 Scan a Barcode, QR code, or Microsoft Tag .......................................................................................... 149 Scan and translate text.......................................................................................................................... 151 Find out more about a CD, DVD, video game, or book ......................................................................... 154 Find your location, directions, or a diﬀerent place ................................................................................... 155 Find it with your voice............................................................................................................................... 155 Find an app................................................................................................................................................ 156 Search from Internet Explorer .................................................................................................................. 157 Share search results .................................................................................................................................. 158 Pin search results to the Start screen ....................................................................................................... 158 Customize Bing .......................................................................................................................................... 159 5. People + Me .......................................................................................................................................... 162 Understand how accounts and contacts impact the People hub ............................................................. 162 Understand the People tile and launch the hub ....................................................................................... 163 Tour the People hub .................................................................................................................................. 163 Find a contact ............................................................................................................................................ 164 Quick navigate through the list of contacts .......................................................................................... 164 Search.................................................................................................................................................... 166 Find a contact from other apps ............................................................................................................. 168 See what’s new with all of your contacts.................................................................................................. 169 Filter the What’s New list...................................................................................................................... 170 Read a post and post comments ........................................................................................................... 171 Like a post ............................................................................................................................................. 172 View and use post images..................................................................................................................... 172 Quickly access recent contacts ................................................................................................................. 174 Interact with a contact .............................................................................................................................. 175 View a contact card and reach out to that person................................................................................ 175

Pin a contact to the Start screen ........................................................................................................... 178 Edit a contact ........................................................................................................................................ 178 Edit a Facebook friend’s contact information ................................................................................... 178 Edit a linked contact .......................................................................................................................... 179 Edit a contact found in only one non-Facebook account .................................................................. 181 Link (and unlink) contacts ..................................................................................................................... 182 Share a contact...................................................................................................................................... 184 Delete a contact .................................................................................................................................... 184 See what’s new with a contact ............................................................................................................. 185 See a contact’s photos .......................................................................................................................... 186 View your communications history with a contact ............................................................................... 187 Add a new contact .................................................................................................................................... 188 Interact with multiple contacts at once .................................................................................................... 190 Groups ................................................................................................................................................... 190 Create a group ................................................................................................................................... 190 Add a member to a group ................................................................................................................. 190 Remove a member from a group ...................................................................................................... 191 See what’s new with a group of people............................................................................................ 191 See recent photos from a group of people ....................................................................................... 192 Pin a group to the Start screen ......................................................................................................... 193 Rename a group ................................................................................................................................ 194 Delete a group................................................................................................................................... 194 Rooms ................................................................................................................................................... 194 Create a room ................................................................................................................................... 194 Add a member to a room .................................................................................................................. 195 Join a room that someone else created ............................................................................................ 196 Understand the room user experience ............................................................................................. 197 Manage a room ................................................................................................................................. 198 See what’s new with all room members ........................................................................................... 199 See member photos .......................................................................................................................... 199 Send an email to all room members ................................................................................................. 199 Chat with room members ................................................................................................................. 200 Send your location to other room members .................................................................................... 201

Share a calendar with room members .............................................................................................. 201 Share a photo or video with room members .................................................................................... 203 Share notes with room members ..................................................................................................... 206 Customize People ...................................................................................................................................... 210 Me ............................................................................................................................................................. 212 Understand how accounts impact Me .................................................................................................. 212 Find and launch Me............................................................................................................................... 212 Tour the UI ............................................................................................................................................ 213 Update your proﬁle picture................................................................................................................... 213 Post an update ...................................................................................................................................... 214 Check-in to Facebook ............................................................................................................................ 215 Toggle your chat status ......................................................................................................................... 216 Read and respond to what other people are saying online .................................................................. 216 Re-pin a missing Me tile ........................................................................................................................ 218 6. Phone .................................................................................................................................................... 219 Launch Phone............................................................................................................................................ 219 Understand the Phone app ....................................................................................................................... 219 Manually dial a phone number ................................................................................................................. 221 Call a contact ............................................................................................................................................. 222 Call a contact with your voice ................................................................................................................... 225 Call a phone number from elsewhere in Windows Phone ....................................................................... 226 Call a location from a Bing quick card ................................................................................................... 226 Call a person who sent you a text message .......................................................................................... 227 Call a number in an email ..................................................................................................................... 227 Call a number in an appointment ......................................................................................................... 227 Understand what you can do during a phone call .................................................................................... 227 End the call ............................................................................................................................................ 228 Do something else with your phone ..................................................................................................... 228 Use the keypad...................................................................................................................................... 229 Enable the speakerphone ..................................................................................................................... 230 Mute the call ......................................................................................................................................... 230 Place the call on hold ............................................................................................................................ 230 Add another caller ................................................................................................................................ 230

Create a conference call ............................................................................................................................ 230 Handle an incoming phone call ................................................................................................................. 233 Answer a phone call .............................................................................................................................. 235 Ignore a phone call................................................................................................................................ 235 Text a reply instead of answering a phone call ..................................................................................... 235 Understand what happens when you ignore or miss a call, or receive a voice mail ................................ 237 Access your call history ............................................................................................................................. 238 Return a phone call ............................................................................................................................... 238 Learn more about a person who called ................................................................................................ 238 Remove an item from your call history ................................................................................................. 238 Delete the entire call history ................................................................................................................. 239 Search your history ............................................................................................................................... 239 Access your voice mail .............................................................................................................................. 240 Call your voice mail ............................................................................................................................... 240 Use visual voice mail ............................................................................................................................. 241 Listen to a voice mail ......................................................................................................................... 242 Use phone features while listening to a voice mail .......................................................................... 243 Manage voice mails........................................................................................................................... 243 Conﬁgure your voice mail ................................................................................................................. 243 Use a Bluetooth headset ........................................................................................................................... 243 Pair a Bluetooth headset with your phone ........................................................................................... 243 Answer a call with a Bluetooth headset................................................................................................ 245 Initiate a call with a Bluetooth headset ................................................................................................ 245 Customize Phone....................................................................................................................................... 245 Phone Settings ...................................................................................................................................... 245 Other settings that impact the phone experience ................................................................................ 247 Conﬁgure the ringer, vibration and ringtone and voicemail sounds ................................................. 247 Conﬁgure a ringtone for an individual contact ................................................................................. 248 Make volume, ringer and vibrate changes on the ﬂy........................................................................ 248 Conﬁgure lock screen reminders for phone and voice mail.............................................................. 249 7. Messaging ............................................................................................................................................. 250 Understand how Messaging uses accounts .............................................................................................. 250 Launch Messaging ..................................................................................................................................... 250

Messaging tour ......................................................................................................................................... 251 Create a new message .............................................................................................................................. 253 Use your voice to send a message ............................................................................................................ 257 Send a message attachment ..................................................................................................................... 257 Attach a photo or video to a text message ........................................................................................... 258 Attach your location to a text message ................................................................................................. 259 Attach a voice note to a text message .................................................................................................. 260 Attach a contact to a text message ....................................................................................................... 261 Send a group text ...................................................................................................................................... 262 Use emoticons........................................................................................................................................... 263 Handle received messages ........................................................................................................................ 265 Understand Messaging notiﬁcations .................................................................................................... 265 Understand Messaging tile notiﬁcations .............................................................................................. 266 Understand Messaging notiﬁcations on the lock screen ...................................................................... 267 Manage threads and messages................................................................................................................. 267 Delete a thread ..................................................................................................................................... 268 Delete multiple threads ........................................................................................................................ 268 Delete a message in a thread ................................................................................................................ 269 Use Facebook and Messenger .................................................................................................................. 269 Enable Facebook Chat ........................................................................................................................... 269 Enable Messenger ................................................................................................................................. 270 Set your Facebook Chat and Messenger chat status ............................................................................ 270 Chat with your Facebook friends and Messenger contacts .................................................................. 270 Switch between messaging services ......................................................................................................... 272 Customize Messaging ................................................................................................................................ 272 Use Messaging Settings......................................................................................................................... 272 Conﬁgure Ringtones + Sounds .............................................................................................................. 274 8. Maps + Location ................................................................................................................................... 275 Bing Maps.................................................................................................................................................. 275 Find and launch Bing Maps ................................................................................................................... 275 Find your current location..................................................................................................................... 276 Navigate through Maps ......................................................................................................................... 277 Find your way inside a mall or other location ....................................................................................... 278

Find a location ....................................................................................................................................... 278 Clear the map ........................................................................................................................................ 281 Get directions ........................................................................................................................................ 281 Get driving directions ........................................................................................................................ 281 Get walking directions....................................................................................................................... 282 Change between map-only and directions list views........................................................................ 283 Stop using directions ......................................................................................................................... 283 Conﬁgure the view ................................................................................................................................ 283 Show traﬃc updates ......................................................................................................................... 283 Show an aerial view .......................................................................................................................... 284 Favorite places ...................................................................................................................................... 286 Add a location to Favorites................................................................................................................ 286 Access your favorites places.............................................................................................................. 287 Access Bing Maps while oﬄine ............................................................................................................. 288 Pin a location to the Start screen .......................................................................................................... 290 Share your location ............................................................................................................................... 290 Access Bing Maps from other apps ................................................................................................... 291 Customize Maps .................................................................................................................................... 291 Local Scout ................................................................................................................................................ 292 Find and launch Local Scout .................................................................................................................. 292 Understand the Local Scout interface ................................................................................................... 293 Find local places .................................................................................................................................... 295 Find places in a diﬀerent location ......................................................................................................... 297 Pin Local Scout to the Start Screen ....................................................................................................... 298 9. Email ..................................................................................................................................................... 299 Email and accounts.................................................................................................................................... 299 Understand which accounts support email .......................................................................................... 299 Add a new email-based account ........................................................................................................... 301 Understand the Mail app .......................................................................................................................... 302 Select one or more messages ................................................................................................................... 305 Mark a message as read or unread ........................................................................................................... 306 Use message ﬂags ..................................................................................................................................... 307 Delete a message ...................................................................................................................................... 308

Compose a new message .......................................................................................................................... 309 Voice to text: Compose a message with voice .......................................................................................... 311 Work with other folders ............................................................................................................................ 313 View other email folders ....................................................................................................................... 313 Move a message to a new folder .......................................................................................................... 314 Pin another folder to the Start screen .................................................................................................. 315 View and interact with an email message ............................................................................................ 316 Communicate more with the sender ................................................................................................ 317 Communicate with other people who received the email message ................................................ 319 View an attachment .......................................................................................................................... 319 Reply or forward a message from the message view ....................................................................... 322 Delete a message from the message view ........................................................................................ 322 Switch to a newer or older message from the message view .......................................................... 323 Toggle a message ﬂag from the message view ................................................................................. 323 Mark a message as read/unread from the message view ................................................................ 323 Move a message to a new folder from the message view ................................................................ 323 Manually sync with the email service ....................................................................................................... 323 Link inboxes ............................................................................................................................................... 323 Link two or more inboxes ...................................................................................................................... 324 Understand how the Mail app changes when you link inboxes............................................................ 325 Respond to meeting requests ................................................................................................................... 326 Customize Mail .......................................................................................................................................... 327 Customize Mail settings ........................................................................................................................ 327 Customize account sync settings ........................................................................................................... 330 Customize email alerts on the lock screen............................................................................................ 332 10. Calendar .............................................................................................................................................. 334 Understand how accounts aﬀect Calendar ............................................................................................... 334 Launch Calendar........................................................................................................................................ 335 Calendar tour ............................................................................................................................................ 335 Navigate between the Day, Agenda, and To-do views .......................................................................... 337 Navigate within the Day, Agenda, or To-do views ................................................................................. 338 Use Month view .................................................................................................................................... 338 Navigate to today .............................................................................................................................. 339

Navigate to a speciﬁc day in the current month ............................................................................... 339 Navigate to a diﬀerent month ........................................................................................................... 339 Navigate to a diﬀerent month or year .............................................................................................. 340 Manage appointments .............................................................................................................................. 340 View an appointment............................................................................................................................ 341 Find an appointment location in Maps ................................................................................................. 341 Create an appointment ......................................................................................................................... 343 Create a Quick Event appointment ....................................................................................................... 349 Modify an appointment ........................................................................................................................ 350 Delete an appointment ......................................................................................................................... 351 Manage meetings...................................................................................................................................... 352 Accept or decline a meeting request .................................................................................................... 352 Reply to a meeting request ................................................................................................................... 352 View meeting attendees ....................................................................................................................... 352 View information about an attendee .................................................................................................... 352 Add a meeting attendee........................................................................................................................ 352 Tell meeting attendees you’re running late .......................................................................................... 353 Delete a meeting ................................................................................................................................... 353 Access a meeting from an email ........................................................................................................... 353 Use Facebook Events................................................................................................................................. 357 View details for a Facebook event ........................................................................................................ 358 Accept or decline a Facebook event ..................................................................................................... 358 View Facebook event comments .......................................................................................................... 359 Add a Facebook event comment or “like” ............................................................................................ 359 View a Facebook event guest list .......................................................................................................... 360 Manage to-do’s (tasks).............................................................................................................................. 361 Change the display of the to-do list ...................................................................................................... 362 Mark a to-do as complete ..................................................................................................................... 362 Delete a to-do ....................................................................................................................................... 363 View and edit a to-do ............................................................................................................................ 363 Add a new to-do.................................................................................................................................... 364 Handle appointment, meeting and to-do notiﬁcations ............................................................................ 366 Understand Calendar notiﬁcations ....................................................................................................... 366

Understand Calendar tile notiﬁcations ................................................................................................. 368 Understand Calendar notiﬁcations on the Lock screen ........................................................................ 369 Customize Calendar .................................................................................................................................. 372 Use Calendar Settings ........................................................................................................................... 372 Use Ringtones + Sound Settings ............................................................................................................ 373 11. Internet Explorer ................................................................................................................................ 375 Find and launch IE Mobile......................................................................................................................... 375 Tour of IE Mobile ....................................................................................................................................... 375 Web page navigation................................................................................................................................. 381 Navigate to a web page ......................................................................................................................... 381 Stop a web page from completely loading ........................................................................................... 383 Refresh the current web page............................................................................................................... 383 Navigate to the previous web page ...................................................................................................... 383 Find text on the current web page............................................................................................................ 383 Search the web ......................................................................................................................................... 385 Search the web from IE Mobile............................................................................................................. 385 Search the web with Bing ..................................................................................................................... 387 Change the browser search provider .................................................................................................... 388 Tabs ........................................................................................................................................................... 389 Access tabs ............................................................................................................................................ 389 Delete a tab ........................................................................................................................................... 390 Create a new tab ................................................................................................................................... 390 Open a link in a new tab ....................................................................................................................... 391 Access tabs from the address bar button ............................................................................................. 391 Open links from other apps in a new tab .............................................................................................. 391 Recent ....................................................................................................................................................... 392 Access Recent........................................................................................................................................ 392 Manage pages in the Recent list ........................................................................................................... 392 Favorites .................................................................................................................................................... 393 Access Favorites .................................................................................................................................... 393 Edit a Favorite ....................................................................................................................................... 394 Delete a Favorite ................................................................................................................................... 395 Add a web page to Favorites ................................................................................................................. 395

Access favorite web pages from the address bar ................................................................................. 396 Access Favorites from the address bar button...................................................................................... 397 Pin a web page to the Start screen ........................................................................................................... 397 Save a picture from a web page to your phone ........................................................................................ 397 Watch a YouTube video ............................................................................................................................. 398 Share information from web pages .......................................................................................................... 400 Share a web page .................................................................................................................................. 400 Share or copy a link ............................................................................................................................... 401 Copy and paste text from a web page .................................................................................................. 401 Customize Internet Explorer Mobile ......................................................................................................... 403 12. Oﬃce + OneNote ................................................................................................................................ 406 Oﬃce hub .................................................................................................................................................. 406 Tour of the Oﬃce hub ........................................................................................................................... 407 Understand and conﬁgure Places ......................................................................................................... 407 Use SkyDrive with the Oﬃce hub...................................................................................................... 408 Use Oﬃce 365 with the Oﬃce hub ................................................................................................... 409 Add a SharePoint document library to Places in the Oﬃce hub ....................................................... 411 Access recent documents ..................................................................................................................... 413 Create a new document ........................................................................................................................ 413 Work with documents........................................................................................................................... 414 Open a document ............................................................................................................................. 414 Pin a document to Start .................................................................................................................... 414 Delete a document from the phone ................................................................................................. 415 Save a document to a diﬀerent location ........................................................................................... 415 Share a document ............................................................................................................................. 415 Understand commands that are common to Word, Excel and PowerPoint ......................................... 416 Exit..................................................................................................................................................... 416 Save ................................................................................................................................................... 416 Save as ............................................................................................................................................... 416 Open the location that contains the current document ................................................................... 417 Share ................................................................................................................................................. 418 Word Mobile ......................................................................................................................................... 418 Open a word document .................................................................................................................... 418

Edit a document ................................................................................................................................ 419 Navigate around a document ............................................................................................................ 421 Select a word or a block of text......................................................................................................... 421 Copy and paste text within a document ........................................................................................... 422 Toggle the virtual keyboard............................................................................................................... 422 Format text........................................................................................................................................ 423 Find text ............................................................................................................................................ 424 Use Outline view ............................................................................................................................... 425 Add a comment to a document ........................................................................................................ 426 View document comments ............................................................................................................... 427 Delete a comment ............................................................................................................................. 428 Excel Mobile .......................................................................................................................................... 428 Open a workbook .............................................................................................................................. 429 Navigate through a workbook........................................................................................................... 429 Select a cell or a range of cells .......................................................................................................... 430 Switch between available worksheets .............................................................................................. 430 Format a cell...................................................................................................................................... 431 Use a function ................................................................................................................................... 432 Use AutoSum..................................................................................................................................... 435 Find text or numbers ......................................................................................................................... 436 Sort a range of values........................................................................................................................ 437 Apply a ﬁlter ...................................................................................................................................... 439 Make a chart ..................................................................................................................................... 441 PowerPoint Mobile ............................................................................................................................... 442 Display a slide show .......................................................................................................................... 442 View the slides in a presentation ...................................................................................................... 444 Edit text in a presentation ................................................................................................................. 444 Move a slide ...................................................................................................................................... 446 Hide or unhide a slide ....................................................................................................................... 446 Return to Slide Show mode............................................................................................................... 447 Add or edit slide notes ...................................................................................................................... 447 OneNote Mobile ....................................................................................................................................... 447 A OneNote primer ................................................................................................................................. 448

Launch OneNote ................................................................................................................................... 451 View and manage available notebooks ................................................................................................ 451 Open a notebook .................................................................................................................................. 453 Navigate through a notebook ............................................................................................................... 454 Delete one or more notes ..................................................................................................................... 455 Create a new note ................................................................................................................................. 456 Edit a note ............................................................................................................................................. 456 Edit text ............................................................................................................................................. 456 Add a to-do list .................................................................................................................................. 457 Add a bulleted list ............................................................................................................................. 458 Add a numbered list .......................................................................................................................... 459 Insert a picture .................................................................................................................................. 459 Add an audio note ............................................................................................................................. 461 Increase and decrease the indent ..................................................................................................... 461 Format text........................................................................................................................................ 462 Search for text across all of your notebooks ......................................................................................... 463 Share a note .......................................................................................................................................... 464 Pin a note to the Start screen ............................................................................................................... 464 Customize Oﬃce and OneNote ................................................................................................................. 464 13. Music, Videos and Podcasts ............................................................................................................... 466 Find and launch the Music + Videos hub .................................................................................................. 466 Tour of the Music + Videos hub ................................................................................................................ 467 Collection .............................................................................................................................................. 468 History ................................................................................................................................................... 468 New ....................................................................................................................................................... 469 Apps ...................................................................................................................................................... 470 Xbox....................................................................................................................................................... 471 Digital music .............................................................................................................................................. 472 Tour of the Music experience................................................................................................................ 473 Explore an artist .................................................................................................................................... 476 Find more music from an artist ......................................................................................................... 477 Get the buzz ...................................................................................................................................... 478 Read an artist biography ................................................................................................................... 479

Find related artists ............................................................................................................................ 480 Download music from your cloud collection ........................................................................................ 481 Download one song .......................................................................................................................... 481 Download multiple songs at once ..................................................................................................... 482 Purchase or download music from Xbox Music Store .......................................................................... 484 Find music with Search ......................................................................................................................... 485 Play music ............................................................................................................................................. 487 Control music playback ..................................................................................................................... 488 Control music playback from outside the app .................................................................................. 490 Return to Now Playing ...................................................................................................................... 493 Automatically shuﬄe your entire collection ..................................................................................... 494 Playlists and Smart DJ mixes ................................................................................................................. 494 View a playlist ................................................................................................................................... 495 Play a playlist ..................................................................................................................................... 495 Create a playlist ................................................................................................................................. 496 Create and play a Smart DJ mix......................................................................................................... 496 Save a Smart DJ mix as a playlist ....................................................................................................... 497 Pin favorite music to the Start screen ................................................................................................... 497 Add music to Kid’s Corner ..................................................................................................................... 499 Digital videos ............................................................................................................................................. 499 Explore the Videos experience.............................................................................................................. 499 Play a video ........................................................................................................................................... 500 Manage videos ...................................................................................................................................... 501 Podcasts .................................................................................................................................................... 502 Find a podcast in Windows Phone Store .............................................................................................. 503 Stream or download a single podcast episode ..................................................................................... 505 Subscribe to a podcast .......................................................................................................................... 505 Find and manage subscribed podcasts ................................................................................................. 507 Pin a podcast to the Start screen ...................................................................................................... 507 Delete a podcast ............................................................................................................................... 507 View a podcast and manage it further .............................................................................................. 508 Play a podcast ....................................................................................................................................... 508 Other ways to enjoy podcasts ............................................................................................................... 510

Sync a podcast from iTunes ............................................................................................................... 510 Other podcast apps ........................................................................................................................... 511 FM radio .................................................................................................................................................... 512 Find a radio station ............................................................................................................................... 512 Add a station to favorites ...................................................................................................................... 513 Remove a station from favorites ........................................................................................................... 513 Access your favorite stations................................................................................................................. 514 Pin a radio station to the Start screen................................................................................................... 514 Pause live radio ..................................................................................................................................... 515 Switch to the internal speaker .............................................................................................................. 515 Conﬁgure FM radio for your region ...................................................................................................... 515 Customize Music + Videos ........................................................................................................................ 516 14. Photos ................................................................................................................................................. 518 Manage and enjoy photos ........................................................................................................................ 518 Set up and conﬁgure accounts for photos ............................................................................................ 518 Launch the Photos hub ......................................................................................................................... 519 Tour the Photos hub.............................................................................................................................. 519 View your photo albums ....................................................................................................................... 521 View photos in a photo album .............................................................................................................. 523 Share a photo ........................................................................................................................................ 525 Edit a photo ........................................................................................................................................... 528 Add or view tags for a photo ................................................................................................................. 528 Delete a photo ...................................................................................................................................... 530 Save an online photo to your phone ..................................................................................................... 530 Add a photo to Favorites ....................................................................................................................... 531 Set a photo as the lock screen background .......................................................................................... 531 Set a photo as the Photos hub background .......................................................................................... 533 Use favorite photos as the Photos hub and tile background ................................................................ 535 Take photos and videos ............................................................................................................................. 536 Launch the Camera app ........................................................................................................................ 537 Conﬁgure the Camera app .................................................................................................................... 537 Set photo settings ............................................................................................................................. 538 Set video settings .............................................................................................................................. 539

Take a photo .......................................................................................................................................... 539 Toggle the ﬂash ..................................................................................................................................... 539 Zoom the viewﬁnder ............................................................................................................................. 540 Toggle between the cameras ................................................................................................................ 540 Record a video....................................................................................................................................... 541 View previous photos and videos ......................................................................................................... 542 Extend Camera with Lenses .................................................................................................................. 543 Find lenses......................................................................................................................................... 543 Pick the best lenses ........................................................................................................................... 544 Take a screenshot .................................................................................................................................. 545 Customize the Photos hub and Camera app ............................................................................................. 545 15. Games ................................................................................................................................................. 547 Understand Xbox LIVE ............................................................................................................................... 547 Get additional Xbox Games apps .............................................................................................................. 548 Find and launch the Games hub ............................................................................................................... 549 Tour of the Games hub ............................................................................................................................. 549 Find a game in the Games Store ............................................................................................................... 552 Launch the Games Store ....................................................................................................................... 552 Understand the layout of the Games Store .......................................................................................... 553 Search for a game ................................................................................................................................. 555 Find Xbox LIVE games............................................................................................................................ 556 Explore a game ...................................................................................................................................... 557 Play a game ............................................................................................................................................... 558 Send and receive game requests .......................................................................................................... 558 Earn an achievement ............................................................................................................................ 560 Pin a game to Start .................................................................................................................................... 561 Uninstall a game........................................................................................................................................ 562 View and conﬁgure your online persona .................................................................................................. 562 Have fun with your Avatar .................................................................................................................... 562 View your proﬁle ................................................................................................................................... 564 View and edit your Xbox LIVE bio ......................................................................................................... 565 Customize your avatar........................................................................................................................... 567 View your achievements ....................................................................................................................... 568

Interact with your Xbox friends................................................................................................................. 570 See which friends are online ................................................................................................................. 571 View a friend’s proﬁle ........................................................................................................................... 571 Send a message ..................................................................................................................................... 573 Read, respond to, and delete a message .............................................................................................. 574 Remove a friend .................................................................................................................................... 575 Send and respond to friend requests.................................................................................................... 575 Customize the Games hub ........................................................................................................................ 577 16. Security + Networking ........................................................................................................................ 579 Security ..................................................................................................................................................... 579 Lock screen PIN ..................................................................................................................................... 579 Wallet .................................................................................................................................................... 583 Tour of the Wallet user experience ................................................................................................... 583 Protect Wallet and on-phone purchases with a PIN ......................................................................... 584 View your payment methods and membership and loyalty cards ................................................... 586 Add a new payment method............................................................................................................. 586 View or edit a payment method ....................................................................................................... 587 Purchase an app, game, or music ..................................................................................................... 588 Add a new membership or loyalty card ............................................................................................ 589 View your deals ................................................................................................................................. 591 Add a new deal.................................................................................................................................. 592 View and use a saved deal ................................................................................................................ 594 Make a purchase with NFC Tap to Pay .............................................................................................. 595 Kid’s Corner ........................................................................................................................................... 596 Set up Kid’s Corner ............................................................................................................................ 596 Use Kid’s Corner ................................................................................................................................ 599 Customize Kid’s Corner ..................................................................................................................... 600 Backup ................................................................................................................................................... 602 Enable and conﬁgure Backup ............................................................................................................ 602 Restore a backup ............................................................................................................................... 605 Find My Phone ...................................................................................................................................... 607 Conﬁgure Find My Phone on your handset ...................................................................................... 607 Access Find My Phone on the web ................................................................................................... 608

Find your phone on a map ................................................................................................................ 609 Ring the phone remotely .................................................................................................................. 610 Lock your phone remotely and send a message to the lock screen ................................................. 610 Erase your phone remotely ............................................................................................................... 611 Phone Update ....................................................................................................................................... 612 Networking................................................................................................................................................ 615 Cellular data .......................................................................................................................................... 615 Understand which type of cellular data connection you have.......................................................... 615 Conﬁgure cellular data ...................................................................................................................... 615 Wi-Fi ...................................................................................................................................................... 616 Enable Wi-Fi ...................................................................................................................................... 617 Connect to a Wi-Fi network .............................................................................................................. 617 Handle Wi-Fi toast notiﬁcations ........................................................................................................ 619 Connect to a hidden Wi-Fi network .................................................................................................. 620 Conﬁgure advanced Wi-Fi settings.................................................................................................... 620 Bluetooth .............................................................................................................................................. 622 Understand which Bluetooth features work with Windows Phone ................................................. 622 Pair a Bluetooth device ..................................................................................................................... 622 Pair a Bluetooth device with NFC ...................................................................................................... 624 Data Sense............................................................................................................................................. 624 Conﬁgure Data Sense on ﬁrst use ..................................................................................................... 624 Understand Data Sense ..................................................................................................................... 626 Find nearby Wi-Fi connections.......................................................................................................... 628 Conﬁgure Data Sense ........................................................................................................................ 630 Use the live tile to track data usage .................................................................................................. 631 Internet sharing..................................................................................................................................... 631 Toggle Internet sharing ..................................................................................................................... 632 Conﬁgure Internet sharing ................................................................................................................ 632 Access a shared connection from another device ............................................................................ 635 Airplane mode....................................................................................................................................... 635 17. PC Integration ..................................................................................................................................... 637 Understand your options for PC/phone copy and sync ............................................................................. 637 Choose what happens when your phone is connected to the PC ............................................................ 638

Use the Windows Phone mobile app ........................................................................................................ 640 Copy ﬁles from the PC to your phone ................................................................................................... 641 Copy ﬁles from the phone to the PC ..................................................................................................... 643 Learn more about the storage usage on your phone ........................................................................ 644 Use the Windows Phone desktop application .......................................................................................... 645 Sync ﬁles from the PC to your phone .................................................................................................... 646 Copy ﬁles from the phone to your PC ................................................................................................... 647 Learn about your phone’s storage usage .......................................................................................... 649 Rename your phone .......................................................................................................................... 649 Copy ﬁles using File Explorer .................................................................................................................... 649 Import photos from the phone ................................................................................................................. 652 Releases .................................................................................................................................................... 655

Introduction Welcome to Paul Thurrott’s Windows Phone 8, my gift to the Windows Phone community. This book is free, and while my goals in writing it certainly included a desire to explore the world of self-publishing, I chose this topic for one reason and one reason only: I love Windows Phone. And I think you will as well. I’ve been enthralled by Windows Phone since Microsoft announced the new platform in February 2010 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I was so excited by this release, in fact, that I wrote the firstever book about Windows Phone, called Windows Phone 7 Secrets, in the middle part of that year, before it even shipped to the public. In doing so, I was also one of the first people outside of Microsoft to obtain a prototype Windows Phone handset, and I took it to Europe that summer after writing the book and continued the conversation by blogging about my experiences. Since then, I’ve never stopped using or writing about Windows Phone. Few people have more experience with this platform than I do. Long story short: Windows Phone was—and is—everything that Android and iPhone are not. It provides a wonderful new way of doing things. Oh, and unlike iPhone, it can actually make error-free phone calls too. Bam. I’ve certainly had my ups and downs with regards to Microsoft’s treatment of this platform. While Windows Phone has emerged during the writing of this book as the clear number three smart phone platform behind Google Android and Apple iPhone but ahead of Blackberry, it has yet to achieve what I consider to be a sustainable level of usage. But the trends are positive. My fingers are crossed. But I’ve never wavered in my support of both Windows Phone and the people who use it (or are considering using it). I test new smart phones regularly, and while I’ve kept up on the advances in Android and in Apple’s recent me-too moves with iOS 7, these platforms simply are not interesting to me. Yes, the iPhone was innovative when it arrived in 2007, but that’s also when Apple stopped innovating and started protecting their product. Android? That was never innovative. Android is a mess. Windows Phone isn’t just different. Windows Phone is better. And you can tell that’s true every time a feature emerges in the competition that copies one from Windows Phone. Social networking integration. Integrated experiences. Beautiful Swiss-influenced design and killer typography. Windows Phone did it all first. Windows Phone still does it better. And it keeps getting better. Thanks for reading. And thanks for using Windows Phone. You made the right choice. Paul Thurrott July 2013

1. Getting Started In this chapter, you will discover how to conﬁgure your Microsoft account optimally for Windows Phone, learn about the Windows Phone hardware features that matter most, and step through the initial conﬁguration of your new Windows Phone 8 handset.

Conﬁgure your Microsoft account To integrate its diverse families of online services, Microsoft has created a centralized account, called Microsoft account. It’s the key to accessing your personal data in these services on a variety of device types, including Windows 8 PCs, Windows RT tablets, Xbox, and of course Windows Phone. (It also works cross the web, of course, and on competing devices such iPhone, iPad, and Android-based handsets and tablets.) Microsoft account has become so central to how we as users access our information in Microsoft services that we can use this account to sign into a Windows-based PC, device, or phone. Because of that latter capability—which you’ll experience when you set up your new Windows Phone handset for the ﬁrst time as described later in this chapter—you should take care to properly conﬁgure your Microsoft account before purchasing the handset. But this is not just about signing in to an online account. By conﬁguring your Windows Phone handset with your Microsoft account, you will also automatically populate the phone with all of the data that is associated with that account. And it’s potentially a lot of data: Email, contacts, appointments and tasks from Outlook.com, Skype contacts, SkyDrive-based documents and other data, your cloud music collection from Xbox Music, photos stored in SkyDrive and associated services such as Facebook and Twitter, your collection of purchased apps on Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone, your Xbox Gamertag and associated achievements, Gamerscore and other data, connected social networking services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, previous Windows Phone backups, synced settings from Windows 8/RT and Oﬃce, payment options, and much, much more. And all of this information appears in the appropriate Windows Phone experiences, as you’ll see throughout this book. Of course, many of those associations don’t happen automatically. And that’s why it’s important to properly conﬁgure your Microsoft account before you acquire a Windows Phone handset and set it up for the ﬁrst time. Note: Microsoft account was previously called Windows Live ID and is still occasionally identiﬁed by that name online. Here’s the kicker: Chances are, you already have a Microsoft account. In fact, you probably have more than one. When you sign up for Outlook.com (or its predecessors, Hotmail and MSN), Xbox Live, Xbox Music and Video (previously called Zune), Oﬃce 365 Home Premium, and other Microsoft services, the account you’re creating is in fact a Microsoft account. And it will work across all of the services listed here and noted above, and with others as well. If you do have more than one Microsoft account, you will need to think about which you will use as your primary Microsoft account. That’s because certain services on Windows Phone can only be used with the same, primary Microsoft account. These include your sign-in, Xbox Live Gamertag (for games and Xbox entertainment services, which on Windows Phone is pretty much Xbox Music), and SkyDrive. You can

later conﬁgure your other Microsoft accounts on the phone as well, and access email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and other data throughout various experiences on the phone too. (But you cannot use these “secondary” Microsoft accounts for the phone sign-in, for Xbox services, or for SkyDrive.) While it’s not totally inconceivable that you do not have a Microsoft account, I’m going to assume you do. So head over to Outlook.com or Microsoft Account Sign-up with a PC-based web browser and sign up for one otherwise. (You can choose between @outlook.com, @hotmail.com and @live.com email addresses, or you can use an email address from another service, like Gmail, as your Microsoft account. I recommend not doing that, however, as there are some limitations when you use an existing email address from another service as your Microsoft account.)

Conﬁgure Microsoft account settings To conﬁgure your Microsoft account, open Microsoft Account Settings in a PC-based web browser and sign-in.

(There’s a lot of personal information on this page, so please excuse the edits.) As you can see, there is a wide range of information that can and should be conﬁgured on this and subsequent pages on this site. And some of the key options you will conﬁgure are related to account security, so it’s important to ensure that the account is conﬁgured properly. Here are some of the options you should spend time conﬁguring. Display name. On the default Overview page, you can change your display name, which will appear in a variety of places, including sent emails. Generally speaking, you should simply conﬁgure this setting to your actual name. So my display name is Paul Thurrott.

Personal Info. You can conﬁgure birth date, gender, profession, and home and work addresses. Add or change aliases. The Outlook.com email address (which can actually be an @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com or even @msn.com email address) supports multiple email aliases so you can send and receive email from other addresses, and even sign-in to devices from these aliases. Windows Phone does not directly support aliases, however, so if you sign-in with the actual account address, you will not be able to send or receive email from the aliases from Windows Phone. Password. For now at least, a strong password is your ﬁrst line of defense between your Microsoft account—which, again, is the gateway to a lot of personal information—and hackers and identity thieves who may wish to illegally gain access to this account and its contained data. You can and should conﬁgure a strong password and might consider having Microsoft require you to change it regularly. And as noted below, there are other things you can do to further secure your account. Security Info. When you sign-up for or conﬁgure your Microsoft account, Microsoft will require you to create some form of account veriﬁcation, or “security info,” typically a mobile phone number, that the ﬁrm can use to send a conﬁrmation code to prove you are who you say you are. Microsoft will also require you to conﬁgure one or more alternate email address at which it can reach you. This information and other security settings can be conﬁgured through Security Info. Spend time here, and make sure you conﬁgure at least one mobile phone number, alternate email address, and security question. You can also optionally conﬁgure two-step authentication, which is a bit ponderous but can make your account more secure. Please refer to my web-based article Enable and Use Two-Step Authentication with Your Microsoft Account for more information about this crucial part of the security puzzle. Notiﬁcations. From this interface, you can conﬁgure how and with which email account/alias you will be provided with notiﬁcations associated with this account, as well as your marketing preferences. (You can prevent Microsoft from sending promotional email to this account.) Permissions. There are a number of important settings in this area, but one is particularly relevant to Windows Phone: Manage accounts. This is where you conﬁgure the other online accounts that are “connected” to your Microsoft account. And since this is so important, we’ll examine it further in the section Connect other accounts to your Microsoft account. Billing. Because you can purchase apps, games, and music on your phone, and may subscribe to optional services like Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music Pass, and Ad-Free Outlook that make Windows Phone and your Microsoft account better, you will want to conﬁgure one or more payment options. These include credit and debit cards, of course, but can also include a PayPal account or a redeemed Microsoft gift card, which will add a particular dollar amount to your account that you can draw from as you purchase items from the phone. See the section Wallet in Chapter 16: Networking + Security for more information about paying for items on your phone.

Change your account picture It may seem frivolous, but you should consider changing the picture that is associated with your Microsoft account since this is the default picture that others will see when they add your Microsoft account to their own contacts lists. To do so, navigate to the Microsoft Account Proﬁle site with a PCbased web browser and sign-in.

Now, click Change picture and upload a favorite photo.

Connect other accounts to your Microsoft account One of the original goals of Microsoft account was to provide a single sign-on service that would work across various online accounts, including those for social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. Microsoft achieves this vision by letting you “connect” various online services to your Microsoft account. To connect social networking accounts to your Microsoft account, open Microsoft Account Settings in a PC-based web browser and sign-in. Then, navigate to Permissions, Manage Accounts and click the link See what you can add.

From this page, you can connect a variety of third party (i.e. non-Microsoft) online accounts to your Microsoft account. Three—Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—are particularly relevant to Windows Phone, which oﬀers nice integrated features that let you access contacts from these accounts, make posts, comment on posts, and more. (And if you’re in China, Sina Weibo also oﬀers this kind of connectivity.) Note: You can only connect one of each account type to your Microsoft account. Let’s look at connecting Facebook as an example. Click the Chat with your Facebook friends link.

Click Connect. On the Facebook web site, you will be prompted to sign in with your Facebook email and password. Do so. The account will then be connected to your Microsoft account.

Click Done. Now, you can conﬁgure which information is shared through the connected account. On the left, click Manage Your Accounts.

Under Facebook, click Edit.

This page will vary from account to account, but for Facebook you have a wide range of integration capabilities on Windows Phone. Examine the settings and see whether you’d like to disable any of them. (If you actually use Facebook regularly, you will want to do so from Windows Phone and will most likely wish to leave most of these settings enabled.) Note that you can also use this interface to remove a connected account. Done? It’s time to choose a phone.

Choose a Windows Phone handset Hardware makers such as HTC, Huawei, Nokia and Samsung sell various Windows Phone handset models in markets around the world, and your options will vary not only by locale—some phones are only sold in the United States, for example—but by wireless carrier—where some phones are sold only by AT&T Wireless, for example. Additionally, these ﬁrms have developed somewhat artiﬁcial ways to diﬀerentiate entry-level, mid-level and high-end Windows Phone handsets, with some important features only oﬀered on more expensive mid-level and high-end devices. Since the Windows Phone handset market is always changing, and can vary wildly depending on where you live, it doesn’t make sense for me to try and recommend speciﬁc devices. But there are a few things you need to consider, more generally, including the wide range of hardware components that you can and will see across the various available phones. You should also seriously consider limiting your choice to Nokia’s Lumia handsets, as I’ll explain below.

Understand Windows Phone hardware components and which really matter Processor. While all Windows Phone 8 handsets come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual core microprocessor, the clock speed of that processor will vary from 1 GHz in entry-level models to 1.5 GHz in mid-level and high-end phones. In theory, the faster the better, though I’ve never actually noticed any real-world diﬀerence in my use of many diﬀerent Windows Phone handsets. But it’s possible that gamers

in particular would beneﬁt from the faster clock speed. That said, the processor is rarely a true diﬀerentiator for actual buyers. You’re going to buy the phone you want—or at least a certain type of phone—and get the processor it ships with. Graphics. Since graphics processing is built into the Snapdragon processor used by all Windows Phone handsets, this is also not a concern for would-be buyers. Windows Phone 8 provides DirectX-powered graphics support with hardware acceleration for Direct3D. Display size. Windows Phone handsets come in a variety of sizes, with low-end devices typically featuring 3.8-inch to 4.3-inch screens, mid-level devices oﬀering roughly 4.3-inch screens, and high-end devices typically oﬀering the biggest screens of 4.5- to 6 inches. Bigger screens require bigger devices, so the trade-oﬀ to the copious real estate is often a bigger, heavy and thicker device. Display size is a personal preference, and I happen to prefer devices with bigger screens. Display resolution. Windows Phone supports four screen resolutions: WVGA (800 x 480), 720p (1280 x 720), WXGA (1280 x 768) and 1080p (1920 x 1080, sometimes called Full HD). As a rule of thumb, the bigger screen sizes tend to be made available on bigger screens, which somewhat mitigates the presumed advantage of the extra pixels, and on higher-end handsets. But contrary to conventional wisdom, even the supposedly lowly WVGA resolution looks great in Windows Phone 8, with crisp text and clear graphics, thanks to the resolution independent design of the operating system. With very rare exceptions you’d have to be looking for to really see, I’ve found that the display resolution does not matter at all, and I have no issues going back to a WVGA screen after using a WXGA-based device. Do not believe the hype on this one: In my opinion, display resolution should not factor into your Windows Phone handset decision-making process. Display colors. Windows Phone 8 requires a minimum color depth of 16-bits, but all of the real-world handsets I’ve seen—regardless of which part of the market they serve—oﬀer 24-bit color, or 16 million colors. You can consider that the standard, and do not need to worry about devices oﬀering poorer color support. Touch display. All Windows Phone 8 handsets provide a multi-touch screen with at least four touch points. I’m not aware of any handsets that oﬀer more than four touch points, nor is it clear why such a thing would be desirable anyway. Display technologies. In addition to the size, resolution and color depth of the display, Windows Phone makers are free to use their choice of display hardware technology as well. The screens themselves can range from standard LCD-style displays to AMOLED-type displays that oﬀer more vivid colors and deeper blacks. And there are other diﬀerences to keep an eye on, including brightness. Most Windows Phone 8 handsets also utilize some form of Gorilla Glass technology, which helps protect the screen from scratches and, oftentimes, from breaking after a fall. And certain screens can even be touched and used while you’re wearing gloves, a nice addition for those in cold climates. If possible, compare the screens of the devices you’re considered in multiple lighting conditions, especially outside, where most smart phone screens get washed out and can be hard to read (or impossible with sunglasses on). This is an area where device makers try to diﬀerentiate, but the options can be confusing. Trust your own eyes. RAM. Windows Phone 8 handsets must ship with a minimum of 512 MB of RAM for those devices with WVGA (800 x 480) screens, 1 GB of RAM for those with 720p (1280 x 720) and WXGA (1280 x 768)

screens, and 2 GB for those with 1080p screens. As a general rule, you will see 512 MB of RAM in lowend phones, 1 GB of RAM in mid-level phones, and 2 GB in high-end phones. If you will be playing games at all on your Windows Phone handset, you will want a device with 1 GB of RAM (or more). But don’t bother comparing the RAM in a Windows Phone to that in a high-end Android handset: Windows Phone is far more eﬃcient and works great with less than what Android requires. Onboard storage. Windows Phone 8 requires that the device include a minimum of 4 GB of ﬂash memory, or onboard storage. Practically speaking, you will see 8 GB of internal storage on low-end devices, 16 GB on mid-level devices and 32 GB on high-end devices. 8 GB is actually ﬁne for light usages, especially if the device is expandable via micro-SD (see below). But if you’re serious about Windows Phone, I recommend 16 GB or more and a device with micro-SD if possible. Micro-SD storage expansion. Windows Phone 8 devices can optionally provide internal storage expansion of up to 64 GB via a micro-SD slot that supports either micro-SD or micro-SDXC memory cards. With such storage you can optionally conﬁgure the device to store music, videos and photos—but, crucially, not apps or app data—on micro-SD instead of the onboard storage, and you can add this storage to the device at any time. Oddly, some high-end phones with 32 GB of onboard storage do not support micro-SD expansion. I recommend getting a device with micro-SD expansion if possible. Networking. All Windows Phone 8 handsets support 802.11b/g Wi-Fi-type wireless networking, Bluetooth, and some form of cellular (voice, text, data) networking, the latter of which will vary by phone, locale, and wireless carrier. 802.11n and 802.11ac networking is optional. Practically speaking, most Windows Phone 8 handset buyers will ﬁnd their choices limited by the devices made available through their wireless carrier, and each of these devices will support the fastest and most reliable cellular networks provided by that carrier. Hardware sensors. All Windows Phone 8 handsets provide accelerometer, proximity, magnetometer and ambient light sensors, as well as GPS navigation with Assisted Global Navigation Satellite System (AGNSS) support and a vibration motor. All but newer, low-end handsets include a compass. And handset makers can optionally provide a gyroscope sensor as well, which provides more accurate device positioning capabilities and is useful for games and some apps. So while a gyroscope is available in some mid-level phones and all high-end handsets, I’m not sure most would ever notice a diﬀerence. NFC. NFC (near ﬁeld communication) can be used to make secure payments (albeit only in France at this writing), share items (photos, contacts, documents, and much more; perhaps you’ve seen the ads where users “bump” their phones together) with others who also have NFC-compatible devices, pair more easily with Bluetooth devices (including speakers) and more. NFC is only available in some Windows Phone 8 handsets, typically on high-end devices. Generally speaking, it is a nicety not a requirement, though that will change over time as more NFC-compatible devices emerge. USB connectivity. All Windows Phone handsets include a micro-USB 2.0 port for charging and PC connectivity. Headphone jack. All Windows Phone handsets include a headphone jack for headsets and speakers, and all provide support for three-button headsets for phone and media playback capabilities. Hardware buttons. All Windows Phone handsets include seven hardware buttons (though the latter three can be capacitive buttons): Power, Volume Up, Volume Down, Camera, Back, Start and Search.

(Technically, the Camera button is optional, but no handset maker has ever shipped a Windows Phone handset without one.) The use of these buttons is discussed in the section Understand the hardware buttons in Chapter 2: The Windows Phone User Experience. Camera(s). All Windows Phone handsets ship with a main, rear-facing camera, and device makers can also add an optional secondary, front-facing camera (and many do). Both must be at least VGA (640 x 480, or the equivalent of about .3 megapixels) quality, but for the most part you will ﬁnd rear-facing cameras with 5 megapixels (and better) in low-end devices and 8 megapixels (and better) in mid-level and high-end devices. (Front-facing cameras range from VGA to HD resolution.) Megapixels refers to the number of pixels, and is not a measure of quality. Most Windows Phone 8 cameras can be considered “good” or better, while the cameras in most Nokia Lumia handsets in particular are “very good” or better. One Nokia device, the Lumia 1020, is particularly interesting to the photo obsessed as it ships with a 41 megapixel camera that rivals the optics found in point-and-click and even digital SLR cameras. Wireless charging. Some high-end Windows Phone handsets support the Qi wireless charging standard and some mid-level phones can be expanded with a clip-on shell case that adds this capability. Once you’ve used wireless charging you will never want to go back to old-fashioned USB cables, and I recommend trying to get a device that at least supports this feature as an option.

Understand the Nokia advantage While I’m not a Nokia spokesperson, it’s important for any potential (or existing) Windows Phone user to understand that when it comes to this market, there is Nokia and then there is everything else. Yes, HTC, Huawei and Samsung make Windows Phone handsets and, yes, some of them are even excellent. But where these other ﬁrms make most of their proﬁts and sales on Android-based smart phones and consider Windows Phone a minority side-project, only Nokia is “all in” with Windows Phone. This ﬁrm has bet its entire future on the success of Windows Phone, and only Nokia delivers a wide range of exclusive features that in many cases can only be found on its ever-growing family of Lumia handsets. Note: Nokia is so important to Windows Phone that Microsoft announced its intention to purchase the ﬁrm's devices and services business in late 2013. That purchase is expected to conclude in 2014, though it's not clear how Microsoft's ownership will change the branding or distribution of these devices. Some of the advantages to Nokia include: HERE location apps and services. In addition to making the best Windows Phone handsets, Nokia also makes the best set of location services available anywhere—yes, including Google Maps—and exposes them via a set of mobile apps, some of which are exclusive to (or more powerful on) Lumia handsets. These include HERE Maps, HERE Drive and Drive+, Here City Lens, and HERE Transit. This technology is so good, in fact, that Microsoft made HERE the underlying location services platform for all Windows Phone handsets. So this technology even drives the Bing Maps app on non-Nokia handsets. Superior camera technology. While some Windows Phone handsets oﬀer decent cameras, the cameras in Nokia’s high-end Lumia devices don’t just trounce the Windows Phone competition, they’re superior to anything available on Android or iPhone, especially in low-light conditions. Put simply, Nokia makes the best-overall smart phone cameras available anywhere. That’s true across the ﬁrm’s Lumia product line, but those who are interested in photography above all else should pay attention to the Lumia 1020, which provides a category-busting 41 megapixel camera with superior optics.

Exclusive apps and services. Aside from the superior HERE apps, Nokia also oﬀers a crazy-good selection of exclusive in-house and third-party apps (and games), providing Lumia users with a range of content that isn’t available to other Windows Phone users. This includes a wide range of photo apps, music apps (like Nokia Music+, a Nokia subscription music service), and popular games like Bejeweled Live+. Hardware accessories. Nokia is the only Windows Phone maker to support the ecosystem with a wide range of compatible hardware accessories that make your Lumia handset better. These include speakers (with wireless charging built-in), headsets and headphones, wireless chargers of various kinds, portable USB chargers, wireless car chargers, special cases, and much more. Nokia even makes a magical device called Loop that makes smart phones of any kind work better for the deaf (with cochlear implants) or hard of hearing (with hearing aids). This company is special, folks. Now, you may be perfectly happy with an HTC handset or whatever, and I would never try to convince you otherwise. But just be aware of the advantages that Nokia brings to the table. They are considerable.

Set up your phone Whichever you choose, when you bring your new handset home, you will want to charge it, and then turn on the device and step through the initial set up. This is a straightforward process that can vary a bit from phone to phone, but it generally works as follows.

Complete the initial set up wizard Note: This assumes that you or your wireless carrier has inserted a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card, if required, in the phone. Cellular connectivity is assumed. First, hold down the power button on the handset to turn it on. You’ll feel a small vibration to indicate that the device is powering up. A logo will appear for your device’s manufacturer (Nokia, HTC, Samsung and others), followed by a blue Windows Phone logo screen. Finally, the Welcome to Your Windows Phone screen appears and you can begin the set up process.

Tap Get Started.

If prompted, choose the correct language in the Choose a Language screen and then tap Next.

In the Windows Phone Terms of Use screen, tap Accept.

In this step, I strongly recommend choosing the aptly-named Recommended option, which conﬁgures your Windows Phone handset to work optimally: Cellular data is enabled, updates are automatically downloaded (when possible, but not installed until you OK them), and your handset will occasional send Microsoft “usage feedback” (really metrics about the quality of your experience so they can ﬁx bugs). Normally, you will tap Recommended. But if you’d rather OK these items one-by-one, tap Custom instead.

At this point, you reach what is the most crucial part of the Setup wizard. You can sign in to an existing Microsoft account, create a new Microsoft account (and then sign in with that), or choose to sign in later.

If you followed my advice in the section Conﬁgure your Microsoft account earlier in this chapter, you will have created a Microsoft account by now and you should tap Sign In to sign in with that account. This book does not cover using Windows Phone without a Microsoft account, and while power users may choose to skip the sign in here for some reason, I do not generally advise this.

Here, you are prompted to enter the email address and password for your Microsoft account. When you tap the Microsoft account ﬁeld, an on-screen (or “virtual”) keyboard will appear so you can enter this information. To enter your password, tap the Password ﬁeld ﬁrst.

Tap Sign In to sign in to your Microsoft account. If you had previously used this Microsoft account with another Windows Phone handset, you may see a Restore Your Phone screen, which lets you restore this device using a cloud-based backup. This process is described in the section Restore a backup in Chapter 16: Security + Networking.

If the Restore Your Phone screen appears, Tap Don’t Restore and then Next.

In the Back Up Your Stuﬀ screen, you are prompted to automatically backup key Windows Phone data such as a your photos, text messages, and phone settings. (Backup is discussed further in the section Backup in Chapter 16: Security & Networking.) Tap Yes unless you intend to conﬁgure this later.

Now, tap Next so that Windows Phone can ﬁnish setting up the handset for your account. This process could take a few minutes. When you ﬁnally arrive at the Windows Phone Start screen, a new text message will arrive welcoming you to your new phone.

Tap the notiﬁcation at the top of the screen to view the message. If you’re too slow, it will disappear. In that case, tap the Messaging tile instead. It looks like so:

Then, in the Messaging app that appears, tap the message to view it.

Note: You can learn more about Messaging in 7. Messaging. Tap the Start button on your Windows Phone handset to return to the Start screen. The Windows Phone user interface is described in the next chapter.

Connect to a Wi-Fi network While it’s not strictly necessary, it’s good practice to connect to your home Wi-Fi wireless network as soon as possible: Wi-Fi is faster than most cellular broadband connections and doesn’t come with the monthly bandwidth limits that accompany most smart phone wireless plans. To connect to Wi-Fi, swipe from right to left on the Start screen to display the All Apps list. Then scroll down and tap the Settings item.

In Settings, tap Wi-Fi.

Enable Wi-Fi if needed and then select your home wireless network and, if prompted, enter the appropriate password. When the connection is complete, Wi-Fi Settings will indicate it has connected, and the Wi-Fi icon in the status bar at the top of the screen will light-up.

Note: Wi-Fi and other networking features in Windows Phone are further discussed in the section Networking in Chapter 16: Security + Networking.

Set up and conﬁgure accounts Before jumping too far into Windows Phone, you should take the time to set up and conﬁgure additional accounts. Windows Phone supports multiple account types for email, calendar, contacts, and tasks, as well as social networking services. And these accounts work in tandem with your primary Microsoft account to “light up” experiences on your phone. To set up and conﬁgure your accounts, navigate to Settings, System, Email + Accounts. If you conﬁgured a new phone as described above, you will typically see only one account listed: the primary Microsoft account you signed in with when you ﬁrst set up the phone.

Note: It is possible that other accounts will appear here after an initial phone setup. That’s because some accounts, like Twitter, are actually tied to your Microsoft account behind the scenes.

Set up a new account To add an account, tap the Add An Account link.

What you see here will vary from phone to phone because some phone manufacturers (like Nokia) and some wireless carriers (such as Verizon Wireless) add their own special account types to the stock list provided by Microsoft. Unless otherwise noted, these account types will generally just require your signin information—your email address or account name and password—but some account types are only available in certain locales. Most Windows Phone handsets will provide access to the following account types: Outlook. This item lets you conﬁgure Exchange Server, Exchange Online, Oﬃce 365, Outlook.com, Hotmail or any other account that uses Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) technologies to provide push-based access to email, contacts, calendar, and tasks (to-do’s). Hotmail. This item lets you conﬁgure Hotmail and Outlook.com-type accounts and also provides pushbased access to email, contacts, calendar, and tasks (to-do’s). Yahoo! Mail. This item lets you connect to Yahoo! email only, but not contacts or calendar. Google. With this, you can sync your Gmail or Google Apps-based email or email, contacts, and calendar.

Facebook. This account type connects your Facebook account to Windows Phone, allowing you to post to the social networking service, view your friends’ posts in the People hub, view your friends’ photo posts in the Photos hub, “like” items and more. Your Facebook contacts can be added to the People hub and you can optionally connect the Messaging app in Windows Phone to Facebook Chat as well. (However, you cannot view or write Facebook-based messages using the Mail app.) Twitter. This account type integrates your Twitter account with Windows Phone, enabling you to send tweets, view tweets and direct messages, view photos, and more. If this is the ﬁrst time you’ve conﬁgured your Twitter account, you will need to step through a short web-based wizard that connects your Twitter account to your Microsoft account. Note that you can only connect one Twitter account to your Microsoft account and to Windows Phone. LinkedIn. With this item you can connect to your contacts on the LinkedIn social networking service. If this is the ﬁrst time you’ve conﬁgured your LinkedIn account, you will need to step through a short webbased wizard that connects your LinkedIn account to your Microsoft account. You can only connect one LinkedIn account to your Microsoft account and to Windows Phone. Other Account/Advanced Setup. If you’re using an old-fashioned email server from the 1990’s, Windows Phone also supports the POP and IMAP legacy account types through the Other Account interface. Additionally, you can use the Advanced Setup option if directed to do so by your corporate administrator. Note that both of these account type entries may require more information than your sign-in information to be fully conﬁgured.

Conﬁgure an account Each time you add an account to Windows Phone, it will connect to the online service and synchronize with whatever data is supported by that account type. Once this process is complete, you should tap on the account in the Email + Accounts list and examine the available options. Chances are, you will want to make some changes from the defaults on those accounts that do support further conﬁguration.

Some of the more common settings you will be able to conﬁgure across various account types include: Account name. The Microsoft account, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Google account types let you name the account as you wish. This can be useful when you have two accounts of the same type and wish to diﬀerentiate them. Download new content. The Microsoft account, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Google account types let you determine when to download new content, choosing between “as items arrive” or various time intervals such as every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes and so on. For these account types, which are all essentially push-based, you may wish to consider using “as items arrive,” which is the setting for push. You can also optionally conﬁgure each of these account types—except Microsoft account, oddly—to download new content only when you manually check (which you can do by tapping the Sync app bar button in the Mail app, for example). Download email from. For email-based accounts—Microsoft account, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Google—you can choose how much email to sync to the phone. The default is “the last 7 days, but you may wish to store more (up to all of your email, which is not advised) or less (“the last three days”) based on your oﬄine needs. Content type to sync. Depending on the account, you will have up to four choices here, which can be some combination of Email, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks. Your primary Microsoft account and Yahoo!

Mail can only sync email, for example (though the former also syncs contacts, calendar and tasks automatically), while Outlook account types can use all four. Google can sync email, contacts and calendar. Note: The Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account types do not support further conﬁguration from this interface. However, you can access the Settings interface for the People hub to ﬁlter your contact list by determining which accounts will supply contacts to the hub. This is discussed in the section Customize People in Chapter 5: People + Me. Note: You can also use the Settings interface for the Calendar app to determine which calendars from which accounts are displayed in the app. For example, if you have two calendars associated with your Hotmail account, you could enable calendar access from the account settings, but then use Calendar Settings to choose to display only one of them in Calendar. Check out the section Use Calendar Settings in Chapter 10: Calendar for more information.

Update apps The built-in apps on your phone should have been updated during initial Setup. But over time, the app makers will update those apps and you will see a notiﬁcation on the Windows Store tile that app updates are available. The number you see here will indicate how many apps need to be updated.

To update apps, tap the Windows Store tile. In the ﬁrst screen of this app, you will see an entry at the bottom of the list indicating that there is one or more app updates.

Tap the Updates link to see which updates are available.

From here, you can tap the Update All button to update all apps immediately. Or you can tap an individual app to learn more about the app and update it individually. Whichever you choose, some apps may require you to grant them certain rights. For example, many apps require the ability to access your location information. If you do not grant this access, the app update will not install.

As apps update, you can watch the progress from the Downloads screen that appears. Or, you can simply exit the Store and do other things with your phone while the apps are updated.

2. The Windows Phone User Experience When Microsoft reentered the smart phone market with Windows Phone, it started over with a new platform and a new user experience. That is, rather than simply copy the market leader at the time, Microsoft went in a completely diﬀerent direction. But Windows Phone isn’t just diﬀerent just to be diﬀerent, it’s better. And it’s better because Windows Phone, at every level, is guided by known good design. The inspiration for Windows Phone, from a design perspective, is Swiss-style print and packaging design—the so-called Swiss grid system—and the simple way-ﬁnding graphics one sees in train stations, airports, and other transportation hubs around the world. These designs have been proven, over long periods of time, to not only work well, but to be universally well-understood. Windows Phone is modern and beautiful. It embraces several core tenets, which might be summarized simply as “doing more with less.” That is, rather than waste valuable on-screen real estate with toolbars and other unnecessary nonsense, Windows Phone places content above the surrounding chrome, or supporting UI. The content itself is often the interface, something you can interact with directly. Windows Phone utilizes white space in a way that will be familiar to any designer, but is unheard of in other smart phones. It features strong geometric shapes and embraces bold, beautiful typography in ways that other phones simply do not. But design isn’t just about how something looks. Windows Phone is also highly functional and more usable than other smart phones. You don’t need to remember which app to launch to ﬁnd certain information, nor do you need to hunt and peck through endless grids of lifeless icons. Instead, Windows Phone oﬀers animated, live interfaces that keep you up to date at a glance. It provides integrated experiences, backed by online services, and works the way you do. If you want to do something with photos, you use the Photos hub. Music lover? Try Music + Videos. Looking to interact with your friends and family in a virtually unlimited manner? Just try the People hub. Games player? Wait for it: We have a Games hub too. The whole thing is simple and logical. And yes, better. And in this chapter, I’m going to show you how it works, how you get around, and what you need to do to make it yours.

Basic navigation Windows Phone navigation consists of various hardware and software interfaces. But at its heart, it is of course a multi-touch system that relies on on-screen gestures that typically require one or two ﬁngers. So let’s take a quick look at the basic multi-touch screen features you’ll need to master ﬁrst.

Use the multi-touch screen Like all modern smart phones, Windows Phone supports a series of multi-touch gestures that are common across the various experiences you will encounter.

Tap Tap is the most basic gesture: Just press and then quickly release your ﬁnger against an on-screen object. Tap is very common throughout Windows Phone as a means to select a button or other object, to launch apps via a tile or icon, and elsewhere.

Tap and hold To open a context-speciﬁc menu, you can tap and hold on an on-screen object. This is akin to rightclicking something with your mouse on a PC. Tap and hold is fairly common in Windows Phone and is a gesture you might try if you want to act on an object—say, a photo—but don’t see any obvious UI for doing so.

Double-tap This uncommon gesture is exactly what it sounds like: Two quick taps in sequence, and similar to doubleclick a mouse on a PC. You use double-tap to zoom in a speciﬁc amount—usually 200 percent—when viewing a photo or map, for example.

Flick To move from left to right in the Start screen (to reveal All Apps as noted below), a hub (as described below) or in a pivot-based app, just ﬂick your ﬁnger across the screen horizontally. Generally speaking, you can ﬂick to the left or right, but it is more common to ﬂick to the left (which navigates to the right).

Pan A variant of ﬂick, you can use pan to move between screens in a more measured way: Simply tap, hold, and then move left or right to pan. This is akin to scrolling in a PC-based application.

Pinch To zoom out, you can use a two-ﬁngered pinch gesture: Tap and hold with your thumb and foreﬁnger and then move the two ﬁngers towards each other on the surface of the screen.

Stretch To zoom, use the stretch gesture, which is sort of a “reverse pinch”: Tap and hold with your thumb and foreﬁnger and then move the two ﬁngers away from each other on the surface of the screen.

Device rotation While it is not supported by the Start screen, All Apps view or some apps, many Windows Phone apps support both the default portrait orientation as well as a landscape orientation: To see if the current experience supports this, simply rotate the phone in space. Here’s an example of a photo shown in both portrait and landscape view. Portrait view:

Landscape view:

Note: Many games require you to rotate the phone into landscape orientation before you can play.

Understand the hardware buttons Each Windows Phone handset includes the same set of hardware buttons. (Check out the section Understand Windows Phone hardware components and which really matter in Chapter 1 for a rundown of the hardware components you will see in various Windows Phone handsets, however.) These include:

Power button As its name suggests, this button powers the phone on and oﬀ, but it’s more commonly used to toggle the screen on and oﬀ. To actually shut down the phone, press and hold the Power button.

Your phone’s maker can position the Power button where they wish. On Nokia Lumia handsets, it is on the middle of the right side of the device, between the Volume and Camera buttons (and so positioned to enable easy one-handed use). But other hardware makers position this button on the top or the left side of the device.

Back button The Back button is always located on the front of the phone, below the screen (when held in the normal, portrait mode orientation), and to the left of the Start and Search buttons. This position is consistent across all Windows Phone handsets. To use the Back button, simply press it. Windows Phone uses what’s called a “back stack” to let you “go back” to the previous screen, much as you can go back to the previous screen in a web browser by clicking its Back button. (And, not coincidentally, when you’re using Internet Explorer on Windows Phone, the Back button on the handset does indeed perform this duty.) Pressing the Back button can exit you out of an app, return you to a previous app, or navigate you to a previous screen in the same app you’re current using … all depending on what it is you have been doing. The Back button is also the front-end to Windows Phone’s multitasking capabilities: Press and hold this button to view the Switcher screen, which lets you switch between all of the apps that currently are currently running. This can be faster than pressing Back many times, but navigating to a previous app this

way will also “reset” the back stack so that the app you’re switching to is now in a diﬀerent location in the stack.

To switch to a new app in Switcher, swipe left or right and then tap the app you wish to use. You can also exist Switcher by pressing Back again.

Start button Always located in the middle of the row of hardware buttons that is found under the screen on every Windows Phone handset, the Start button works as it does in desktop versions of Windows: It navigates you immediately back to the Start screen, no matter what you’re currently doing. Just press the button to go back to Start. You can also press and hold on the Start button to activate Windows Phone’s speech functionality, where you can speak into the phone’s microphone to launch apps, search the web, call a contact’s phone, send a text message, and more.

Search button The Search button—which is always located on the right side of the three hardware buttons that appear below the screen of every Windows Phone handset—launches the Bing Search experience, which helps you ﬁnd anything, anywhere, at any time. Bing Search is discussed in detail in 4. Search.

Note: As any Windows Phone user can tell you, there’s something odd about the location of this button that makes it annoyingly easy to press by mistake. It seems like every time you pass your phone to someone to show them a photo or other content, someone presses this button by mistake, ruining the experience.

Volume Up and Volume Down buttons All Windows Phone handsets include dedicated Volume Up and Volume Down buttons, though they can be located as per the hardware maker’s discretion. The buttons work when the phone is “oﬀ” (i.e. when the display is oﬀ), but when the screen is on, even if on the lock screen, you will see a small overlay indicating the current volume level as well as other information.

And if you are using the device’s media playback functionality—perhaps to play a podcast, music or some other related content—the overlay will include playback controls as well.

Note: Windows Phone handles system volume and phone call volume separately. System volume operates on a scale from 0 (mute) to 30 (full volume) while phone volume goes from 0 to 10. Why? Because Microsoft says so, that’s why.

Camera Though it is not technically a requirement, all Windows Phone handsets include a dedicated Camera button, which can be located on any edge of the handset. The Camera button provides a number of functions. You can tap and hold it brieﬂy to launch the Camera app from anywhere in Windows Phone, tap it to take a shot once the Camera app is running, or tap it lightly to focus on the center of the viewﬁnder. The Camera app is detailed in the section Take photos and videos in Chapter 14: Photos.

Understand common software interfaces In addition to the hardware buttons described previously, Windows Phone oﬀers a consistent set of software interfaces that you will see throughout the OS, apps, and settings screens that you will encounter. Some of the more common ones are described here.

Status bar You will ﬁnd a status bar at the top of the Windows Phone screen, which displays status icons for such things as network connectivity, battery life, clock and more. But there are caveats: It’s often (but not always) partially hidden, so you’ll need to tap the top of the screen to display all of it. And some apps, especially games, hide the status bar, so it’s not available everywhere. For example, if you’re viewing the Start screen, a clock appears at the top right of the screen. This clock is actually sitting at the right side of the status bar, which is hidden by default.

To see the rest of the status bar, just tap right at the top of the screen. More icons will appear.

What you see here will depend on your phone, your connectivity, and other factors. But some of the more common icons include: Cellular signal strength. This can be from one “bar” to ﬁve, with ﬁve being the strongest signal. Cellular connection type. You will also see a notation next to the cellular signal strength icon such as 4G, LTE or similar, which indicates the type of cellular network to which you are connected. Roaming. If this icon is present, you are roaming and not using your wireless carrier’s network. Wi-Fi. When this icon is present, you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Internet sharing. This icon indicates that are you sharing your cellular Internet connection. Bluetooth. This icon appears when your phone is connected to a Bluetooth device. Vibrate. This icon indicates that your phone is in vibrate mode, so the ringer will not sound when a call arrives. Location services. This icon indicates that an app on the phone is accessing your location data. Battery. The battery icon provides a rough measurement of the remaining life of the phone’s battery. Note: Status bar icons are discussed further throughout the book as required.

Onscreen keyboard Since it’s not 1999 anymore, you won’t ﬁnd any Windows Phone handsets with a hardware keyboard. Instead, Windows Phone uses an onscreen, or virtual, keyboard, similar to that found on competing smart phones. The Windows Phone keyboard is smart in various ways. For example, it won’t appear until you need it to, so that you can view as much of the screen as possible. To display the onscreen keyboard, just tap anywhere you can type. For example, if you use the Nokia HERE Maps app, there’s no keyboard visible by default and you are presented with a beautiful, full-screen experience (on the left, below). But tap the Search button in the app bar at the bottom of the screen and the onscreen keyboard appears, allowing you to search for a location immediately.

The onscreen keyboard also provides an auto-suggestion feature called Word Flow. So as you type, suggestions appear in the bar right above the keyboard. If you see what you want, you can just tap the suggestion instead of continuing to type.

Because of the limits of onscreen real estate, you can’t see every possible key onscreen at once. To access numbers and symbols, tap the &123 key.

Note: And don’t forget the More (->) key: You can tap that to access even more symbols. You can also access hidden keys by tapping and holding on certain virtual keys. For example, if you tap and hold on the period (.) key, you will see a pop-up with additional punctuation keys.

The onscreen keyboard also adapts to what you’re doing. If you’re sending a text message or email message, for example, you’ll see an emoticon key at the bottom of the onscreen keyboard that provides access to a wide range of emoticons.

But if you’re browsing the web with Internet Explorer and tap the address bar, you’ll see a special .com key so you don’t have to type that out. (And here’s a tip: Tap and hold that key to see additional options.)

Copy and paste Like Windows for PCs, Windows Phone supports copy and paste functionality via a system-wide clipboard. However, unlike Windows for PCs, Windows Phone can only copy and paste text between apps. To copy text, you must ﬁrst select it. To do so, tap on a word to create a selection area. Then, use the supplied “grab handles” at the start and end of the selection area to drag out the area until it encompasses all of the text you wish to copy. You will notice that a Copy icon appears in the center of this selection.

Tap the Copy icon to copy that text to the clipboard. Now, open the app into which you’d like to paste the text. When the onscreen keyboard appears, you’ll see that there is a Paste icon in the suggestions area at the top of the keyboard.

To paste the text, just tap the Paste icon.

Note: Text selection and copy and paste is discussed a bit more in the section Word Mobile in Chapter 12: Oﬃce + OneNote.

Start experience Your daily Windows Phone experience starts, literally, with Start. What Microsoft calls the Start experience is the place from which you can launch apps and view detailed status notiﬁcations from live tiles that represent apps and are backed by online services. This is a big diﬀerentiator from other smart phone platforms, which oﬀer static icons that can oﬀer only basic (read: borderline useless) notiﬁcations. It consists of two basic interfaces, the Start screen and All Apps. The Start screen is what you see when you turn on your phone (after the lock screen, which is discussed later in the chapter and then throughout the book as needed). It consists of tiles of various sizes that represent the apps and other experiences you care about—and use—most often. All Apps, as its name suggests, represents the full list of apps (but, oddly, not games) that are installed on your phone.

Understand the Start screen The Windows Phone Start screen works like the Start screen in Windows 8 and RT and like the Start menu in previous versions of Windows: It provides a place for you to “pin” tiles for your most frequentlyused apps and other experiences.

By default, the Start screen is laid out with a custom tile collection speciﬁed by your wireless carrier or handset maker. But the Start screen is yours and you can customize it how you like with the tiles that matter most to you. You can remove any tiles you don’t want to see or use regularly. You can resize tiles

using up to three sizes (depending on the tile). And some apps even let you pin what’s called secondary tiles to your Start screen. So while you could launch a sports app like ESPN and use it normally, that app also oﬀers a way to pin a tile for your favorite team to the Start screen too. The big diﬀerentiator here is that the tiles on the Start screen are often live, meaning that they provide glanceable information that, in many cases, means you don’t have to actually launch the app to ﬁnd out what’s going on. The Calendar tile, for example, will display information about your next appointment, which is often all you need. And the Photos tile can animate through a slideshow of your favorite pictures. Note: On most Windows Phone handsets, the Start screen provides room for two columns of square, medium-sized tiles. On those handsets with 1080p screens, however, Windows Phone provides room for three columns of square, medium-sized tiles. So your screen may diﬀer somewhat from the examples shown here.

Understand All Apps The Start screen is useful, but sometimes you need to access an app that isn’t represented by a Start screen tile. When that happens, you can access All Apps: Just swipe from right to left across the face of the Start screen and the All Apps list will appear.

As you might expect, you can simply scroll through the list to ﬁnd what you’re looking for, and the apps are listed alphabetically. You can also use the Search button on the left to ﬁlter the list: As you type, the All Apps list is trimmed to show only those apps that match what you’re typing.

And once you’ve installed enough apps, the All Apps list will be segregated by letter, with tappable letter icons.

Tap one of those letter icons to display a quick jump menu that lets you quickly move to apps that start with a particular letter. To jump down to those apps that start with the letter ‘u’ just tap the U tile in this menu.

One thing you won’t ﬁnd in All Apps, curiously, is games (which, after all, are just another kind of app). To see the list of games installed on your phone, you must instead launch the Games hub, which is usually found on your Start screen but can also be found under ‘g’ in All Apps.

Note: You can learn more about Windows Phone games and the Games hub in 15. Games.

Customize Start screen tiles You can customize the Start screen in various ways (and be sure to check out the Personalization section later in this chapter for a look at how much conﬁguring the theme can change how the Start screen looks). The most obvious thing you can do is customize which tiles appear on this screen, and how they look and where they are located. Tile positioning, resizing and removal all start with the same basic gesture: You tap and hold on the tile you wish to aﬀect until it visually pops up and displays a few “handle” controls like so.

This tile is said to be selected. And once a tile is selected, you can perform other actions on it as described below. When you’re done performing these actions, you can deselect the tile by tapping elsewhere on-screen.

Reposition a Start screen tile To reposition a selected tile, simply drag it to a new location. As you move the tile through the other tiles, they will move to accommodate the tile.

Resize a Start screen tile All tiles support at least two tile sizes, and many support three. These include small, medium and wide.

As a rule of thumb, you should consider using small tiles for those apps that don’t display a lot of live information and medium or wide for those that do. But it is up to you: You can resize and position tiles as you like, of course. To resize a selected tile, repeatedly tap the Size handle that appears in the lower-right of the tile. As you do, it will toggle through the available sizes.

Remove a Start screen tile To remove or “un-pin” a selected tile, simply tap the Unpin handle that appears in the upper-right of the tile. The tile will disappear without any additional warning.

Pin an app to the Start screen To pin an app to the Start screen, navigate to All Apps and locate the app you wish to pin. Then, tap and hold on the app icon or name.

In the pop-up menu that appears, select Pin to Start. The new tile will appear, medium-sized by default, at the bottom of the Start screen. From there, you can resize and/or reposition it as needed. Note: You can pin a game to the Start screen as well. However, you must tap and hold on the game icon or name from within the Games hub.

Note: Many apps also provide secondary tile capabilities, which let you pin in-app items to the Start screen so you can access them more quickly. For example, Internet Explorer lets you pin favorite web sites to the Start screen and Bing Maps lets you pin favorite locations to the Start screen.

Apps and Hubs Like other mobile platforms, Windows Phone comes with a collection of built-in apps and allows developers to create and then provide (for free or a fee) their own apps. These apps are only made available to users through the Windows Phone Store, which can be accessed via the web from your PC or, more typically, via the Store app on your phone.

Understand apps and hubs This book is largely aimed at documenting the built-in apps and experiences in Windows Phone 8. These include solutions for email, contacts, calendar, phone and messaging, maps and location, web browsing, search, oﬃce productivity, games and much more. But at a very high level, there are two basic kinds of apps supported by Windows Phone. These are: Apps. These are traditional, standalone apps that perform a certain function. For example, the Mail app provides email capabilities, allowing you to connect to multiple email accounts. Hubs. These are special apps that provide integrated experiences that tie together functionality from multiple online services and standalone apps. For example, the Photos hub lets you browse your photos on your phone and from various connected online services, but it also lets you see the photos your friends and other contacts are sharing and provides a central location to access standalone photo apps that are installed on your phone. Ultimately, both apps and hubs are just apps, executable code that runs on the phone when you tap their tile (on the Start screen) or icon (in the All Apps list). The major diﬀerentiator is that hubs oﬀer an integrated experience.

Understand the types of apps and hubs you will see on Windows Phone Both apps and hubs can be designed in diﬀerent ways.

Single screen apps The simplest apps are just single screen (or “one page”) experiences, and to be fair, this type of app is actually very rare. But simple utility apps like Alarms or Calculator (shown here) are good examples.

Stepping up in functionality a bit, Windows Phone also supports apps with multi-screen experiences. There are a few examples of this kind of app.

Pivot apps The most common is a pivot-based app, which looks like a single screen experience but actually oﬀers a series of screens (sometimes called pages or views) that you navigate between by tapping a heading, or pivot, at the top of the screen. You can also swipe from left-to-right (or vice versa) to move between the various available views. The Phone app provided with Windows Phone is a simple example of this type of app, as it provides just two pivots, History and Voicemail.

In this app, History is said to be the default view as it is the view you see when you ﬁrst launch the app.

Panorama apps Windows Phone supports a unique and often very attractive app type called a panorama in which the user experience spreads out across a horizontal canvas that extends beyond the screen. On ﬁrst view, a panorama looks like a normal single-screen app. But you can swipe horizontally to see other parts of the panorama.

If you could see an entire panorama at once, it may resemble the following.

Many (but not all) hubs are designed as panoramas, and some use their own unique designs. For example, you can customize the Photos hub with your picture wallpaper, and the Games hub resembles

the UI you see on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.

Understand which hubs are included with Windows Phone Windows Phone ships with the following hubs. Games. Windows Phone games are all consolidated in a single place, the Games hub, which also includes interfaces for managing your Xbox Live Gamertag persona. The Games hub is described in 15. Games. Music + Videos. Music and video apps and services are consolidated in the Music + Videos hub, which also provides a front-end for Microsoft’s Xbox Music and Xbox Music Pass services, as well as podcast and, on supported devices, FM radio capabilities. The Music + Videos hub is described in 13. Music, Videos and Podcasts. Oﬃce. This is the front-end for your Microsoft Oﬃce documents on the phone and in the cloud—on SkyDrive and Oﬃce 365/SkyDrive Pro—and it integrates with mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. The Oﬃce hub is described in 12. Oﬃce + OneNote. People. This panoramic experience integrates the contacts from each of your connected accounts into a single place and provides a way to access their social networking posts, regardless of service, from a single view. The People hub is described in 5. People + Me. Photos. Rather than wondering if the photo you liked so much was on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or whatever other services whose apps you’ve dutifully downloaded and installed on you device, you can simply visit the Photos hub, which consolidates your own photos—whether they’re on the device itself or connected services like SkyDrive, Facebook, Twitter and more—as well as photos from all your contacts across numerous services and all the photo-related apps you’ve downloaded and installed on your device. The Photos hub is described in 14. Photos. Wallet. Windows Phone 8 provides a Wallet hub experience that integrates with various payment instruments (credit cards, debit cards, Microsoft Store gift cards, PayPal and more) and retail store sales and deals. The Wallet hub is described in 16. Security + Networking.

Understand which apps are included with Windows Phone Alarms. This small utility app lets you set multiple alarms so you can wake up or be reminded at the appropriate times.

Bing Search. Available via the hardware Search button that appears on all devices, Bing Search provides an amazing integrated experience that spans the web, local places, media, shopping, music, and more. It can even ﬁnd apps that may be useful for the current search. Bing Search is discussed in 4. Search. Calculator. This small utility app lets you use your handheld supercomputer like a $13 electronic calculator. Hey, it’s good for calculating tips. Calendar. This application consolidates your appointments across multiple calendars and accounts. The Calendar app is discussed further in 10. Calendar. Camera. Windows Phone includes a Camera app that can be extended with a special kind of app, called a lenses app. So instead of hunting and pecking for the right app, just launch Camera, tap the Lenses app bar button, and choose from there. Camera is discussed further in 14. Photos. Help + Tips. This app helps you learn how to use Windows Phone. It’s like this book, but lame. Internet Explorer. This app lets you browse the web using a mobile version of Microsoft’s powerful Internet Explorer browser. Internet Explorer is discussed further in 11. Internet Explorer. Maps. Windows Phone includes Bing Maps and Local Scout apps for ﬁnding your way around in the world. And Nokia Lumia handsets include the superior Nokia HERE mapping and location apps, most of which are available to other Windows Phone users as well (for free or fee, depending on the situation). These apps are described in 8. Maps + Location. Messaging. This app lets you communicate with others over SMS/MMS, Facebook Chat and Microsoft’s Messenger service. The Messaging app is discussed further in 7. Messaging. OneNote. This app is part of Oﬃce Mobile and lets you take and access notes on the go. OneNote is discussed further in 12. Oﬃce + OneNote. Phone. This app lets you make and receive phone calls and access your voicemail. The Phone app is discussed further in 6. Phone. Settings. This app provides a front-end to your phone’s system and app settings. These settings are discussed throughout the book as needed. Store. This app lets you access Windows Phone Store-based apps, games, podcasts, and music. Store is discussed further in 3. Store.

Understand common app interfaces You will see a set of standard interfaces while using apps, including various buttons and other controls. But a primary goal of Windows Phone user interface design is that apps and other experiences not be bogged down by what’s called “UI chrome,” which is the surrounding toolbars, menus, and other extraneous interface elements you see with other smart phones. Instead, Windows Phone is designed so that the content you care about is at the center.

App bars Sometimes, of course, apps and hubs do need to provide access to more commands. And in Windows Phone, the way to do that is via an app bar, which is like a combination toolbar and menu bar. While app bars always appear at the bottom of the screen—where they’re more easily tapped—they can take on

diﬀerent appearances based on the needs of the app (or hub). In many cases, the app bar will resemble a standard toolbar, and will always be visible.

This type of app bar can present up four normal buttons plus one special More button, which is represented by the ellipsis (“…”) at the right. When you tap the More button, the app bar resizes enough so that you can see the name of each button. And if one is available, the app bar menu—providing still further commands—will display as well.

You will occasionally see app bars like those described above with no visible buttons aside from the special More button. But for those apps and hubs that do not need to display app bar buttons, but still need a way to access an app bar menu, Windows Phone also supports a special, minimal app bar as well. This UI construct is often a bit hard to see, but it is identiﬁed by the ever-present More (“…”) button at the right.

It works the same way: Just tap More to see the app bar menu.

Pop-up menus Windows Phone apps and hubs also support hidden pop-up menus that let you access commands that are related to the item you have selected. You access these menus by tapping and holding on an item, a gesture that is similar to a right-click on a PC. If the item you are selecting in this fashion supports it, you will see a pop-up menu with a list of applicable commands. For example, when tap and hold on an image or link in Internet Explorer, a menu with relevant commands appears.

Personalization One of the neatest things about Windows Phone is that you can really make it your own by signing in with your primary Microsoft account and automatically connect to the information in various online services, “lighting up” apps and experiences throughout your handset. But Windows Phone’s personalization features don’t stop there. In this section, I’ll highlight some of the ways in which you can further customize Windows Phone, and really make it your phone.

Understand Settings Before you can do any personalization at all, you need to know about Windows Phone Settings, or Settings. This special app is how you access all system-level settings as well as many settings related to the built-in apps. You launch Settings via the Settings item in the All Apps list, or, if pinned, using the Settings tile on the Start screen. (It resembles a gear.)

Settings has two views, or pivots, System and Applications. System Settings are those settings related to the phone itself.

Application Settings apply to built-in apps like the Games hub and Internet Explorer, as well as appcentric settings like background tasks.

Note: I reference Settings throughout this book and will typically instruct you to navigate to a location like Settings, System, Internet Sharing (or whatever). This means to load Settings, navigate to the System view, and then ﬁnd the Internet Sharing item in that view.

Conﬁgure other accounts When you ﬁrst set up your new Windows Phone handset, you sign-in with your primary Microsoft account, automatically populating the various user experiences on the device with your personal information. But that primary Microsoft account isn’t the only account you can (or should) conﬁgure on the phone: You can also add multiple email accounts, one account each for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and other accounts, each of which enhances your mobile experience in a variety of ways, including providing you with more options for sharing things with others. Account conﬁguration is described in the section Set up and conﬁgure accounts in Chapter 1, but it’s worth remembering that Windows Phone is at its most versatile when you fully conﬁgure it to work with all your online accounts.

Change the theme One of the most obvious ways in which you can personalize your phone is to change the user interface theme. This theme consists of a background—which can be dark (black) or light (white)—and an accent color, of which there are 20 available choices. (Some phone models include a special additional color choice as well.) To change the theme, navigate to Settings, System, Theme.

Choose Dark or Light for the Background choice. Then, choose an accent color using a palette of choices.

The choices you make here can have a profound eﬀect on the look and feel of your phone. Consider the following two Start screen images, one with a light background and one with dark.

Note: Some Windows Phone handsets use an OLED/AMOLED-type display. These displays get signiﬁcantly less battery life if you use a light (white) background.

Make text bigger While the beautiful typographical presentation used in Windows Phone is one of the platform’s biggest strengths, some may ﬁnd that some onscreen text is a bit hard to read. Fortunately, Microsoft provides a way to increase the text size in Windows Phone. To do so, navigate to Settings, System, Ease of Access. At the top of the Ease of Access Settings screen that appears you will see a slider for conﬁguring the size of onscreen text.

By default, the text in Windows Phone is set to its default (and smallest possible) size. To increase the size of text, tap on the slider control.

I recommend increasing the text in single increments at a time. To test how the new conﬁguration changes the display, view an app—like Mail—that displays a lot of text. For example, in the following screenshots, you can see how this app looks with the default text size (left) and a larger text size (right). Note that only some onscreen text is aﬀected by this change. Navigational elements are typically not aﬀected.

Conﬁgure ringtones and sounds Your Windows Phone handset can be conﬁgured to play speciﬁc sounds whenever you receive a phone call, text message, voicemail, or email, and it can trigger a reminder sound for a variety of other events too. These sounds are conﬁgured globally in Ringtones + Sounds Settings. To conﬁgure these sounds—as well as whether the ringer and vibrate function are enabled—navigate to Settings, System, Ringtones + Sounds.

Note: Ringtone and sound conﬁguration is discussed in the section Conﬁgure the ringer, vibration and ringtone and voicemail sounds in Chapter 6: Phone, and elsewhere throughout the book as required. You can also conﬁgure special ringtones for individual contacts. To do so, navigate to People, All and then to the contact you wish to change. Tap the Edit app bar button and then tap the Ringtone entry. In the Choose an Item screen that appears, choose the ringtone you wish to associate with that contact. Note: Contact management is further discussed in 5. People + Me.

Conﬁgure the lock screen Windows Phone oﬀers nice “glance and go” functionality throughout the system, most notably with the live tiles that adorn your Start screen. But you don’t even need to sign in to your phone to take advantage of this functionality: The Windows Phone lock screen also oﬀers some nice “glance and go” features, and you can conﬁgure it in fun and useful ways as well. A stock lock screen will display the Windows Phone status bar at the top, the time and date, some detailed status information (typically from Calendar), and a row of small icons that provide quick status information about unread emails, unread messages, missed phone calls, pending voicemail, and other information.

You can customize this screen in a variety of ways. To do, navigate to Settings, System, Lock Screen.

The following options are available. Background. Windows Phone lets you set a single picture as the background image for the lock screen, or you can choose between a list of apps that are designed to dynamically change the lock screen background. Bing, for example, is built-in and will provide you with a new Bing image of the day each day (as seen below on the left). Or you can install third party apps—such as Facebook (shown below on the right), which can provide you with new images from that service on a regular basis.

Show artist when playing music. Disabled by default, this option will temporarily change the lock screen background to display artist imagery while music is playing through the Music + Videos hub.

(This feature is discussed in the section Control music playback from outside the app in Chapter 13: Music, Videos + Podcasts.) Detail status notiﬁcation. Windows Phone lets you conﬁgure one app that can display a detailed status notiﬁcation on the lock screen. This is generally set to Calendar, since appointment information can often include lots of text. But you can choose other apps instead, including Mail, Messaging or Phone, or third party apps that you install yourself, like Facebook. Quick status notiﬁcations. Windows Phone also lets you conﬁgure up to ﬁve apps that can display quick status notiﬁcation icons, each with a number indicating the status. For example, if you choose an email icon for one of these notiﬁcations, it will display when you have unread email. A Phone notiﬁcation can display missed calls. Screen time out. If you leave your phone idle, it will “time out,” blanking the screen to save battery life. This option lets you conﬁgure how long will pass before the phone times out: 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, or 5 minutes. Password. You can and should conﬁgure Windows Phone to use a password so that the data it contains is safe if the phone is lost or stolen. This feature is described in the section Lock screen PIN in Chapter 16: Security + Networking.

Download apps and games While Windows Phone includes a ton of functionality out of the box, you will want to download apps and games to increase the usefulness and fun of the device. How you do so is described in 3. Store, and if you’re a game player, you might also want to check out 15. Games.

Name your phone By default, your Windows Phone handset will use the unimaginative stock name Windows Phone. But you can rename your phone to something more pithy or personal if you’d like. (If you’re curious, I use Big Red for my red Lumia 920, for example, and Big Zoom for a Lumia 1020.) To do so, however, you’ll need to connect your phone to your PC. Then you can name the phone from File Explorer. Or, optionally, you can download and then use the Windows Phone desktop application or Windows Phone mobile app.

Name your phone using File Explorer in Windows To name your phone using Windows, ﬁrst connect your handset to the PC using a USB cable. Then, launch File Explorer (called Windows Explorer in older Windows versions) and navigate to the Computer view. Your Windows Phone handset should appear as a drive in Explorer.

In Explorer, select the handset and then press F2. The name of the phone will be highlighted so you can type to rename it.

Tap Enter when you’re done.

Download the Windows Phone apps You can also name your phone using a Windows Phone sync application for the PC. You have two choices: The Windows Phone desktop application and the Windows Phone mobile (“Metro”) app. The Windows Phone desktop application works with Windows 7 and 8 only. The Windows Phone mobile app works with Windows 8 and RT only. Download the Windows Phone desktop application Download the Windows Phone mobile app Note: Not sure which one to get? These apps are described more fully in 17. PC Integration.

Name your phone using the Windows Phone desktop application To name your phone using the Windows Phone desktop application, ﬁrst connect your handset to the PC using a USB cable. Then, in the Windows Phone desktop application, click Settings. In the Settings interface, you’ll see a text box that will let you edit the phone’s name.

Click OK when you’re done.

Name your phone using the Windows Phone mobile app To name your phone using the Windows Phone mobile app, ﬁrst connect your handset to the PC using a USB cable. Then, in the app, select the Settings charm (WINKEY + I) and then Preferences. In the Preferences pane that appears, you’ll see a text box that will let you edit the phone’s name.

Tap Back when you’re done.

3. Store Microsoft maintains a massive online infrastructure which works as a back-end for the various consumerfacing online stores that we access from Windows 8 and RT, the Xbox, and Windows Phone. These include the game- and media content-related stores under the Xbox umbrella, Windows Store, which provides PC mobile apps for Windows 8 and RT, and Windows Phone Store. Obviously, Windows Phone Store serves Windows Phone users. It provides the parts of the Microsoft Online Store that are applicable to Windows Phone, including Windows Phone apps (and games), music, and podcasts. On Windows Phone, you access Windows Phone Store primarily through the Store app, which is the primary focus of this chapter. That said, you can also access certain aspects of the Windows Phone Store—primarily apps (and games)—through a web browser on your PC or tablet. Because this provides some unique capabilities you can’t access directly from the phone, let’s start there. Note: In this chapter, the term app is used to describe any app or game, as a game is just a type of app.

Access Windows Phone Store from your PC or tablet The oﬃcial Windows Phone web site is a great place to learn about Windows Phone, but it also provides some interesting capabilities that are not otherwise reachable from your actual handset. And some of those capabilities are directly related to apps and Windows Phone Store. Note: Be sure to sign into your primary Microsoft account when you visit the Windows Phone site as these capabilities require that access.

Edit your payment information Because Windows Phone Store is an online store, you will sometimes need to pay for items. Rather than require you to enter credit card information every time you make a purchase, Windows Phone Store works with the billing information connected to your Microsoft account to let you choose between your preconﬁgured payment types—various credit cards or PayPal—at the time of purchase. While you can conﬁgure this information using the Wallet hub in Windows Phone—as described in the section Wallet in Chapter 16: Networking + Security—it is often easier to do so via the web. To edit your payment information, sign in to the Windows Phone web site and then view your Account page. (Select Account settings from the pop-up menu that appears when you click your name in the upper left corner of the site.)

Now, click Edit payment info. In the Edit Payment Info page, you can choose which credit card or PayPal account you’d like to edit or add a new payment method. You can also use this interface to update your billing address. Note: To access the global billing history for your Microsoft accounts—which will include purchases and subscriptions across Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox—click the View billing info link on the Account page.

View your purchase history and reinstall previously downloaded apps To view a history of your Windows Phone app purchases only, select Purchase history from the pop-up menu that appears when you click your name in the upper right corner of the site.

This interface also lets you remotely reinstall an app you previously downloaded. Just click the Reinstall link next to an app you’d like to reinstall.

Browse and ﬁnd apps The Windows Phone web site also provides a nice front-end to the Windows Phone Store’s app and games collections. To browse and ﬁnd apps (and games), click the Apps + Games link in the site’s menu bar at the top.

You can browse the site as expected, but if you know the app you’re looking for, you can use the Search box in the top right. When you do view an app listing, you can read a detailed description, view screenshots, look at reviews and ratings, and discover other apps from the same publisher. You can also buy, try, install, or reinstall the app.

Launch the Store app As you might expect, you can access the Windows Phone Store experience on your phone using the Store’s tile or, via All Apps, icon. The Store tile is only available in the smaller two sizes, and as you’ll see later in the chapter, the only dynamic content it provides is a number indicating how many app updates are waiting to be installed.

Tour of the Store user experience Store is a front-end to the Windows Phone Store. It provides on-device access to apps, games (which are really just a type of app), music, and podcasts. Note: All that’s missing is videos: Though Microsoft makes TV shows and movies available through its cloud-based store to users of Windows 8/RT and Xbox 360, it does not do so on Windows Phone. In the default view, you will see a list of items which can be tapped to visit virtual mini-stores that are in some cases available directly from other experiences in Windows Phone. For example, the part of Store that oﬀers games is often referred to as the Games Store; it can be reached directly from the Games hub, as described in the section Find a game in the Games Store in Chapter 15. Likewise, the Music Store (and, if available in your locale, Podcast Store) can be reached directly from Music + Videos hub. This is discussed in the section Purchase or download music from Xbox Music Store in Chapter 13.

The Apps, Games, and Music items will always appear on this default screen. But there are other items that can appear here as well, depending on a number of factors. These items include: Podcasts. The Podcasts entry is only available in the United States. Users in other locales will need to use third party podcast solutions or sync podcasts from a PC to the handset. Handset maker. The companies that make Windows Phone handsets can add their own entry to this list. For example, Lumia users will see a Nokia Collection entry, while HTC users will see HTC Apps, and Samsung ATIV users will see Samsung Zone. Wireless carrier. If you purchased your phone from a wireless carrier, that carrier will typically add their own entry as well. For example, AT&T Wireless adds a menu item called AT&T Featured. SD card. If your handset has an SD card in its expansion slot, it can be used to “side load” apps, typically in a corporate environment. This entry will appear if such an app is available on the SD card. Download. This entry will appear if you are currently downloading one or more apps, app updates, songs, or podcast episodes. Updates. This entry will appear when you have one or more pending app updates.

Regardless of which items appear in that default screen, it’s worth remembering that Windows Phone Store is a panoramic experience, meaning that the full user experience extends oﬀ to the right and left, and you can swipe in either direction to see all of it, albeit it a bit at a time. If you were able to see the entire experience in one view it might resemble the following.

In addition to the default screen, this experience provides screens with a featured app and then Apps, Games, and Music screens that provide obvious launching points for browsing those types of content. We’ll examine browsing in the next section.

Browse for apps The Store app provides an excellent browsing experience with diﬀerent areas of the store dedicated to apps and games (as well as those for other content types like music and podcasts). Each is essentially a store-within-a-store, as with the Apps Store and Games Store. And each is structured the same way, providing a panoramic experience that mimics that of the main store experience. Consider the Apps Store, for example. When you select Apps from the default view in Store, you’re presented with a second panorama, this one dedicated to apps. The ﬁrst screen you see advertises a featured app.

But as you scroll over, you’ll see further screens and sections dedicated in turn to automated as well as curated app/game collections (the red tiles in the shot below), categories, and spotlight apps (basically more featured apps). Each provides a nice jumping oﬀ point for browsing the apps collection, and if you could view the entire experience at once, it might resemble the following.

The Games Store oﬀers a similar experience, with the same basic layout. In each store-within-a-store, there are a few obvious starting points for the browser. These include.

Top free. Here, you will ﬁnd a list of the most-frequently downloaded apps (or games), with the most popular at the top.

New + rising. This list features apps (or games) that have experienced a major download bump in the past week, and it generally consists of popular new apps that will soon break into the Top free list, or apps that have recently received a major update and are thus receiving renewed attention. Top paid. The Top paid list features the most-frequently-purchased paid apps (or games), with the most popular at the top. (While there’s no tile for Top paid in the Games Store, this list is still maintained and available. Simply visit Top free and swipe over.) Best rated. Anyone who installs an app can write a review for that app and/or provide a rating on a scale from 1 to 5 stars. This list lets you ﬁnd the crème of the crop in apps (or games), with the most highly rated right at the top. (See the section Rate and review an app to ﬁnd out how you can contribute your own opinions.) Xbox. Only available in the Games Store, this list features only those games that are part of the Xbox LIVE service and thus include Xbox LIVE features such as Achievements and leaderboards, as well as other optional features. The newest Xbox LIVE games for Windows Phone are at the top. (You can learn more about Xbox LIVE games in the section Understand Xbox LIVE in Chapter 15: Games.)

Collections. One of the most useful launching points in the store, this is a set of curated collections of apps (or games), meaning that Microsoft employees have actually collected groups of apps into individual, themed collections such as Essential Apps, Photo and Visual Eﬀects, Navigation Apps, and so on. There are many collections available, so be sure to spend some time browsing through this area.

Picks for you. If you enable the optional personal suggestions service in Windows Phone, this list will help you ﬁnd apps and games that are recommended by others you know. See the section Get app and game suggestions for more information. Categories. Available as a standalone section in the App Store (and called Genres for some reason in the Games Store), this list helps you ﬁnd apps (or games) of a particular kind. In the Apps Store, for example, you will see categories like Entertainment, Music + Video, and Tools + Productivity, among many others, while the Games Store has genres such as Action + Adventure, Classics, Family, and many others. Additionally, your wireless carrier and handset maker will often have their own stores-within-a-store. Links for these stores will appear in the default view of the Store app, and will have titles such as AT&T Features, Nokia Collection, and Samsung Zone. Nokia’s, in particular, is of notably high quality. (And Nokia also oﬀers a separate app, called App Highlights, that users of Lumia handsets should consider grabbing; this app oﬀers a highly curated subset of the full Windows Phone Store experience, providing access only to those apps that Nokia thinks are high quality.)

Search for an app If you know what you’re looking for, use Search to ﬁnd it. The Search app bar button is available at the bottom of most of the screens in the Store app.

Search works exactly as expected: Type in a search term, tap Enter, and search results appear in a list. You can tap an item in the Apps + Games view to learn more about that app.

Note: Be sure the search results list is in the Apps + Games view and not in Music or Podcasts.

Learn more about an app When you tap an app in any listing in Store, that app’s quick card will load, presenting you with a fourpage interface for discovering more about the app. The default page, Details, is full of information, including the app’s name, live tile design, price, rating (with number of ratings), download size, description, and more. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see one or more buttons which can include options for buying, trying, installing or sharing the app.

You can swipe left or right to view the other available pages. These include: Reviews. Here, you can ﬁnd a listing of user reviews and ratings, which can be used to help you determine whether you want the app.

Screenshots. This grid of screenshots provides a visual preview of the app. Tap a screenshot to view it full-screen.

Related. Here, you will see a list of apps that are in some way related to the app you’re currently viewing. In my experience, this list can be hit or miss, as evidence by the awful apps you see listed here. Where’s Netflix?

Install, buy or upgrade an app As you might expect, Windows Phone provides a reliable and safe experience for downloading apps to your phone, and supports free apps, paid apps, and trial apps that are initially free but limited in some way and can then be upgraded to the full experience. Initiating each install type is described below, in this section. But once the download and install process begins, it works the same for each: As the app installs, you will navigate automatically to the All Apps view where you can view its progress. (For games, you instead navigate to the Collection view in the Games hub.)

Note: You can tap the app icon during install to navigate to the Downloads view in Store.

Note: A Wi-Fi connection is required for apps larger than 50 MB.

Install a free app To install a free app, simply tap the Install button on the app’s Details page.

Buy an app To purchase a paid app, tap the Buy button on the app’s Details page.

The Conﬁrm Purchase screen appears.

From here, you can choose the selected payment method or tap the Add or switch payment methods link to choose a diﬀerent method. Tap the Buy button when you’re ready to take the plunge.

Install a paid app you’ve already purchased Windows Phone Store doesn’t provide a way on the device to view the list of apps you’ve already purchased or downloaded. But if you navigate to a previously purchased app and tap the Buy button, Store will inform you that you’ve already paid for the app and provide you with an Install button.

Tip: You can view your entire purchase history and trigger remote app reinstalls from your PC (or phone) by visiting the Windows Phone web site as described earlier in the chapter. This is a better way to reinstall apps if you’ve recently reset your phone or purchased a new phone.

Try a paid app Some paid apps support a special trial version that is limited in some way, giving you the opportunity to test the app and see whether you’d like to pay for the full version. To try a paid app, tap the Try button on the app’s Details page.

Convert a trial app to a paid app The process of converting a trial app to the paid version will vary from app to app. In most cases, the app will advertise the upgrade in some way and perhaps provide a special screen explaining the beneﬁts of the upgrade.

Ultimately, however, you’ll be directed back to the Store, where you’ll make the purchase normally. But you won’t need to download the full app again. Instead, Store simply updates the app to the full version, a process that usually takes just a few seconds, even for large games.

Download an app update When an update for one or more of the apps you’ve installed arrives, the Store tile will change to display a number that reﬂects how many app updates are available.

Likewise, when you visit Windows Phone Store, you will see an item at the bottom of the default screen indicating that you have pending updates.

Tap the Updates link to see which updates are available.

From the App Updates screen, you can do the following: Update All. Tap the Update All button to update all of the apps. Update a single app. To update just an individual app, tap it in the list and then tap the Update button in the next screen.

Share an app If you ﬁnd an app you’d like to share with another Windows Phone user, tap the Share button. This will display a standard Share screen, where you can pick between your available email accounts, Messaging, Xbox, and your social network accounts.

In each case, what you’re sharing is the URL to the app in the Windows Phone Store. The recipient can select this URL on their phone or PC and view the app in Windows Phone Store and then decide whether to download it themselves.

Rate and review an app You can rate and review any app you’ve installed. To do so, ﬁnd the app in Store and then swipe over to the Reviews view. You will see a new link, Rate and Review.

Tap Rate and Review to view the Rate and Review screen. Here, you can tap a rating of one to ﬁve stars and then optionally type a review.

When you’re done, tap Submit to submit your review.

Note: Submitted reviews don’t appear in Windows Phone Store immediately. Note: You can also use the Rate and Review screen to report inappropriate or even illegal apps to Microsoft.

Make an in-app purchase Apps and games can oﬀer what’s called in-app purchases, a way for you to spend real money to buy virtual goods. There are many examples of such purchases, but two obvious ones are in-game items, like a sword or weapon that might make the game easier or maps that will make a navigational app more useful. In-game purchases are another way for developers to monetize their work: Many apps are free but display ads to earn money. Others use in-app purchases. And some apps with ads let you make an inapp purchase to disable ads. Warning: While in-app purchases can obviously be useful or otherwise desirable, you should be careful using apps or games that oﬀer such a feature, especially if you loan your phone to your children. 16. Security + Networking discusses two features—Kid’s Corner and PIN purchase protection—that can help mitigate these concerns.

The in-app purchase experience will vary from app-to-app. Most of the time, you’ll see a purchasing experience that is part of the app itself. This will resemble the app and often have a Windows Phonestyle look and feel.

In the game Temple Run, there is an in-game store that lets you purchase items. This experience is part of the game and thus looks like the rest of the game.

If you tap to purchase an item from this in-game store, however, a normal Store-based Conﬁrm Purchase screen appears so you can choose how to make the payment, just as you would for other Store purchases.

Note: In some cases, you will have to purchase in-app items using your Microsoft Points balance. Microsoft Points is a virtual currency system, currently being phased out, that is still used some Xbox LIVE games. This system allows you to purchase blocks of points and then use them to make certain kinds of purchases through the Xbox LIVE service.

Protect purchases with a PIN Windows Phone provides various security features that can help keep the data and accounts on your handset safe from others, be them your own children or malicious thieves. One of these features is directly related to Windows Phone Store purchases you make through the Store app: You can protect these purchases with a 4-digit PIN (personal identiﬁcation number) using a unique Windows Phone feature called Wallet. Note: Wallet and other Windows Phone security features you should seriously consider, including PIN locking your phone and Kid’s Corner, are discussed in 16. Security + Networking. To protect your Store purchases with a PIN, open the Wallet app and choose More (“…” in the app bar) and then Settings + Pin from the menu that appears.

In Wallet Settings, enable the PIN if needed—again, this is discussed in 16. Security + Networking—and then check the box titled Use Wallet PIN to protect music, app and in-app purchases. Now, when you attempt to purchase an app in Store (or make an in-app purchase), you’ll be prompted to enter your PIN before you can view the Conﬁrm Purchase screen.

Get app and game suggestions Windows Phone includes a personal suggestions service that lights up Local Scout, Xbox Music, and other features in Windows Phone. If you enable this feature—it’s disabled by default—Store will make app and games suggestions based on usage. To enable suggestions, open Store and then choose More (“…”) in the app bar and then Settings. In Store Settings, tap the Suggestions button.

In the Get Personalized Suggestions screen, you can learn more about what this service does. Tap Yes to enable it. Note: If the Use Facebook too option is checked, you’ll need to sign-in with your Facebook account. Now, navigate to the App Store or Games Store experience. You’ll see a Picks for You tile in the grid of tiles to the right of the Featured screen.

Tap that tile to view a list of relevant picks, each of which will explain why that app (or game) was selected for you.

4. Search While Windows Phone is rightly lauded for its seamless integration with Microsoft and popular third party services, no service is more thoroughly integrated into this system than is Bing. Billed as a “decision engine,” Bing is Microsoft’s answer to Google Search, at least prosaically, but it also goes much further than that. Bing search capabilities are used throughout Microsoft’s many products, including Windows 8/RT and Xbox, and in each case are tailored to the speciﬁc needs of the environment. But because Windows Phone handsets are personal companions that people carry with them everywhere, the Bing search capabilities are particularly far reaching and useful. And that includes ﬁnding restaurants, shopping, and other places that are close to where you are, maps and directions, music, videos, and images, and more, as well as performing normal web searches. If you’re out in the world and need to ﬁnd something—or just ﬁgure out where you are—Bing is always there for you. Your ﬁrst clue to the special status of Bing on Windows Phone comes via the prominent hardware search button on your handset, only one of three such buttons—the other two are Back and Start—which Microsoft requires on the front of all Windows Phone devices, and the only one of the three dedicated to a particular app hub. Note: In fact, this hardware search button is the only way to launch directly into the Bing hub, which is just part of the set of Bing services Microsoft provides in Windows Phone. Other parts, such as (Bing) Maps and Local Scout, can also be directly accessed via dedicated apps and live tiles.

As it turns out, the placement of this search button can be annoying: If there’s one button that Windows Phone users hit accidentally more than any other—such as when they’re playing a game or handing their phone to someone else—it’s Search. Note: Not all Bing Search features are available in all locations.

Understand the Bing hub Bing for mobile—or just Bing, as I’ll call it—is an app hub, a one-stop shop for all your search needs. This hub provides a single screen search experience, but you can also swipe oﬀ to the right and view more search-related information that might be of interest to you. This includes movies that are playing locally, news headlines, top videos, local events, and local deals. If you’re familiar with the Bing web experience and the Bing app for Windows 8/RT, you will see elements of both solutions surfaced in Bing on Windows Phone. The Bing hub resembles the Bing web site on your PC’s browser, with the same image of the day, complete with image hotspots so you ﬁnd out more about that image.

As a panoramic experience, Bing allows you to pan across its multi-screen interface so can view the information in its various content sections. This interface somewhat resembles the Bing app for Windows 8, though of course each is tailored for the diﬀerent device form factors. If you could view the entire UI in one screen, it might resemble the following:

Note: Unlike some other Windows Phone apps, Bing can also be used in landscape view, by which you physically rotate the phone away from its normal, portrait orientation. For consistency’s sake, the screenshots in this chapter will all utilize the default, portrait view.

Tour of the Bing interface Before moving on to speciﬁc Bing functions, let’s take a quick look at the layout of this interesting app hub. When you ﬁrst navigate to Bing by pressing the search button on your handset, you’ll be presented with what looks like a normal, single-screen experience.

On this screen you will ﬁnd the following elements, all of which will be described a bit later in the chapter, or in one case, later in the book. Search box. Located prominently at the top of the screen is the search box. Just tap it, and a virtual keyboard will appear so you can type in a search query. Voice search icon. If typing is too 20th century for you, tap the voice search icon in the right of the search box to search via speech instead. Image of the day with image tips and copyright. The backdrop of the main Bing view is the same one Microsoft uses on its Bing web site and various Bing mobile apps, including the one for Windows 8. You can use various image tip boxes to learn more about the image or tap the barely visible copyright symbol to ﬁnd out exactly what it is. Local Scout. You can jump directly to a useful Bing Maps feature called Local Scout via a dedicated app bar button. Local Scout is discussed in the section Local Scout in Chapter 8: Maps + Location. Bing Music Search. When you hear a song you like, you can tap this app bar button to ﬁnd out which song is playing. It will also show you the artist and album names, and a button to purchase it online at the Xbox Music Store. A history list of your music searches is saved by default.

Bing Vision. This app bar button lets you scan text, bar codes, QR codes, Microsoft Tags, books, CDs, and DVDs and then, depending on the source, interact with these real-world objects Settings and more. You can access the music history list and Bing settings via a More (“…”) item in the app bar. More content sections. Like most other hubs, Bing is a panoramic experience that extends oﬀ the right side of the screen. You can pan to the right to see other content sections, including nearby movies, top videos, news headlines, local deals, and local events. OK, those are the basics. Let’s dive in and see what you can ﬁnd and do with Bing.

Find anything You’ve been using web search for years, so you understand how the basics work here: Using the Bing experience on Windows Phone, you can perform any general search just as you would using web search from your PC’s web browser. As you’ll see, Bing excels at so-called vertical searches, which are speciﬁc types of searches, such as searches for local information (including restaurants, stores, and other locations, plus Maps integration), media (images and video), and shopping. But when it comes to basic web searching, the Bing experience even branches out a bit from the norm with news results, related searches, and even Windows Phone apps integration, where related apps installed on your phone can come up in results, as can recommendations for apps you don’t yet have. Searching with Bing works as you’d expect. To ﬁnd something—almost anything, really—just tap the Search button on your phone and type a search term in the search box using the virtual keyboard. As you type, Bing will provide search tips in a drop-down box so you can jump directly to the full search term without having to type it all.

Understand Bing search results When you select a search tip or tap Enter, Bing will try to intelligently place your search into the right category from the get-go, using a series of pages, or pivots, which ﬁlter the results. That is, you can easily pivots between these views and ﬁlter the search to web, local, media or shopping results only.

The Web view is perhaps the most common and can be considered the default, since Bing will display these results if it can’t obviously categorize the search further. But this view is deceptively rich, since it can contain a number of items, not just web searches, so it’s always worth scrolling down the list. Depending on your search term, you can see the following search results types in this view: Advertising. Bing displays ads at the top of its search results, but only in the Web view. I ﬁnd this vaguely annoying, but to be fair, this is how web-based searches work as well.

Apps. If there are any apps in the Windows Phone Store that are relevant to your search query, you will see one or more of them promoted in the results along with a link to See more apps. Tap that link and you’ll jump into an apps list in the Windows Phone Store.

Web search results. As you’d expect, Bing does of course provide a list of standard web search results too. In fact, most of this view consists of web search results which, depending on the search, can be broken up into groups of results surrounding the movies, related searches, and news results mentioned below. However it’s displayed, web search results will continue oﬀ the bottom of the display, and as you continue to scroll down, new results will ﬁll in almost inﬁnitely, it seems. (Again, depending on the topic.)

Movies. If you type in the name of a location or a term that resembles a movie name, you will see a list of movies that is playing nearby. This list is one giant link—that is, you can’t tap an individual movie name—but tapping the list opens up an amazing array of functionality related to ﬁnding movies, buying tickets, and more. (This capability is examined later in the chapter.)

Note that this movies list is interspersed with the standard web search results. So you’ll see web search results both above and below this list. Related Searches. Below the web search results, you will see a list of related searches.

News. Finally, at the bottom of the Web view, you will see a list of news results related to the search term you typed. A See More News link provides a much longer list of news related to the search.

Get instant answers The Bing experience also provides Instant Answers, putting frequently-requested information right at the top of the search results. While there are a wide range of Instant Answers to choose from, you can see things like view movie times, the weather, game times, stock quotes, ﬂight times, and more without having navigate to a diﬀerent screen, load a diﬀerent web page, or use an app. For example, if you type in the name of a favorite sports team, you can ﬁnd out a lot about what’s going on with that team right in the search results.

Search for weather and Bing will accommodate with a nice ﬁve day forecast and the current conditions and temperature.

Learn more with quick cards Search results for certain items—products, movies, events, and places—can display an interesting and unique Bing construct called a quick card. A quick card is essentially a multi-screen interface to that item, with pivots that reveal additional and useful information about the item, allowing you to take the next logical step in a search. Quick cards provide a summary of relevant information about the item, reviews, ways to purchase the item when possible, related apps, and so on. Let’s say you’re researching a new e-book reader. Search results for speciﬁc products will include one or more results in a special Products area in the Shopping view, as noted a bit later in the chapter. This will resemble the following:

When you tap one of the products in the list, a quick card appears, providing a single screen interface with multiple pages, or pivots. For products, these pages include About, Prices, Buzz, Related, and Apps. But quick cards can vary by item type, with each being customized for the item. For example, a movie quick card has About, Showtimes, Buzz, Related, and Apps views. Here’s the Showtime page in the quick card for a movie that is currently playing:

Each can be pinned to the Start screen or shared via Messaging, Mail, NFC Tap + Share, and other methods.

Find an image or video Thanks in large part to our society’s fascination with celebrities, Bing has evolved into an excellent way to keep up with the Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians of this world. The Bing experience on Windows Phone mirrors this societal evolution with excellent image and videos search capabilities that will keep some occupied for hours at a time. But for those who are not celebrity obsessed, Bing also provides excellent general purpose image and video search capabilities. To ﬁnd an image or video, launch Bing, type in a description of the image or video you’d like to ﬁnd, and then tap Enter. In the search results screen that appears, select the Media page if it doesn’t appear automatically.

From here, you can select an image thumbnail to view it full screen, tap the See More Images link to see further image search results, scroll down and select a video thumbnail to view that video in YouTube or another video source, or tap the See More Videos link to see more video search results. Tip: Remember that images can be saved to the phone and/or used as lock screen wallpaper. Refer to the sections Save an online photo to your phone and Set a photo as the lock screen background, respectively, in Chapter 14: Photos for more information.

Find a nearby place Because so many people use their smart phones to ﬁnd restaurants, stores, attractions, events, and other places nearby, Windows Phone includes an incredible feature called Local Scout, which Microsoft bills as your location-aware guide to the neighborhood. With Local Scout, you have instant access to the best restaurants, stores, and other places within 25 miles of your phone, right at your ﬁngertips. Note: Local Scout is discussed in the section Local Scout in Chapter 8: Maps + Location.

Find a movie locally To search for a movie locally, launch Bing and type the movie name into the search box. Then, switch to the Local page in the search results. At the top of the results (under an ad), you will see an Instant

Answers listing for the movie, listing its name, category, rating, length, and rating, along with some local show times.

Tap this area and you will see a quick card for the movie. As with other quick cards, there’s a lot information to be had here, but the Showtimes page is particularly useful as it breaks down the show times across multiple nearby theaters. What’s missing, of course, is a way to purchase tickets with your phone. But don’t lose heart: Third party apps can integrate with Bing providing this capability, and it’s possible that your phone maker or wireless carrier has already installed such an app for you.

Find and buy a product To ﬁnd and buy a particular product online, launch Bing, type the name of the product into the search box, and tap Enter. In the search results view, pivot to the Shopping view if required. You’ll see a Products section right at the top.

From here or the Product results screen—which can be reached by tapping See More Products—you can tap any of the product entries to learn more via a handy quick card with About, Prices, Buzz, and Apps views.

The Prices view lists online retailers selling the product, listed in order by price, where the cheapest location is at the top. Tap any of these entries to visit the retailer’s web site and make the order.

Find out which song is playing A feature called Bing Music Search lets you use your phone’s microphone to “listen” to any song you hear playing—on the radio, at a sports event, or elsewhere—and then ﬁnd out which song it is and, if it’s available via Xbox Music, buy it and/or download it to the phone, or share it with others using messaging, mail, Facebook, or Twitter, or other service. Note: Xbox Music Pass subscribers can download songs without paying for them individually. Please refer to 13. Music, Videos and Podcasts for more information about Xbox Music Pass. To ﬁnd out which song is playing, launch Bing and then tap the Music app bar button.

A notiﬁcation will appear, indicating that the phone is listening to the music and trying to identify the song.

If Bing Music Search is unsuccessful, the notiﬁcation will indicate that and give you the option of trying again. Note that loud, crowded places are often not conducive to this sort of search.

If Bing Music Search is successful, the notiﬁcation will change to identify the song, and the album in which it can be found.

Tap the Store button to visit the Xbox Music Store and view the album. (Or, tap close if you’re not interested.) From here, you can purchase the song, download it (if you have an Xbox Music Pass), or share it with others. Note: Sometimes you’re able to ﬁnd a song you like but can’t buy or download it immediately for some reason. Fortunately, Bing Music Search maintains a list of all of the successful music searches it has done. To access this list, open the app bar menu—by tapping the More (“...”) app bar button—and choose Music History. In the resulting screen, you can see a list of all your music searches.

Find out what you’re looking at Because your Internet-connected smart phone is with you at all times when you’re out in the world, it makes sense that you would expect to use this versatile tool to ﬁnd out more about what you’re looking at, at any given time. And while it’s possible to use visual clues to conduct an Internet search to discover

more about the world around you, Windows Phone’s Bing experience includes an integrated feature called Bing Vision that makes doing so even easier. Bing Vision combines the device’s camera with software-based visualization capabilities and Bing online services to allow you to ﬁnd out more about what you’re looking at. It speciﬁcally understands QR codes, Microsoft Tags and bar codes, and it can scan text from virtually anywhere to drive a search query. But it also understands some physical objects, including CD, DVD, video game, and book covers, and more. You can use it to discover whether a product is available near you, or online, and then compare prices. Some key usage scenarios are detailed below. But the basics are the same in each case: Simply launch the Bing experience on your handset and then tap the Vision app bar button.

The view will change and display a camera viewﬁnder. From here, point the phone at the item in question.

Scan a Barcode, QR code, or Microsoft Tag Barcodes, QR (“Quick Response”) codes, and Microsoft Tags are all examples of two-dimensional, machine-readable codes that provide data about the object on which they can be found. Bing Vision can interact with each of these code types. Barcodes consists of lines and are used on product packaging of all kinds. When you purchase something in a retail store, the item’s unique barcode is scanned to register the sale.

QR codes were developed as a higher performance version of the standard barcode: They feature square dots instead of lines and are often seen in advertisements and meant to be scanned by a compatible smart phone application (like Bing).

And Microsoft Tag is a type of High Capacity Color Barcode, or HCCB, that uses color and triangles rather than lines or rectangles in order to increase the data density, or the amount of information that the code contains.

To scan any of these code types, launch Bing Vision and point the viewﬁnder towards the code. Bing Vision will identify the code and provide a link.

If it’s a bar code for a retail product, tap this link to see Bing search results. But other code types can act diﬀerently. For example, oftentimes when you scan a QR code in an advertisement—perhaps in a magazine, or in a subway—you will navigate to the web site related to the advertised product, using Internet Explorer.

Scan and translate text You can use Bing Vision to scan text and then copy it into the phone’s Clipboard. From there, you can paste it into an app like OneNote or Word Mobile (see 12. Oﬃce + OneNote) and save it for posterity. To scan text, enable Bing Vision, point your phone’s camera at the text, and tap the Scan Text button. After a second, Bing will display a photo of the text with the blocks of text it understands highlighted.

To copy the text and paste it into another app, More (“…”) and then Copy All.

Then, open an app that can accept the text—perhaps OneNote Mobile (again, see 12. Oﬃce + OneNote)—and then select the Paste button to the top left of the virtual keyboard.

Note: Bing’s text scanning capabilities are somewhat constrained by the size of the device. That is, you won’t be able to replace a document scanner with your phone. But it works nice in a pinch, and with small blocks of text. Bing Vision can also translate text in a foreign language to your own language. To do so, engage Bing Vision and tap the Scan Text button as before. But this time, select the Translate button. Bing will display the translated text—it’s not always very accurate—onscreen.

To trigger a Bing search from scanned text—including text you’ve translated—tap individual text blocks in the Bing Vision scan view (after a scan or translation). They’ll be added to a search box that appears at the top of the screen, in sequence. To search on that term, just tap the Search button in the app bar.

Find out more about a CD, DVD, video game, or book Bing Vision can also be used to ﬁnd out more about speciﬁc physical products, including music CDs, movie DVDs, video games, and books. To ﬁnd out more about an item this way, enable Bing Vision, point your phone’s camera at the item, and then hold still for a second. Bing will ﬁll in a list of potential search results.

Tap the one you want and a standard quick card will appear so you can ﬁnd out more and potentially buy it online.

Find your location, directions, or a diﬀerent place While Windows Phone includes a standalone maps app called Bing Maps, or just Maps, it makes sense that the Bing search experience can be used as a jumping oﬀ point to location searches that will ultimately result in the Maps app ﬁring up. For example, if you launch Bing and type in an address, city or other place name, ZIP code, or other place-related search, you will see a Maps Instant Answer appear at the top of the search results.

Tap this item to launch Maps, which will then navigate to that location. While you are of course free to manually launch the Maps app to ﬁnd your location, a place, or directions, the Search button is always available, and the Bing experience it triggers will help you get there quickly as well. Note: The Maps app is discussed further in the section Bing Maps in Chapter 8: Maps + Location.

Find it with your voice Windows Phone includes integrated voice capabilities, which can be used with Bing Search to help ﬁnd what you need while you’re on the go using the most natural possible interface, your voice. To activate voice search, press and hold the Start button from anywhere in Windows Phone. Or, open the Bing search experience normally and tap the little microphone icon in the search box. Either way, the Listening overlay will appear, prompting you to speak your search. (A cute little tone will warble as well, indicating that it’s ready to those not looking at the screen.)

Note: If you’ve not used this feature before, you’ll be prompted to enable the voice recognition service, which is understandably required for voice search. Just speak any normal search term. Some good choices include “Find movie theaters,” “Bamboo restaurant Dedham,” and even “what is the capitol of Ontario?” But you can ask “What can I say?” if you’re not sure what to ask. Voice search will give you some tips.

Find an app As noted previously, Bing will oﬀer feature links to apps in search results. This feature, called App Connect, provides two useful services. First, you can use Bing to ﬁnd the apps you’re looking for, rather than having to dig into Windows Phone Store. Note: That said, you can of course search for apps in Windows Phone Store too. Check out the section Search for an app in Chapter 3: Apps for details. Second, as you use Bing for general searches, you may discover that there are apps that provide a more elegant interface for accomplishing a frequently performed task, such as ﬁnding and buying movie tickets. To search for an app, just use Bing normally and type in the name of an app or a general topic related to an app you may want. Here, you can see the search results for Kindle, Amazon’s e-book platform. Someone searching for information about Kindle devices may be surprised to discover that the Windows Phone handset they already own can function like a Kindle simply by downloading Amazon’s free app.

Search from Internet Explorer If you use a modern web browser on your PC you know that you can start a web search simply by typing a search term in the browser’s address bar. Not coincidentally, Internet Explorer Mobile in Windows Phone works the same way. When you type in the address bar, you are shown suggested web sites from your favorites, browsing history, and popular Bing searches.

And if you just ﬁre away on a search term, the search results will come up in … wait for it… the Bing experience, not in IE. Note: You can ﬁnd out more about Windows Phone’s web browser in 11. Internet Explorer.

Share search results As you learned earlier in this chapter, certain search results—including products, movies, events, and places—provide what’s called a quick card, from which you can view and interact more deeply with these items. One of the many features of a quick card is that you can share it with others, using a variety of methods, including (but not limited to) the Mail app (with any conﬁgured email account), the Messaging app (via MMS/SMS), or the NFC-based Tap + Send functionality in Windows Phone 8. To do so, simply tap the Share button in the app bar at the bottom of any quick card.

You’ll be presented with a standard Share screen, from which you can pick the method (and thus the app) through which you’d like to share the item.

Pin search results to the Start screen You can pin any quick card—which, as you will recall, is an individual search result for a product, movie, event, or place—to the Start screen so that you can come back later and continue learning about that item. To do so, display a quick card and then tap the Pin button in the app bar.

When you do, a new tile for the item is added to the bottom of your Start screen.

Customize Bing Bing Settings, available via More (“…”), Settings in the Bing app bar, provides ready access to various options. Since some of these are privacy related, it’s important that you take a few minutes to scan through the list.

Available settings include: Use my location. The ﬁrst time you run Bing, you’re asked to allow this app to use your location to deliver more relevant searches. And while the privacy hairs on the back of your head may be standing at attention, it’s unclear why anyone with a smart phone would not want its search functionality to understand where they are. After all, this is a device you carry with you at all times, and much of its best features—not just through Bing, but elsewhere as well—rely on it knowing where you are at all times. My recommendation is to leave this slider set to On. Otherwise, you’re not realizing the full beneﬁts of Bing or Windows Phone. Send location info for Microsoft Tags. As noted earlier in the chapter, Microsoft Tag is a modern, more full-featured barcode type. One of the features of Microsoft Tag is Real Time Location (RTL), which can be embedded in Microsoft Tag so that the advertisement or other item you’re scanning has an understanding of your physical location. This can be important for locale-speciﬁc oﬀers, such as a museum that is oﬀering discounted tickets but only to those who are currently in the area around the

museum. If you’re not interested in sharing your location info through Microsoft Tags—which, frankly, are pretty rare in the real world anyway—just leave this item unchecked. (It is unchecked by default.) Suggestions. Windows Phone includes a personal suggestions feature via Bing (including Local Scout), Xbox Music, and other services. If you enable this feature—it’s disabled by default—these apps will make suggestions based on usage. So if you search for seafood restaurants a lot, Bing will begin suggestions highly recommended seafood restaurants when you’re looking for a place to eat. Note that this suggestion service requires you to conﬁgure a Microsoft account—which you did when you ﬁrst set up your phone—and/or Facebook account. SafeSearch. As with Google, Bing oﬀers diﬀerent levels of protection against objectionable material when searching online. Its default SafeSearch mode is Moderate, which ﬁlters adult images and videos but not text from search results. If you’re feeling Amish, you can change this setting to Strict, which ﬁlters out adult text, images, and videos from search results. Or if you’re ready to throw caution to the wind and aren’t easily oﬀended, try out the Oﬀ setting, which doesn’t ﬁlter any adult content from search results. Allow search button from lock screen. When checked (as it is by default), this option lets you trigger search queries even when the phone is locked. Get suggestions from Bing as I type. By default, Bing will provide search tips in a drop-down box as you type, a nice time-saving feature. But if you’re not interested in this useful feature for some reason, you can disable it here. (It’s enabled by default.) Allow Microsoft to store and use images from vision searches. Microsoft improves its Bing Vision service by anonymously collecting the images of items that users search for visually. If you’d rather not contribute to this service—shame on you—you can uncheck this option. (It’s on by default.) Delete history. If you tap this button, Bing will delete your previous searches, Bing Vision searches, and music searches from the phone. You will be prompted ﬁrst. Unfortunately, there’s no way to just delete individual search types: While I’d like to forget all those late-night searches for Duran Duran songs, I’d rather retain my web and Vision searches.

5. People + Me Where most smart phones provide you with a simple app that helps you manage your contacts across one or more connected accounts, Windows Phone takes a more integrated approach. The People hub works as you might expect, aggregating and even linking contacts from multiple accounts. But it also provides a host of other useful features, with deep social networking integration that lets you see what your friends, co-workers and other acquaintances are up to in the real world. So instead of forcing you to ﬁnd, download, conﬁgure, and manage multiple apps, you can use this single hub to manage your relationships with others. And it even includes a special feature, called Me, that lets you post updates for your own contacts to enjoy and keep up with online posts that are directed to you. Note: Because of the nature of the information stored with contacts in Windows Phone, some of the screenshots in this chapter have been edited to hide or alter personal information.

Understand how accounts and contacts impact the People hub Many of the accounts you add to Windows Phone include some notion of contacts, a collection of information about individuals you know. And while some accounts don’t call this feature “contacts”—in Facebook, for example, all contacts are called friends for some reason—the eﬀect is the same: Most of the account types supported by Windows Phone include a list of contacts you maintain on that service. Note: Looking just at the built-in account types—your carrier or device maker may have added others— the exceptions are Yahoo! Mail and the “other account” and “advanced setup” account types, each of supports email only on Windows Phone. When you add an account to Windows Phone through Settings, System, Email + Accounts, any contacts that are associated with that account are automatically added to the People hub and are made available to other apps, like Mail, which uses this contact list to help you auto-complete email recipients, or Phone, which uses it to make it easier to make phone calls to people you know. Looking at People speciﬁcally, this hub aggregates contacts across all of your connected accounts that do support contacts. It also comingles, or links, contacts from two or more services that appear to represent the same individual into a single, linked item, or contact card. That way, you don’t have multiple entries for the contact on multiple services, but instead can simply access that person as you do in the real world, by their name. You’ll learn how this all works throughout the chapter. But there is one more concept to consider before moving on: In the past, you might have used a PC-based contacts management solution like Microsoft Outlook or Palm Desktop to manage and store your contacts, and then synced those contacts from the PC to mobile devices. In the more modern cloud computing age embraced by Windows Phone, you will never store contacts directly on the phone. Instead, you must associate any new or edited contact information with an online account, and that information will be stored and maintained in the cloud. That way, if your phone is lost or replaced, none or your crucial data is lost with it. Everything is where it should be, in a cloud-based account, and accessible from any of your PCs and other devices.

Understand the People tile and launch the hub The People tile isn’t particularly interactive—it doesn’t provide live social networking updates or whatever—but it does provide a nice animated display (on the larger two tile sizes) in which a grid of your contacts’ photos moves and ﬂips as you watch it.

Note: The only way to disable the animation is to use the smallest tile size. To open People, tap its Start screen tile or its icon in All Apps.

Tour the People hub Like most hubs in Windows Phone, People is a panoramic experience, meaning that it spans beyond the sides of the current display. By default you’re presented with the All view, which is a list of all of your contacts.

But you can swipe horizontally to see more. If you were able to view the entire People hub user experience at once, it might resemble the following.

The People hub includes the following pages, or sections: All. This is the list of all of your contacts with a special Me tile at the top that represents you, or your online persona. What’s New. This view is aggregates the posts from your contacts’ social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, all in one place. Recent. This is a selection of tiles representing the contacts with which you most recently interacted. Together. The People hub supports two unique features, Rooms and Groups, which let you share information between speciﬁc contacts and follow groups of contacts, respectively. This page houses each of your rooms and groups. Each of these interfaces is described elsewhere in the chapter.

Find a contact Windows Phone oﬀers many ways to ﬁnd a contact, both in the People hub and elsewhere.

Quick navigate through the list of contacts The simplest way to ﬁnd a contact, perhaps, is to navigate to the All page in the People hub and simply scroll down the list. Your contacts are in alphabetical order (by ﬁrst name by default, though you can change this in People settings). That said, if you have a lot of contacts, this process isn’t exactly eﬃcient. Fortunately, you can quickly navigate through your contacts list, jumping from letter to letter. To do so, tap one of the colored letter headings (like “A”) in the contacts list.

When you do, a quick navigation display appears, with a grid of letter tiles.

Tap a letter to jump directly to names that start with that letter. For example, if you’re looking for a contact named Paul Thurrott, tap the “P” tile. When you do, the All page returns, but scrolled down to that spot in the list.

Search Quick navigation is indeed pretty quick, but in some cases you can get where you’re going most eﬃciently by searching. Fortunately, the All page includes a Search app bar button for this purpose.

When you tap this button, a unique search experience appears in which your contacts list is whittled down as you type.

For example, if you’re searching for my name, you might start typing paul. As you do, the contact list results displays only those names with that letter combination.

Note: If one of your connected accounts is an Exchange account, you will also see a Search Name-ofaccount link at the bottom of the search results. Tap this link to continue your search against the Exchange global address list, or GAL, a list of all of the contacts at your organization, not just the ones that are synced to the phone. As you can see, this can return a much longer list of names.

Find a contact from other apps Thanks to the integrated nature of Windows Phone, your contacts aren’t locked inside the People hub and are instead available throughout the system, via other apps. For example, when you start a new email in the Mail app or a new message in Messaging, you can access your People-based aggregates contacts list through the Contact Chooser, a full-screen interface that’s like a window into the People hub from other apps.

See what’s new with all of your contacts One of the biggest innovations of the People hub is that collects, or aggregates, information from multiple sources—various accounts, including those from social networking services—and then displays them together in a single, integrated view. But this capability isn’t just limited to individual contacts. The People hub also lets you see what all of your friends and other contacts have posted to all of the social networks to which they belong. So instead of forcing you to manually visit separate Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter apps to get a full picture of what’s going on in your social circles, as other smart phones do, Windows Phone’s People hub provides a handy list, via the What’s New view, that acts as a feed for all of those networks.

As you scroll down this list, you’ll see Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter updates all comingled—assuming you’ve conﬁgured those account types—with the most recent updates at the top. From this interface, you can dig deeper, reading the full posts and post comments, writing your own comments, and even “liking” Facebook posts.

Filter the What’s New list By default the What’s New list will show updates, or posts, from any social networking services you’ve conﬁgured on the phone. However, you may occasionally want to ﬁlter the view so that it displays updates from a particular service instead. To do so, navigate to the What’s New view in People. You will notice a link, All Accounts, below the What’s New header.

Tap All Accounts to ﬁlter the view. In the Show Updates From screen that appears, tap the name of the social network whose posts you’d like to display.

When you do, you will navigate back to What’s New and the All Accounts link will be changed to the name of the network you chose. As important, only updates from that network are now shown.

Read a post and post comments Oftentimes, as you scroll down the What’s New list, the posts you see are complete in the list, allowing you to read them in their entirety. But some posts are too long to ﬁt within the space allotted here, and some include a photo which is only shown here as a thumbnail. In either case, you can read the entire post, and see any attached photo in a larger, more easily viewed format. To do so, tap either the post itself or the Comment bubble on the right. The post will appear full-screen, along with any comments (if any). And if there’s a photo, you will see a bigger thumbnail that can be tapped to view it full screen.

To add a comment to a post, proceed as you would to read the post and then type a comment in the Add a Comment text ﬁeld at the bottom of the screen. Tap Post when you’re ready to post the comment.

Like a post To “like” a Facebook post, tap the Like app bar button while reading the update. (This button will not appear for non-Facebook posts.)

View and use post images As you’re browsing through the What’s New list, you may see an image you like or otherwise wish to work with. Here are some of the things you can do with the images your friends and other contacts post to social networking services like Facebook.

View. To view a photo that was posted online, simply tap the post in the What’s New list. It will appear full screen (note that you may need to rotate the phone for horizontally-oriented photos) along with related information that the contact posted about the photo.

View or add tags. If you see a person in a posted photo who isn’t tagged—which identiﬁes that person and links to their own social networking proﬁle—you can tag them yourself. To do so, tap the “Tag someone” link below the photo or choose More (“…”) and then Add or view tags from the menu that appears. Each recognized face will be shown with a “Who’s this” box, letting you tag them, or you can arbitrarily tap any area of the screen and tag that.

Save a photo to the phone. To save a photo or other image to your phone—and then potentially share it with others—tap and hold on the image and choose Save to phone from the menu that appears. This photo will be saved to the Saved Pictures album in the Photos hub. Set as your lock screen image. You can also use a posted photo as your lock screen image: Just tap and hold on the photo and choose Set as lock screen from the menu that appears.

Quickly access recent contacts Navigate to the Recent view to see a grid of tiles representing those contacts you’ve move recently communicated with. The tiles are arranged so that the most recently-contacted people are ﬁrst. Tapping a tile will of course display that person’s contact card.

Interact with a contact The People hub’s contact cards are rich sources of information and they provide a number of ways in which you can interact with the people they represent.

View a contact card and reach out to that person To view a contact card, tap that person’s name in the All list, a search results list, or elsewhere in the People hub. The card is displayed as a multi-page interface with Proﬁle, What’s New, Photos, and History views.

The amount of information you see in the Proﬁle page will vary from contact to contact, but some of the more pertinent information includes: Photo. People provide their own proﬁle photos on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and the People hub will always use one by default. Most recent social networking update. If the contact posts to Facebook or Twitter, the most recent update will be found to the right of their photo on the contact card.

Tap this update to see it displayed full-screen. This is particularly useful for photos. Call. This link will allow you to call one of the contact’s phone numbers. You will often see multiple Call links, including Call Home, Call Work, Call Mobile, and many others. Tap a Call link to launch the Phone

app and call that number. (The Phone app is discussed in the section Understand the Phone app in Chapter 6: Phone.) Text + Chat. Contacts with mobile phone numbers can send and receive SMS-based text messages, but you can also see Text + Chat links for Messenger and Facebook. Messaging and chat is discussed in 7. Messaging. Chat. Seen with contacts who have a Facebook account. (Again, refer to 7. Messaging.) Skype. You can perform voice, video, and text chats with your Skype friends through Windows Phone. (This requires that you can install the Skype app ﬁrst, as it’s not included with Windows Phone.) Write on Wall. Seen with contacts who have a Facebook account. When you tap this link, the Write on Wall screen appears, where you can type a message that will appear on that contact’s Facebook Wall.

Tap the Post app bar button to send the message. Mention on Twitter. Seen with contacts who have a Twitter account. When you tap this link, the Mention on Twitter screen appears, where you can type a message, or tweet, that will be posted to Twitter and mention the contact. It even includes their Twitter name automatically.

Tap the Post app bar button to send the tweet. Send Email. This link lets you send an email to one of the contact’s email addresses. You will often see multiple Send Email links, one for each email-based account they have. Tap one to launch a new email message with the Mail app, which is discussed in 9. Email. Map Address. If the contact has saved one or more addresses with their proﬁle, you will see a Map Address link for each. For example, there are often separate links for Home and Work. Tap one to view the address in the Maps app, as discussed in the section Bing Maps in Chapter 8: Maps + Location. View website. If this contact has saved a web site URL with their proﬁle, you can tap this link to open that web site in Internet Explorer Mobile. This browser is the focus of 11. Internet Explorer.

There are sometimes more, but you get the idea: People aggregates all of the information that contacts have associated with themselves across multiple accounts.

Pin a contact to the Start screen If you interact with a speciﬁc contact a lot, you may wish to pin their contact card to the Start screen so that you can access it directly. To do, ﬁnd the contact in the All page of the People hub, or in search results. Then, tap and hold on the contact name and choose Pin to Start from the pop-up menu that appears. Alternatively, you can display the person’s contact card and then tap the Pin app bar button. Either way, the contact card’s tile will appear at the bottom of the Start screen and will begin animating. Remember that you can resize this tile to any of the three available sizes.

Edit a contact As you might expect, you can edit any contact’s information. However, because contacts are represented by a contact card that can aggregate information from multiple accounts, you must choose which account to edit. And some account types, like Facebook, can’t be edited from the phone, because that information is supplied by the contact through the service and is in eﬀect read-only. You can begin editing a contact in one of two ways: From the All list. Tap and hold on a contact’s name and then choose Edit from the menu that appears. From a contact card. While viewing a contact card, tap the Edit app bar button.

From here, editing is a bit diﬀerent depending on which account type(s) are associated with the contact.

Edit a Facebook friend’s contact information If the only account associated with the contact is Facebook, you will receive a pop-up notiﬁcation toast telling you that you cannot change Facebook contact info.

Tap the add button to choose another account to which you can add that information. From here, you can proceed using the instructions in Edit a contact found in only one non-Facebook account, below.

Edit a linked contact If you try to edit the information for a contact found in multiple accounts—what Windows Phone calls a linked contact—you will see the Edit Linked Contact screen next.

From here, you can change the following information:

Picture. Windows Phone automatically associates a photo from Facebook or another social networking service to the contact if available. But you can change this, or add a photo when none exists, by tapping the photo box in the Edit Linked Contact screen. Using the Picture Chooser, you can select a photo from a connected account or from your phone.

Name. Tap the Name link to edit the contact’s ﬁrst and last name, but also a wide range of other optional name-related information, including company, middle name, nickname, title, and suﬃx. Ringtone. Tap the Ringtone link to select a custom ringtone that will play when that contact calls your phone. This list will include ringtones supplied with Windows Phone, by your wireless carrier, by the handset maker, or any ringtones you may have added yourself.

Below these three options you will see two or more Edit links, each attached to one of the accounts that contains information about the contact (Edit Hotmail, Edit Outlook, and so on). Tap the account you’d like edit. From here, you can proceed using the instructions in Edit a contact found in only one nonFacebook account, below.

Edit a contact found in only one non-Facebook account If the contact is found in only one non-Facebook account, you will be delivered directly to the Edit Contact screen, which lets you edit information about the contact that is stored in a single account. (As noted above, you will also eventually arrive at this screen when you attempt to edit a linked or Facebook account.)

This interface is fairly straightforward: Simply tap the item—Phone, Email, Ringtone, and so on—you’d like to add or edit. You can add multiple items in some cases—Phone and Email, for example—and the Other link opens up a wide variety of additional, optional ﬁelds like Address, Website, Birthday, Notes, Anniversary, and more. You must tap the Save app bar button to save a new or edited item. When you’re done editing the contact, simply tap the Back button on your handset to return to the person’s contact card.

Link (and unlink) contacts Because the People hub aggregates contacts from multiple accounts, you may occasionally see multiple contacts listed for the same person. When this happen, you can link the two or more contacts together so you can access all of the person’s information from a single contact card. First, ﬁnd a person with two (or more) separate contacts in People, such as with Rafael Rivera here.

Then, display one of the contact cards. (It doesn’t matter which.) In the app bar, tap the Link button.

This will display the Links screen, where you can see which contacts are linked and which aren’t.

To link an account, tap it in the Suggested Links list at the bottom. Repeat if there are multiple choices. If you don’t see the contact you want listed, tap the Choose a Contact link. To unlink a contact from a contact card, display the contact card and tap the Link app bar button. Then, in the Links screen, tap the contact you wish to remove in the Linked Proﬁles list.

Share a contact To share a contact, display their contact card, tap the More (“…”) app bar button, and then choose Share from the menu that appears. This will display the contact’s Proﬁle so you can see what will be shared. If you still want to continue, tap the Share app bar button.

From there, the normal system-level Share screen appears, letting you choose how you wish to share the contact. Choices will include accounts (which will use email and the Mail app), Tap + Send (NFC, which requires another NFC-compatible devices to be present), Bluetooth (ditto), Messaging (where the contact will be sent as an attachment over text message), and perhaps others. What’s sent varies according to the choice you make. The Tap + Send, Bluetooth, and Messaging options will allow the recipient to import the contact directly into their phone’s contact list. But if you use an email account, the contact is sent as an industry-standard VCF ﬁle (VCard File, essentially an electronic business card), as an attachment. This ﬁle can be imported into virtually any PC- or web-based email solution.

Delete a contact You can delete a contact in two ways: From the All view in People or from a contact card. Tip: Remember that a “contact” is often quite diﬀerent from a “contact card.” That is, where a contact represents a single user proﬁle associated with a single account, a contact card can aggregate information about an individual from multiple accounts. So oftentimes, when you choose to delete a contact, you will be asked to choose the account from which you’d like to delete that contact. This means, in turn, that deleting a contact fully is often a multi-step operation. To initiate a contact deletion from the All view, simply tap and hold on the contact you’d like to delete. To do so while viewing a contact card, choose More (“…”) in the app bar and then Delete. If the contact is only associated with a single proﬁle on a single account, you will be notiﬁed that continuing means you will delete the contact from both your phone and that account.

If the contact is associated with multiple proﬁles (and/or multiple accounts), you will be asked to choose the proﬁle you wish to delete. Each proﬁle you see on this screen is an individual user account, so it’s possible that you will (confusingly) see multiple listings for the same account.

When you choose a proﬁle from the list, you’ll be notiﬁed to ensure you wish to continue.

See what’s new with a contact In addition to the global What’s New view that aggregates all of your contacts’ social networking updates in a single location, the People hub provides a similar What’s New view for each contact. To see what’s new with a contact, display their contact card and then swipe over to the What’s New view.

This works identically to the global What’s New view and oﬀers the same options for viewing and commenting on posts, “liking” Facebook posts, and so on.

See a contact’s photos Unique to contact cards is a special version of the What’s New view called Photos that aggregates just the pictures that that person has posted to social networking services. To see a contact’s photos, display their contact card and then swipe over to the Photos view.

From here, you can dive into speciﬁc albums, view and comment on photos, and even download photos you like to your phone.

View your communications history with a contact As you interact with people via Windows Phone, the People hub keeps a communications history that lists each time you call or message each other, exchange email, and so on. This communications history is available via the ﬁnal page on the contact card, called History.

The History view is handy when you need to ﬁnd something that a particular person sent you (or vice versa) but you can’t remember which service you used. From this view, you can scroll down and go back in time, and tap individual entries to do more. For example, when you tap an instant message entry, Messaging launches and takes you to that message. Likewise, when you tap a phone entry, the Phone app will launch and dial that phone number.

Add a new contact To add a new contact, navigate to the All view in the People hub and tap the New app bar button.

In the next screen, you must choose which account will contain the information for the contact. (Unless of course you’ve only conﬁgured a single account on the phone.) Note that you cannot choose Facebook as an account type here: Facebook account information is read-only.

In the New Contact screen that appears, numerous contact card ﬁelds—Phone, Email, Ringtone, and so on—are available. This interface is fairly straightforward: Simply tap the item you’d like to add or edit. You can add multiple items in some cases—Phone and Email, for example—and the Other link opens up a wide variety of additional, optional ﬁelds like Address, Website, Birthday, Notes, Anniversary, and more.

When you’re done adding information, tap the Save app bar button.

Interact with multiple contacts at once Windows Phone oﬀers two interesting constructs for managing multiple contacts together, Groups and Rooms. And while they may have similar sounding names, they both work quite diﬀerently.

Groups Groups provides a way for you to group two or more contacts together so that you can follow them more easily. A group works similarly to the contact card for an individual in that you can easily see what’s new and view photos, though in this case for multiple people at once. Unlike a room (see Rooms, below), a group is a one-way street: It’s something you make for yourself on your Windows Phone handset, and the people in a group won’t ever know they’re in that group.

Create a group To create a group, navigate to the Together view in the People hub and tap the New button in the app bar. Then, select Group from the Add New screen. In the Name the Group screen that appears, provide a name for the group. This can be virtually anything that makes sense to you, such as Friends, Family, Favorites or whatever. When you’re ready, tap the Save app bar button. At this point, the Edit Group screen appears, letting you add new members. You can do so now, of course, or just tap Done in the app bar and follow the instructions in the next section.

Add a member to a group To add a member to a group, tap the group tile in the Together view and then tap the Members app bar button.

Then, in the Edit Group screen, tap the Add app bar button. In the Choose a Contact screen, select the user you wish to add to the group.

Repeat until the group is complete.

Remove a member from a group To remove a member from a group, tap the group tile in the Together view and then tap the Members app bar button. Then, tap the Members app bar button. In the Edit Group screen, tap the member you’d like to remove and then tap Remove from Group in the screen that appears.

See what’s new with a group of people You can view a What’s New feed for a group just like you can for an individual contact or for all of your contacts. To do so, navigate to the Together page in People and then tap the group tile. Then, in the group view, swipe over to What’s New.

This view works as it does elsewhere in People; you can tap into individual posts, leave comments, “like” Favorite posts, and so on.

See recent photos from a group of people You can also view a Photos for a group, though it works a bit diﬀerently than when doing so for an individual contact. To see this, navigate to the Together page in People and then tap the group tile. Then, in the group view, swipe over to Photos.

From here, you can tap the Pictures of group tile to see an album of photos of the people in the group. Or, choose a name from the list to see their own albums only.

Pin a group to the Start screen If you ﬁnd that you’re communicating with or checking up on a group frequently, you can pin it to the Start screen for faster access. To do so, open the group tile in the Together view and then tap the Pin app bar button.

A tile for the group will appear on the Start screen and, as you can see, it is visually a cross between the People tile and a tile for an individual contact.

Rename a group To rename a group, view the group and then choose More (“…”) from the app bar and then Rename.

Delete a group To delete a group, view the group and then choose More (“…”) from the app bar and then Delete. You’ll be prompted before the group is deleted.

Rooms Rooms is a more powerful feature than Groups, providing a way for a group of people to explicitly share instant message chats, calendars, photos, and OneNote-based notes, but only with each other. A room is invitation only, and each member must agree to be part of the room before they’re included. You can create your own room(s), of course, but you can also join rooms created by others. Note: Technically, Rooms oﬀers some cross-platform capabilities meaning that it’s possible to invite people with other smart phones types—Androids, iPhones, whatever—to join a room and then interact with the others in the room in limited ways. Here, I’ll only focus on using Rooms with Windows Phone, since that gives the most consistent and complete experience.

Create a room To create a room, navigate to the Together view in the People hub and tap the New app bar button. Then, select Room from the Add New screen. In the Name Your Room screen that appears, provide a name for the group and then tap Save. Your handset will set up the room, which actually takes several seconds, and then present you with the Edit Room screen, where you can see that you are the only member so far.

Add a member to a room To add a member to a room, open the room and then tap the Members app bar button. This displays the Edit Room screen. Now, tap the Invite app bar button.

A standard contacts chooser screen appears, but its name, Text an Invite, is a clue to how invitation will be delivered: Members must have a mobile phone to use Rooms, so it makes sense that they’ll be able to receive a text message-based invitation. When you select a contact, you may need to choose which phone number to use for the text message, depending on how many phone numbers are conﬁgured. Then, you’ll be prompted to send the invite.

Tap the Send button and the invitation will be sent. Note: No, there’s no way to customize the invitation.

Join a room that someone else created Invites to a room appear as a new text message. If you’re using the phone at the time, you’ll see a notiﬁcation toast at the top of the screen.

Tap the toast or start Messages to view the invitation message.

To join the room, tap the link. You will be prompted with information about this feature and what it entails and asked to conﬁrm your choice.

Tap the Join button. After a bit of processing, you’ll navigate automatically to the new room.

Understand the room user experience When you enter a room in the People hub, you’re treated to a new multi-page experience that includes Members, Chat, Calendar, Photos and Notes pages. These pages are like miniature versions of user experiences from elsewhere in Windows Phone, designed speciﬁcally to let you interact only with room members. So you could engage in SMS/MMS-style messaging with members only from the Chat page in the room. But you could also use the Messaging app normally and chat with room members from there. The same is true for many of the other room experiences too.

In the following sections, you’ll ﬁnd a description of each of these features and see how you can use them inside the room and elsewhere in Windows Phone.

Manage a room Each room you utilize is customizable. Here are some of the things you can do to customize a room, whether you created it or joined a room someone else created. (Each is accessible from the Members page in the room by tapping More in the app bar and the choosing the appropriate app bar menu item. Note that some options are only available to those who created the room, while others are only available to other members.) Pin to Start. If you wish to access a room regularly, you can pin it as a tile to the Start screen. Change the background picture. By default, a room has a basic black background, but you can choose a background picture as you do with the Photos hub. Rename the room. If you created the room, you can rename the room at any time. Delete the room. If you created the room, you can delete it, which will also delete any related photos, notes, and other content. Leave the room. If you did not create the room, you can leave the room at any time.

See what’s new with all room members To view a special What’s New feed that includes social networking posts made only by members of the room, tap the What’s New link in the room’s Members page. This feeds looks and works just like other What’s New feeds in People, so you can comment, add tags, “like” Facebook posts, and so on.

See member photos Each room maintains a specially crafted photo album that only contains photos in which at least one room member has been tagged. To see this album, tap the Member Photos link in the room’s Members page.

Send an email to all room members To send a new email message to all room members, open the room and then tap the Email app bar button in the default page, Members.

If you have more than one email account conﬁgured on the phone, you’ll be asked to choose the account from which you’d like to send the message. Then, a new email screen will appear, with each of the members of the room automatically added to the To: line.

Note: There’s no way to automatically initiate a room email from the Mail app. (Obviously, you could manually address the email message to each member if you’d like.)

Chat with room members Rooms supports instant message (IM) chat via the Messenger network. To send an IM to all members of a room, navigate to the Chat page, select the text box, and type your message.

When you do, you are automatically signed in to the Messenger network, which was part of Microsoft’s Windows Services business, or what used to be called Windows Live, until fairly recently. (It’s actually part of Skype now.) Likewise, all of the other room members are signed in to Messenger, and a toast notiﬁcation will appear, showing them that they have a new IM.

As with other Messenger-based chats, this conversation can be accessed through the Messaging app, where the recipient will be listed as the name of the room (in my case, Thurrott Family).

But when you tap the conversation, it will open in the room instead of in Messaging, and you can see each participant’s name normally.

Note: The Messaging app is discussed in 7. Messaging.

Send your location to other room members To send your location to other room members, navigate to Chat and tap the Location app bar button. A Bing map will be attached to a new IM, and you can add some text or just send the message normally.

Recipients can use this map to locate you. When tapped, the Maps app opens so you can compare their location to yours or use the Directions functionality to get there from wherever you are. Note: Maps is discussed in the section Bing Maps in Chapter 8: Maps and Location.

Share a calendar with room members When you create or join a room, a new calendar is automatically added to the Outlook.com-based Calendar that is associated with your Microsoft account. This calendar is accessible via the web (from your PC or other device), from any Outlook.com-compatible application, or from Windows Phone and other devices. On Windows Phone, you can verify that the new calendar—in my case, called Thurrott Family—is available by opening the Settings interface for the Calendar app. You’ll see the calendar listed at the end of the list of available calendars.

You can add or edit appointments in this calendar just as you would with any calendar, but of course the point of the shared calendar is that it is openly accessible to all room members. So when someone adds an appointment to the calendar, it will show up in the Calendar page of the room.

But it will also appear anywhere else that this shared calendar can be viewed, including the Calendar app in Windows Phone. To add a new appointment to the shared room calendar, navigate to the Calendar page of the room and tap the New app bar button. A normal New Appointment screen will appear.

Note: Calendar is discussed further in 10. Calendar.

Share a photo or video with room members To share a photo or video with room members, navigate to the Photos page and tap the Add app bar button. In the Add Something screen, choose Photo or Video. Then, choose the item(s) you wish to share from the picture or video chooser that appears. You can multi-select two or more items from the same album.

When you tap the Done app bar button, the items will be uploaded to the room and made available to the other room members.

You can also access these shared photos and videos via the Photos hub. To see them, navigate to Albums and then ﬁnd an album with the same name as the room. In my case, it’s called Thurrott Family from SkyDrive.

Note: You can learn more about the Photos hub in 14. Photos.

Share notes with room members Windows Phone also automatically creates a shared OneNote notebook for each room member. Named after the room—again, in my case, Thurrott Family—this notebook can be found on SkyDrive from a web browser on your PC, but also via Windows Phone. Inside the notebook, there is a single section called Shared notes, and then a single sample page called Groceries that was created by Microsoft as an example. There are two primary ways to access this shared notebook from Windows Phone. From the room, navigate to the Notes page. Here, you’ll ﬁnd a simple view of the shared notes, with just that one page, Groceries, unless you’ve already started using it.

To edit Groceries, just tap the name of the page and it will open in OneNote Mobile. Or, tap the Add app bar button to add a new page. This, too, will cause OneNote Mobile to open.

Changes made inside OneNote Mobile—or elsewhere, as you can of course access this shared notebook from your PC using the OneNote desktop or mobile app, or the web-based OneNote Web App—will be synced automatically for all users. For example, if you create a new page in the Shared notes section, it will appear in the Notes page in the room for all users.

You can also access this shared notebook directly with OneNote Mobile (or indirectly from the Oﬃce hub). To do so, open OneNote Mobile and select the shared notebook from the list of available notebooks.

Inside, you’ll ﬁnd the single section, Shared notes.

And inside that, you’ll ﬁnd any available pages.

Note: OneNote Mobile and the Oﬃce hub are discussed in 12. Oﬃce + OneNote.

Customize People People Settings is accessible from within the hub by choosing More (“…”) from the app bar and then Settings. Or you can navigate directly to Settings, Application, People.

The following options are available: Import SIM contacts. If you upgraded to a Windows Phone 8 handset from an older phone, it’s possible that your previous handset stored contact information on the SIM card. If so, this button lets you import those contacts into an account you’ve conﬁgured in Windows Phone. (If not, the button is grayed out.) Note that Windows Phone does not let you store any contact information on a SIM card. Instead, contact information is stored in one or more accounts online. Filter my contacts list. Tap this button to see a list of the accounts you’ve conﬁgured on the phone and choose which accounts will be used to populate the contacts list in People.

By default, contacts from all accounts except for Twitter are automatically displayed in People. But there are two interesting caveats to this rule. If a contact is represented by account types other than Twitter, they will still show up in People (and be identiﬁed as a Twitter contact). And when you search for a contact, contacts in ﬁltered-out accounts are still displayed in the results. Hide posts from the contacts I’ve ﬁltered. By default, People doesn’t hide posts—as displayed in the What’s New view—from the contacts you’ve ﬁltered out. To hide posts from ﬁltered accounts, check this box.

Sort list by. By default, the All contacts list is sorted by ﬁrst name, but you can change this to last name if you prefer. Display names by. By default, the All contacts list displays contact names as “First Last” (as in Paul Thurrott) but you can change it to “Last, First” (as in Thurrott, Paul) if you prefer. Use my location. To use the check-in functionality described later in the chapter, you must allow the People hub to access your location information. This is disabled by default, but you will be prompted to enable it the ﬁrst time that People needs this information. Save my check-in searches and locations with my Microsoft account to improve search results. This option is disabled by default. If you’re feeling altruistic and trust Microsoft, you can enable it. Accounts. Here, you’ll ﬁnd a list of the accounts that are conﬁgured on the phone and an Add an Account link for adding a new account. This interface is duplicated in Settings, System, Email + Accounts, and is discussed in the section Set up and conﬁgure accounts in Chapter 1: Getting Started.

Me The People hub has an incredibly useful feature called Me that lets you post to, check in, and see when others have pinged you from multiple social networking services. This feature is so useful in fact that it is made available via a secondary live tile on the Windows Phone Start screen by default. Note: The Me feature and Me tile do not represent your own contact card in People, though such a thing does exist. Instead, Me is a unique feature of People, with unique capabilities.

Understand how accounts impact Me While Windows Phone of course supports multiple accounts of multiple types, Me is primarily concerned only with the three account types that represent the social networks Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, plus your main Microsoft account. You can use Me to update your proﬁle picture, post to these networks, check in via Facebook, toggle your Messenger chat status, and read and respond to what other people are saying to you (and about you) via these services. To do all this, of course, you need to ﬁrst conﬁgure an account for all of the social networks to which you belong. As with all accounts, this occurs through Settings, System, Email + Accounts.

Find and launch Me There are two ways to access Me: Through the People hub or the Me tile. To launch Me from People, navigate to the All view and then tap your proﬁle picture at the top of the list of contacts. Generally speaking, it’s faster and easier to launch Me using the Me tile, which sits on the Start screen and animates between your proﬁle picture and a plain opaque design.

Tour the UI Me has a fairly simple interface, with three pages: Share, Notiﬁcations and What’s New. Share is where you go when you want to communicate with the outside world via a social network, while Notiﬁcations is the place for seeing what others have said to (or about) you. What’s New is a special feed that shows what your contacts are doing on these social networking services.

In the next few sections, you can discover what you can do from these pages.

Update your proﬁle picture To update your proﬁle picture, tap the proﬁle picture on the Share page. This will launch the Update Proﬁle Picture screen, from which you can choose both a picture and the account(s)—you can choose your primary Microsoft account, Facebook, or both—that the change will eﬀect.

Note: This change will indeed change the picture that is associated the underlying services, so be sure you want to do this. First, choose which accounts to impact: Tap the Post to drop-down to choose between your primary Microsoft account, Facebook, or both. Then, tap the picture thumbnail. This will open a picture chooser interface from which you can browse the photos available on your phone and via connected online services like Facebook and SkyDrive. When you’ve selected the photo you wish to use, tap the Post app bar button.

Post an update To post an update to Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter, tap the Post an Update link in the Share page. This will display the Post an Update screen.

From this screen, you’ll ﬁnd three ﬁelds: Post. The actual post.

Post to. Tap to choose between Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter. Share on Facebook with. Here, you choose which types of people will be able to see your post on Facebook. This is set to Friends by default, but you can also choose Me only, Friends of friends, Public, or Use my Facebook settings. When you’re ready to post, tap the Post app bar button.

Check-in to Facebook Facebook supports a unique feature called “check-in” that lets you announce, via a Facebook post, that you are at a particular destination. To check-in via Facebook, navigate to the Share page in Me and then tap the Check in link.

Me will examine the nearby area and display a list of places you and others have checked into nearby as well as other notable places. If you don’t see the place you’re at in the list, you can use the Search app bar button to ﬁnd it. And if that fails, you can (supposedly) use the Add app bar button to add the place. I’ve had limited success with that last option. When you select a location, the Check In screen appears. Here, you can add a message, choose which services to which to post (for non-Facebook services, it’s basically just a post), and who on Facebook you’d like to share the check-in with.

Tap the Post app bar button to check-in. Note: The check-in feature is lacking in some notable ways. It doesn’t let you upload a photo. And it doesn’t provide a way to check-in other people who may be with you. The standalone Facebook app for Windows Phone does support these features, however, so you may want to use the app for this functionality instead.

Toggle your chat status Windows Phone lets you chat with your other Messenger contacts and Facebook friends using a feature called instant messaging (IM). You can use the Set Chat Status link on the Share page in Me to determine whether you’re available via Messenger or Facebook Chat for IM. Note: This functionality is also available via the Messaging app. Messenger chat is discussed in 7. Messaging.

Read and respond to what other people are saying online Both Notiﬁcations and What’s New operate in a similar fashion: They provide feeds that aggregate content from the four supported services—your Microsoft account, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter— and allow you to see what others are posting online. Notiﬁcations shows posts to these services that are

directed to you, or are about you. And What’s New provides a list of social network posts from people in your contacts list. In Notiﬁcations, unread posts are colored while read posts are white. (Over time, the unread posts change to white to indicate they’re marked as read.)

You can tap on an individual post to read the full post and respond to it, if required, using the same service to which the original was posted.

If the post is from Facebook, you can optionally “like” it.

If the post is from Twitter, you can retweet it.

Re-pin a missing Me tile If you accidentally (or purposefully) remove, or unpin, the Me tile from the Start screen, you can get it back. To do so, open the People hub and, if necessary, navigate to the All panel. Tap your proﬁle tile at the top of the contacts list to access the Me card. Then, tap the Pin app bar button to bring it back.

It will appear at the bottom of the Start screen, and you can move or resize the tile as necessary.

6. Phone As the version of Windows designed for smart phones, it comes as no surprise that Windows Phone includes integrated phone capabilities. These capabilities are surfaced through a dedicated Phone app, which works with the underlying platform and other apps and experiences in Windows Phone.

Launch Phone Like most other built-in Windows Phone apps, you can launch Phone via its Start screen tile or the All Apps list.

Note: As you’ll discover in this chapter, Phone also provides a full-screen notiﬁcation when a call comes in and a ﬂyover notiﬁcation when a new voice mail arrives. Tapping these notiﬁcations will also launch the Phone app, but into the appropriate experience, and not the app’s default user interface.

Understand the Phone app The Phone app is simple and straightforward, except for one surprising twist: It displays a diﬀerent user interface depending on whether you’ve enabled visual voicemail, a feature that is only oﬀered by some wireless carriers or, in some cases, only with certain wireless plans. If you do not have visual voice mail enabled, the Phone app will display a very simple one-screen interface with a single page, or view, called History. This version of the app has an app bar with four buttons: Voicemail, Keypad, People, and Search.

If you do have visual voice mail enabled, Phone still provides a single-screen interface, but now it has two pages, or views, History and Voicemail. This version of the app has an app bar with just three buttons: Keypad, People, and Search.

Manually dial a phone number If you need to manually dial a phone number, simply launch Phone and then tap the Keypad app bar button.

This displays the Phone keypad, so you can dial the number.

This process is pretty straightforward. Tap the Call button to complete the call, or the Save button to add the number to a new or existing contact. Tip: As indicated on the virtual keypad, you can press and hold the 0 (zero) button to add a + (plus) symbol to an international phone number.

Call a contact To call one of your contacts, open Phone and tap the People app bar button.

Doing so literally launches the People hub, giving you access to all of your contacts, but also all of the other features of the hub. (As opposed to opening a standard contacts chooser.)

From here, you’re expected to navigate through the People hub and ﬁnd the contact you wish to call. You can do so by manually scrolling through the All list, using Search, accessing Recent, or whatever. When you tap the contact you wish to call, their contact card will display, providing a list of phone numbers (and other information, of course).

Tap the phone number you want to start the call.

Note: You can learn more about the People hub in 5. People + Me.

Call a contact with your voice You can also call a contact using voice control. To do so, press and hold the Start button on your Windows Phone handset. The Listening notiﬁcation appears, indicating that voice control is engaged.

Now, simply speak to your phone using phrase such as call Paul Thurrott, call Paul Thurrott home or call Paul Thurrott mobile. The more speciﬁc you are, the better: If the contact has multiple phone numbers, you’ll be prompted to choose which one to use.

Choose a number by saying the name—mobile, work, home or whatever—and the call will be connected after a brief reminder about being more speciﬁc next time.

Call a phone number from elsewhere in Windows Phone Throughout various apps in Windows Phone, you will often come across a phone number that you can tap to begin a call. The following are examples but do not represent the full extent of this capability in the system.

Call a location from a Bing quick card When you display a quick card in Bing search results, you can tap that number to begin a phone call.

Note: You can ﬁnd out more about quick cards in the section Learn more with quick cards in Chapter 4: Search.

Call a person who sent you a text message While reading a text message, you may wish to call the person who texted you. To do so, tap the name or phone number at the top of the screen to view that person’s contact card. Then, tap one of the Call links on the Proﬁle page that displays.

Call a number in an email Some email messages will include an embedded phone number that you can tap: When you do, a contact card appears with a Call link.

Call a number in an appointment Many appointments in the Calendar app—especially those that are work-related meetings you’ve accepted—will include a phone number in the Notes ﬁeld. Tap this number to display the Edit phone number screen, and then tap the Call button to initiate a phone call.

Understand what you can do during a phone call When you connect a call the Call screen appears

End the call When you’re done with the call, tap the End Call button. Note: If the other participant hangs up their phone, the call will automatically be terminated.

Do something else with your phone While you’re on a phone call, you may need to do something else too. Windows Phone supports this: Simply tap the Start button on your phone to navigate to the Start screen and then launch the app you need. While you do this, a notiﬁcation strip will appear at the top of the screen, indicating that the call is still in progress. This notiﬁcation animates with a bit of informational text.

To return to the call, tap the notiﬁcation. The Phone app’s Call screen reappears. Note: This activity makes the most sense if you are using the phone in speakerphone mode (see below) or with a wired or Bluetooth headset so that you can still communicate on the call while otherwise using the phone.

Use the keypad During some phone calls you may need to enter numbers to control a voice-based menu or enter a code. To access the virtual keypad during a call, tap the Keypad button.

When you do, the virtual keypad appears, covering much of the Call screen, and the Keypad button appears toggled on.

To toggle the keypad oﬀ, tap the Keypad button again.

Enable the speakerphone By default, a phone call will use the handset’s earpiece, which is located on the front of the device above the screen, to play audio. This way, you can use the phone normally, in one hand with the device pressed against your cheek, its earpiece next to your ear and its microphone next to your mouth. However, Windows Phone also supports a speakerphone mode in which the audio comes out of the handset’s external speaker and the built-in microphone behaves a bit diﬀerently to accommodate you not being right next to the device. To enable speakerphone mode, tap the Speaker button. The button will visually toggle on and you can place the phone down on a nearby surface and continue the call while doing other things.

To disable speakerphone mode, tap the Speaker button again.

Mute the call To mute a call—which disables your handset’s microphone, not audio from the other party on the call that is coming through the earpiece/speaker—tap the Mute button. The button will visually toggle on.

Tap the button again to disable mute.

Place the call on hold To place a call on hold—disabling both your handset’s microphone and the audio from the other party on the call—tap the Hold button. The button will visually toggle on, and the call will remain connected, but neither participant can hear the other. It’s like a two-way mute.

Tap the button again to return to the call.

Add another caller Using the Add Call button, you can add another caller to the conversation, creating what’s called a conference call. This capability is discussed in the next section.

Create a conference call Windows Phone supports conference calls, where you speak with two or more other people simultaneously, depending on your wireless carrier.

To place a conference call, you ﬁrst call one person normally. Then, once the call is connected, you can add a third party to the call using the Add Call button on the Call screen. When you tap the Call button, Phone navigates back to the History view. From here, you can select another contact from the History view or your contacts list (by tapping the People app bar button). Or, you can manually dial a phone number using the Keypad app bar button. A notiﬁcation appears at the top of the screen as a reminder that a call is currently in progress.

Once you’ve selected or typed a phone number, you will connect to this phone normally while your original call is on hold. When you connect, the Call screen will show two diﬀerences. First, that notiﬁcation is still available at the top of the screen, indicating the original (on hold) call. And second, there is a new Merge Calls button available.

To return to the original call and place the new call on hold, tap the notiﬁcation at the top of the screen. You can hop back and forth between the two calls in this fashion if you’d like. To merge the calls and create a conference call, tap Merge Calls. The Call screen changes yet again, this time to indicate that it is in a conference call. In addition, there is another new button, Private.

From here, you can simply continue with the conference call, and all parties should be able to communicate with each other. To disable the conference call and speak only with one of the parties—placing the other(s) on hold—tap the Private button. In the Choose Call screen that appears, select the caller with which you’d like to speak. That call will continue normally, and the other caller(s) will be accessible via the notiﬁcation strip at the top of the screen.

Handle an incoming phone call When you receive an incoming call, your phone will do some combination of the following depending on how you have things conﬁgured: Play a ringtone, vibrate, and display a “toast” notiﬁcation at the top of the screen. So while there’s little excuse for not realizing that you’re receiving a phone call, how you respond to that call if, of course, entirely up to you. Note: You can learn how to conﬁgure what happens when a phone call arrives at the end of this chapter in the section Customize Phone. If you are not using the phone when a call arrives, the phone will wake up and a new display will cover the lock screen.

Slide up to display the Incoming Call screen or, optionally, power down your phone to ignore the call. Otherwise, the Incoming Call screen will appear immediately, replacing whatever you were previously doing with the phone.

Answer a phone call To answer an incoming phone call, tap the Answer button on the Incoming Call screen. The Call screen will appear, so you can engage in the phone call and optionally use the related features discussed in the section Understand what you can do during a phone call, above.

Ignore a phone call To ignore a phone call, you can shut oﬀ the phone using the Power button or tap the Ignore button in the Incoming Call screen. In either case, the caller is sent immediately to your voice mail and you can continue doing what you were doing. An ignored call is treated like a missed call: You will see notiﬁcations on the lock screen and on the Phone tile.

Text a reply instead of answering a phone call The Phone app has an interesting feature that lets you respond to a phone call with a text message and then ignore the call. To do so, tap the Text Reply button on the Incoming Call screen. In the Text Reply screen that appears, select from the pre-made replies or tap Type a Message to type your own reply.

Because this ignores the call too, you will see notiﬁcations about a missed call on the lock screen and on the Phone tile. Note: The caller will receive the text message you sent and will go immediately to your voice mail as well. You can edit the list of default text replies by visiting Phone Settings (More, Settings). From here, tap the Edit Replies button to ﬁnd the Edit Text Replies screen.

There are four available reply slots, and two are pre-conﬁgured by Windows Phone. You can change the pre-conﬁgured replies or add additional replies of your own. Tap Done when you’re ﬁnished.

Understand what happens when you ignore or miss a call, or receive a voice mail When you miss or ignore a call, or receive a new voice mail, Windows Phone provides various prompts to alert you to this fact. If you don’t answer a phone call—either by explicitly ignoring it or by missing it—Windows Phone will place a notiﬁcation icon on your lock screen with a number indicating how many missed calls occurred.

Likewise, the Phone tile will display a similar notiﬁcation, as well as more information with larger tile sizes.

Voice mail behaves similarly, with a diﬀerent lock screen icon.

Likewise the Phone app’s live tile will also reﬂect a similar change.

Access your call history As you use your phone, you amass a history of the calls you received, both answered and missed. Windows Phone presents this history in its default History view, letting you more quickly interact with those you most recently communicated with via the phone.

Return a phone call To call a person who you previously communicated with over the phone, tap the Call button to the left of their entry in the History list. (It resembles a phone.) The Phone app will immediately dial that number.

Learn more about a person who called To learn more about a person who you previously communicated with over the phone, tap their entry in the History list. This will display their contact card and proﬁle, letting you call them via various phone numbers, send a text message, and so on.

Remove an item from your call history To remove one item from the call history, tap and hold on the item and then select Delete Item from the pop-up menu that appears. Note: There is no prompt on an item deletion.

Delete the entire call history To delete the entire call history, select More (“…”) from the app bar and then Delete All. You will be prompted to conﬁrm you wish to do so.

Search your history If you have many items in your phone conversation history list, it may be tedious to scroll through hit to ﬁnd a particular call. Fortunately, you can search this list. To do so, tap the Search app bar button.

A search box will appear over the History page, letting you search the list. As you type in the search box, the history list ﬁlters to display only those items that match the search term.

Tip: If you don’t ﬁnd what you’re looking for, tap the Search Contacts link at the bottom of the list to use the current search against your full contacts list.

Access your voice mail Windows Phone supports two forms of voice mail, normal voice mail and visual voice mail, but what you see in the Phone app will depend on which of the two your wireless carrier and/or your mobile plan supports. As noted previously, with normal voice mail, you will see only one page (History) in the Phone app and an additional Voicemail app bar button. But with visual voice mail, the Phone app will include a Voicemail page in addition to the default History page, and will not show a Voicemail app bar button. That said, it’s possible that those with the normal voice mail display can still access visual voice mail. That’s because Windows Phone will often default to normal voice mail until visual voice mail is conﬁgured. To check, access normal voice mail as described below in “Call your voice mail.” If you’re prompted to conﬁgure visual voice mail—which is preferable—you should do so.

Either way, when a voice mail arrives, your phone will chime and momentarily display a notiﬁcation. If you are quick enough and tap this notiﬁcation, you will navigate to the Phone app to retrieve the new message.

Otherwise you can access voicemail using the methods described below.

Call your voice mail If you’re using normal voice mail, you can call your carrier’s voice mail service by opening Phone and tapping the Voicemail app bar button.

From here, Phone dials your carrier’s voice mail system.

You navigate using a series of number presses, so you’ll want to display the virtual keypad using the Keypad button.

Note: These voice mail systems vary from carrier-to-carrier, with diﬀerent commands and capabilities.

Use visual voice mail With visual voice mail, the Phone app has two pages, History and Voicemail. To access voice mail, swipe over to the Voicemail page.

Here, your voice mail messages are arranged in order, with the newest messages at the top and new (non-listened) messages marked with the theme’s accent color.

Listen to a voice mail To listen to a voice mail, tap the voice mail in the list.

As the message plays, a progress bar indicates where you are in the message and four new buttons appear: Play/Pause. Tap this button to play or pause the message. Delete. Tap this button to delete the message. Phone. Tap this button to recall the phone number that was used to make the message.

Message. Tap this button to display the Proﬁle page of the contact who left the message and choose a diﬀerent way to communicate with them, including other phone numbers, via text messaging, or whatever.

Use phone features while listening to a voice mail You can also tap the Speaker button in the app bar to enable the speakerphone, or the Keypad button to display the virtual keypad.

Manage voice mails You can manage your voice mails in various ways. To delete an individual voice mail, tap and hold on it and then choose Delete item from the menu that appears. To delete multiple emails, tap the Select app bar to display selection boxes next to each voice mail message. Then, select the ones you wish to delete and tap the Delete app bar button. To delete all of your voice mails at once, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Delete all from the menu that appears.

Conﬁgure your voice mail While visual voice mail is generally superior to normal voice mail, you may want to occasionally make changes to the voice mail greeting that others hear or other aspects of the system. To do this, you need to actually call voice mail. But you can do this even if visual voice mail is enabled. To conﬁgure your voice mail, open Phone, select More (“…”) in the app bar and then Settings from the menu that appears. In Phone Settings, tap the Call Voicemail button.

Note: More Phone settings are discussed in the section Customize Phone.

Use a Bluetooth headset Many smart phone users prefer to use a Bluetooth headset for making and receiving phone calls, as this oﬀers them a hands-free experience during which the phone can stay in a pocket, purse or other out-ofthe-way place. Windows Phone natively supports Bluetooth, and while this technology can be used to pair other types of devices as well, using it to connect, or “pair,” with a headset is one of the more common usage scenarios.

Pair a Bluetooth headset with your phone To pair a Bluetooth headset with your phone for the ﬁrst time, navigate to Settings, System, Bluetooth and ensure that Bluetooth is turned on. If it is not, turn it on now.

Using your headset’s user manual as a guide, initiate the pairing sequence. (How you do so diﬀers from device to device.) On your phone, you will see the headset appear in the list of devices on the Bluetooth Settings screen. Tap this entry to ﬁnish the pairing.

Then, it will connect.

Answer a call with a Bluetooth headset Now, when your phone rings, you can answer the call by tapping the appropriate button on the headset instead of bringing the phone out and fumbling with the screen. (Again, how you do so diﬀers from device to device.) This button is typically used to end the call as well. If you were to look at the Call screen, you would see that the Bluetooth button is now toggled on, meaning that the phone call is going through Bluetooth rather than the phone’s internal earpiece and microphone. You can tap this button to switch back to using the phone’s built-in hardware if desired.

Initiate a call with a Bluetooth headset Likewise, you can use the Bluetooth headset in tandem with Windows Phone’s voice control. As described earlier in the chapter, press and hold the Start button on your handset and speak a phrase like Call Paul Thurrott home to begin a new phone call.

Customize Phone Like most built-in Windows Phone apps, Phone includes a Settings interface through which you can conﬁgure various options. But some options related to Phone can be found outside of this interface as well.

Phone Settings You can access Phone Settings from within the app by tapping More (“…” in the app bar), Settings, or from outside the app by navigating to Settings, Applications, Phone.

This interface provides access to the following options: Phone number. You can’t modify your phone number, but the top display in Settings does at least display this number, which can be surprisingly handy. Use default voicemail number. By default, Windows Phone will automatically conﬁgure the number it calls for voice mail based on settings provided by your wireless carrier. In some cases, however, your carrier may require you to manually enter the number, or you may be using a third party service with its own number. If so, you can disable this option and enter the new number for voice mail. Call voicemail. This button triggers a call to your voice mail system so you can change your greeting, password, or other options. (This is described earlier in the chapter.) Show my caller ID to. This option determines when your caller ID—the name registered with your phone number, and not just the number—is communicated to phones you call. By default, it’s set to “everyone,” but you can conﬁgure it to communicate this information to no one or only to your contacts. Call forwarding. Disabled by default, this option lets you forward all calls to this handset to another phone number. When enabled, a text box appears letting you type in the number to which you’d like to forward calls.

Text reply. As discussed previously in the chapter, Windows Phone lets you send a text message when a call comes in, so you can alert the caller that you’re busy or otherwise can’t answer the phone normally. This option must be enabled—as it is by default—for this feature to work. Edit replies. You can tap this button to edit the list of stock text replies that are available to you. This is discussed in the section Text a reply instead of answering a phone call earlier in the chapter. International assist. This feature, enabled by default, helps correct common dialing mistakes when making an international call. SIM security. Many Windows Phone handsets include a SIM, or Subscriber Identity Module, a tiny electronic card that is conﬁgured by the wireless carrier with your phone number and other information. If your phone is lost or stolen, another person could insert this SIM into another phone and use your phone number and, perhaps, other aspects of your account. This option allows you to embed a four-digit PIN code to protect the SIM from nefarious use. (You can only make emergency phone calls without the PIN code.) But it also requires you to input the PIN each time your phone boots up.

Other settings that impact the phone experience While Phone Settings is the obvious place to go to conﬁgure various options related to the Phone app, you might consider visiting a few other locations in Settings to fully conﬁgure your phone experience.

Conﬁgure the ringer, vibration and ringtone and voicemail sounds In Ringtones + Sounds settings (Settings, Systems, Ringtones + Sounds), you can conﬁgure the default conﬁguration of three very useful phone-related features.

Ringer. Enabled by default, this option determines whether the phone audibly rings a tone when a call is incoming. Vibrate. Enabled by default, this option determines whether the phone vibrates when a call is incoming.

Ringtone. This option lets you choose which ringtone is used by all calls by default. (As noted below, you can change the ringtone for certain individuals separately from this option.) New Voicemail. This option lets you choose which ringtone is used when a new voice mail arrives.

Conﬁgure a ringtone for an individual contact By default, all contacts use the default ringtone that is conﬁgured in Phone Settings. But you can conﬁgure a unique ringtone for any contact. To do so, display their contact card in the People hub and tap the Edit app bar button. Select a linked contact if prompted and then select Ringtone from the list in the Edit Contact screen. In the Choose an Item screen that appears, select the ringtone you prefer.

Note: Contact editing is described in more detail in the section Edit a contact in Chapter 5: People + Me.

Make volume, ringer and vibrate changes on the ﬂy In addition to the default ringer and vibrate settings you can conﬁgure as described above, you can of course change the global volume of the phone’s speaker—which impacts the loudness of the ringer—as well as how your phone reacts to incoming calls, voice mails, and other events. To change the volume at any time, tap one of the volume buttons on the side of the phone. (This works whether the screen is on or not.) You can tap the button repeatedly to make incremental changes or tap and hold to change the volume in more sweeping ways (and quite reach maximum and minimum, or mute, volume). To change the ringer and vibrate behavior on the ﬂy, ensure the phone’s screen is on and then tap one of the volume buttons on the side of the phone. You’ll notice that a volume ﬂyout notiﬁcation (or “toast”) appears at the top of the screen.

This notiﬁcation includes some useful information, including the current volume (as expressed as some number out of 30, as in 15/30) and the current ring/vibrate setting. That latter setting can be conﬁgured to ring + vibrate or to vibrate. Tap the ring/vibrate text or icon in the upper right of the notiﬁcation to toggle it between the two values.

Note: If you are or have recently played audio through another app such as Music + Video, the volume ﬂyout notiﬁcation will also include playback controls that are unrelated to Phone.

Conﬁgure lock screen reminders for phone and voice mail By default, your Windows Phone lock screen is conﬁgured to display a quick status icon for Phone. This icon is used to notify you when you’ve missed a phone call or received a new voice mail. To conﬁgure the Phone quick status icon, navigate to Settings, System, Lock Screen. Scroll down until you see an item called Choose aps to show quick status.

If the Phone icon is not present, tap one of the available slots and then choose Phone from the Choose an App screen that appears. You can also use this interface to change the position of the Phone icon; perhaps you’d like it to appear in the third slot instead of the ﬁrst.

7. Messaging Windows Phone’s Messaging app provides a versatile uniﬁed messaging experience that ties together standard text messaging capabilities (SMS and MMS) with the online messaging networks Messenger and Facebook Chat. So rather ﬁguring out which apps you need to communicate with your friends, as you would on competing smart phone platforms, you can simply use a single app that pretty much does it all. Note: Well, that’s the theory. But Messaging doesn’t integrate directly with Skype or Lync, two popular Microsoft communications platforms that both provide messaging capabilities of their own. Maybe in Windows Phone 9. (That said, many people use Skype with their Microsoft account, and the Messenger network that Microsoft provides is common to both Skype and Messaging on Windows Phone.) Messaging also supports the voice capabilities in Windows Phone so you can text hands-free, and it integrates with numerous technologies in the handset so you can share photos, videos, contacts, and even your location through this versatile and useful app.

Understand how Messaging uses accounts While Messaging does work with the accounts you’ve conﬁgured on your handset, it does so in a diﬀerent fashion from other connected apps. The text messaging (SMS, MMS) capabilities in Messaging, for example, are tied to your mobile phone number, and thus your wireless carrier account, and this cannot be conﬁgured or modiﬁed in Windows Phone. And while you can conﬁgure multiple Microsoft accounts on your phone, only the ﬁrst, or primary, account can be used with Messaging. Ditto for your Facebook account, though you can only conﬁgure one such account in Windows Phone anyway. Note: Wireless carriers typically charge for messaging via SMS and MMS. If you are not on an unlimited texting plan, you will need to be careful of not exceeding your limit each month. Some carriers, such as AT&T Wireless, provide apps that help you monitor this and other on-phone activities. Your primary Microsoft account is normally conﬁgured when you ﬁrst set up Windows Phone. As is the case throughout this book, I’ll assume that you did this already, since Windows Phone is dramatically less useful and unusable when you don’t. Other accounts are added and conﬁgured in Email + Accounts in Settings. For more information about accounts and Windows Phone, please refer to the section Set up and conﬁgure accounts in Chapter 1: Getting Started. When you conﬁgure a Facebook account through this interface, you are asked if you would like to connect your Facebook account to your Microsoft account, which, among other things, enables Facebook Chat capabilities in Messaging. Choose Connect if you see this request. You will still need to set up Facebook Chat, however. This occurs through Messaging Settings, which is discussed in the section Customize Messaging.

Launch Messaging Messaging is typically pinned to the default Windows Phone 8 Start screen, so you will normally launch it by tapping its tile. This tile supports all three of the possible sizes, each of which progressively shows more information, with the largest tile size oﬀering a preview of new and missed text messages.

If you don’t see a Messaging tile on your Start screen, you can ﬁnd the app in the All Apps list. To view this list, swipe to the left from the Start screen. Trendy hipsters can also use the Windows Phone speech functionality to start Messaging, as discussed later in the chapter.

Messaging tour Messaging provides a uniﬁed messaging experience in a surprisingly simple and obvious design. Given the popularity of SMS and MMS, in particular, this will be one of the more frequently used interfaces on the phone for many. The main app view is divided into two pivots, or views. The ﬁrst, called Threads, lists your conversation threads, by person (or number) and in order with the most recent conversation at the top.

The second view, Online, is populated with your Messenger and Facebook friends who are available to chat over those networks. Those you’ve conversed with recently will be listed at the top, followed by all friends.

Note: This view will be empty if you’ve not conﬁgured your chat status to anything other than its default state of Oﬄine. To do so, tap the Status button in the app bar and then choose Available, Busy, Away, or Invisible from the Set Chat Status screen that appears.

Create a new message To create a new message, tap the New app bar button. The Message screen will appear. This includes a To ﬁeld, where you can select one or more recipients, a Message ﬁeld, where you can type a text message, as well as Send, Attach, and Speak app bar buttons for performing other functions.

The To: ﬁeld is selected by default. Since this is a text ﬁeld, the virtual keyboard is also displayed, so you can begin typing immediately. As you type the name of the person to whom you’d like to send a message, Messaging will auto-complete the name based on your aggregated contacts list in People, and you’ll sometimes see multiple options for some contacts that support multiple ways of communicating (SMS/MMS through a mobile phone, Facebook chat, or Messenger chat).

Select the person you want from the list. Or, you can optionally add other people so that the message will be delivered to multiple recipients. You can tap the Choose button to the right of the To ﬁeld to select contacts from your full list of People-based contacts. When you’re done selecting the recipient(s), you can type your actual message. By default, the Message ﬁeld, which appears as a squared oﬀ conversation bubble, is selected each time you’ve added a contact, so you can just start typing. (If it isn’t selected, just tap it to select it and display the keyboard.)

To send the message, tap the Send button in the app bar. When you do, the message bubble is colorized and moved up in the conversation thread. And a new clear message bubble appears so you can type additional messages to the same recipient or recipients.

Use your voice to send a message To launch Messaging with your voice, press and hold the Start button and wait for the small chime. You’ll see the Listening pop-up appear, indicating that you can now speak instructions. Then, say “open Messaging”.

Now, tap the New app bar button to select a recipient or recipients normally. Then, tap the Speech app bar button, which resembles a microphone. At the Listening notiﬁcation, speak the message you’d like to send. When you pause speaking, Windows Phone will convert your speech to a text message and insert it in the message bubble.

You can continue speaking—after tapping the Speech button again—to add to the message. Tap Send to send the message.

Send a message attachment While a simple text message often gets the point across, Windows Phone 8 also lets you attach many diﬀerent items to messages. The most common, of course, are pictures and videos, and messages sent with those types of attachments are actually sent using the MMS (multimedia messaging service) message type, not MMS, as with plain text. But Windows Phone also lets you send your location, a voice note, or a contact card.

To send a message attachment, tap the Attach app bar button while in a message view. This will display the Attach Something screen, from which you can choose an attachment type.

Attach a photo or video to a text message If you choose Picture, for example, you’ll get a standard Picture chooser, which lets you ﬁnd and select a photo from the albums in your phone’s storage and in online albums in SkyDrive and Facebook. Note: Video works similarly, but only shows albums in your phone’s local storage.

When you ﬁnd the photo (or video) you wish to send, just tap it. The photo will appear in a message bubble in Messaging, and you can add some text before sending. (Note that you can only select and send one photo or video at a time.)

Attach your location to a text message To share your location with others via Messaging, choose My Location from the Attach Something screen. This will use the GPS and location services in Windows Phone to send an interactive map via Messaging to your recipient(s).

How this maps works on the other end will determine on which type of phone your recipient(s) are using. Those with Windows Phone 8 handsets can tap the map they receive and then view the location in the Bing Maps app. They can then use Maps to get directions to your location.

Those with other phone types can view your location in a map on the web. Note: You can learn more about Windows Phone’s location capabilities in 8. Maps + Location.

Attach a voice note to a text message Choose Voice Note from the Attach Something screen to record a short audio recording using your phone’s built-in microphone. Just tap Done when you’re done recording.

Note: Tap the phone’s hardware Back button to cancel recording.

Attach a contact to a text message To send a contact card from the People hub to a recipient via Messaging, chose Contact from the Attach Something screen. A Contact chooser will appear so that you can ﬁnd the contact you wish to share. When you select the contact you wish to send, that person’s contact card will be displayed. Then, tap the Share app bar button—it looks like a check mark—to proceed. Back in Messaging, add some text or just tap Send. The sent message includes a link with the text “This message contains contact information.” If the recipient has a Windows Phone 8 handset, they can tap on this message to view the contact card and then tap a Save button in the app bar to save that contact to their own device (via their choice of account). Note: The People hub and contact cards are discussed in 5. People + Me.

Send a group text While you can always send group texts the old fashioned way, by loading up the To: line in a new message with multiple recipients, Windows Phone 8 supports two more modern schemes for reaching multiple people at the same time. Which you use will depend on your relationship with those people. These schemes are Windows Phone 8 features called Groups and Rooms, respectively. Groups are typically used to aggregate a group of two or more people together into a virtual group that resembles their real-world relationships—family, co-workers, friends from high school, or whatever—so that you can track their collective exploits online via the social networking integration in the People hub. Groups are tied to your Microsoft account, so they also work across the Messenger network and Outlook.com. Rooms are pretty much Windows Phone speciﬁc (though there is some cross-platform functionality for iPhone and, to a lesser extent, Android users too). This feature lets you stay more easily connected with a group of people—again, family, friends, whatever—and provides shared and automatically synced Messaging-based chats, calendar, photo and video album, and notes. Note: There are other diﬀerences between these features. Groups and Rooms are discussed further in the section Interact with multiple contacts at once in Chapter 5: People + Me. You can a text message or Messenger-based instant message to a group directly from Messaging: Just type the name of the group into the To: ﬁeld. Note that you can choose between text message and Messenger-based IM.

Rooms work a bit diﬀerently: With this construct, you can send group instant messages only from within the room interface, which is available from the People hub or, if you’ve pinned the room to your Start screen, from its own live tile.

Use emoticons If you’ve spent any time typing on your Windows Phone handset’s virtual keyboard, you have probably noticed two things. One, the keyboard changes subtly depending on what you’re doing, presenting a version of the keyboard that is optimized to the task at hand. And two, the keyboard makes on-the-ﬂy corrections and auto-suggestions that really help improve typing reliability. Both of these keyboard features really help improve the Messaging experience. But another feature, Windows Phone’s support for hundreds of emoticons, is very much Messaging speciﬁc. Technically, this functionality is tied to how Windows Phone optimizes the keyboard based on what you’re doing. The keyboard you see in Messaging, which is unique to this experience (at least among built-in Windows Phone capabilities), is called the Text keyboard. It presents a standard QWERTY layout but adds a dedicated emoticon key. (You will need to select the new message bubble in the New Message or Message view to see the Text keyboard layout with emoticon key.)

Tap the emoticon key—it resembles a smiley face—and you’ll see a pretty incredible collection of emoticons, each of which is ASCII-based and will transmit properly to virtually any device.

Along the bottom are category keys. Tap each to change the view and see even more emoticons. For example, the pizza slice icon provides access to a collection of food emoticons.

If you’re over 11 years old, you’ll be forgiven for skipping this feature.

Handle received messages If you are in the middle of a text conversation with a friend or other contact, new messages will appear inline in the message view, using the familiar staggered message balloon layout. But that’s actually pretty rare. Oftentimes, you’ll be doing something else entirely, or using your phone for some other purpose, when a new message arrives. Windows Phone alerts you when such a thing happens. If you’re not using the phone, Messaging can alert you to new messages via a unique sound and/or by vibrating your phone. Both of these features can be conﬁgured in diﬀerent ways: The sound used for an incoming text (or instant message, which is what the Facebook chat and Windows Messenger texts really are) is conﬁgured in Settings, Ringtones + Sounds, as is the option for whether your phone uses the vibrate function. But you can also conﬁgure whether your phone makes sounds and uses vibrations on the ﬂy: Just press one of the handset’s volume buttons and a volume overlay will appear at the top of the screen. On the right is an indicator for the ringer and vibration.

Tap that icon on the rightmost area of the overlay to toggle between Ring + Vibrate and Vibrate. Or, hold down the Volume Down button to mute the volume entirely.

Understand Messaging notiﬁcations If you are using your phone, you’ll notice that an incoming message also triggers a notiﬁcation toast at the top of the screen. This toast includes the name of the person texting you and at least the beginning of their message. Note: If the text is coming from an unknown person or otherwise unidentiﬁable number, you will see the phone number instead of a name.

To view the message within its thread immediately in Messaging, just tap the toast notiﬁcation.

Understand Messaging tile notiﬁcations If you move too slowly or are simply busy doing something else, you can always manually navigate to Messaging from the Start screen: You’ll notice that the Messaging live tile has a number next to its icon, indicating a new message. Indeed, the Messaging live tile will always display the number of new and missed messages, regardless of which size tile you choose. But if you choose the larger tile size, you’ll also see the most recent message, right on the live tile.

The tile also uses a cute emoticon-like icon that changes depending on how many new or missed messages you have waiting. When there are no missed messages, the icon is a smiley face. If you miss 1 to 3 messages, it changes to a wink emoticon. And for four or more, you get the “uh-oh” face. Cute.

When you view the Threads list in Messaging, you’ll see that the thread with the new message is highlighted with the phone’s accent color, indicating where the new message is within the various available threads.

To view the new message within its thread, just tap the thread header in the list. If the message you received comes from a number not a contact, you can tap that number in the message view and then add it to your contact list in People, either via a new contact card or by adding the number to an existing contact.

Understand Messaging notiﬁcations on the lock screen If you miss one or more messages while you’re away from the phone, you will see a Messaging icon on your phone’s lock screen the next time you turn it on. This icon will have a number next to it, indicating how many message you’ve missed.

Note: If the same contact sends you multiple messages, each message is counted; this icon counts messages, not threads.

Manage threads and messages If you use Messaging frequently, you will quickly amass a number of diﬀerent message threads, each of which maps to one contact, even if you and that person have communicated via multiple mobile numbers, Facebook, and/or Windows Messenger account. Some may ﬁnd this overwhelming, but Messaging does provide ways to delete threads and messages so you can cull down the junk and just keep the messages that matter most to you.

Delete a thread You can delete an entire thread—that is, every conversation you’ve had with one person (or number)— by tapping and holding on the thread header in the Threads view. A single menu item, Delete, will appear.

Note: Alternatively, you can delete a thread by ﬁrst viewing that thread and then choosing Delete Thread from the app bar menu in that view.

Delete multiple threads You can also delete multiple threads at once. To do so, tap the Select app bar button. This places selection boxes next to each thread in the Threads view.

Select one or more threads and then tap the Delete app bar button that appears.

Delete a message in a thread You can also manage individual messages in a thread. To do so, open a thread and then tap and hold on a message. As with the thread management functionality mentioned above, a Delete menu item will appear. Note: Curiously, there’s no way to select and then delete multiple messages in a thread.

Use Facebook and Messenger While many will happily use Messaging solely for its text messaging—really SMS and MMS—capabilities, this uniﬁed messaging solution also provides useful instant messaging capabilities for users of Facebook Chat and Microsoft’s Messenger network. If you do use either of these popular services, Messaging is all the more useful.

Enable Facebook Chat Before you can use Facebook Chat in Messaging, you will need to ﬁrst conﬁgure a Facebook account in Settings, System, Email + Accounts. When you do, you’ll be asked whether you wish to connect Facebook Chat to your Microsoft account.

Choose Connect. Once the connection is made, Facebook Chat is enabled in Messaging. (You can toggle this option in Messaging Settings, as described later in the chapter.)

Enable Messenger Assuming you signed in to your phone with your Microsoft account, which you did, there’s nothing more to do: Your Microsoft account can automatically and immediately use the Messenger service. Most people use this via Skype on PC versions of Windows, or through Xbox LIVE on the Xbox 360, so this capability can open up your communications abilities pretty dramatically.

Set your Facebook Chat and Messenger chat status Once Facebook Chat and Messenger are enabled, you need to conﬁgure Messaging to access these services. This occurs through the prominent Status app bar button. By default, you are oﬄine—not connected to—either Facebook Chat or Messenger. But you can use this button to toggle your availability or status. When you tap the Status appear button, the Set Chat Status screen appears.

You have ﬁve available choices: Available (online and visible to your Facebook and Messenger contacts), Busy (online and visible but with a busy status), Away (online and reachable, but marked as away to your contacts), Invisible (online but not visible to your contacts), and Oﬄine (oﬄine and marked as away to your contacts). To use Facebook Chat and Messenger, you must set your status to Available, Busy, Away, or Invisible. Oﬄine is the default.

Chat with your Facebook friends and Messenger contacts Once you’ve set your chat status accordingly, you can use the Messaging app’s Online view to view your contacts from both services and send new instant messages. The Online view is divided into Recent and All views, with online contacts clearly marked.

Note that Facebook and Messenger contacts are comingled in this view. If you have a contact that uses both Facebook and Messenger, then the Messenger service will be used for communications ﬁrst. To send a new instant message, tap the New app bar button. This opens a standard New Message screen, as with any text message, and you can pick from one or more contacts, as before. (In fact, Messaging doesn’t diﬀerentiate between communications types, so you could send the same message to one contacts over SMS, to one over Facebook Chat, and to a third via Messenger.) Alternatively, you can select a contact that is listed in the Online view, since those contacts are known to be using Facebook Chat, Messenger, or both. When you tap such a contact, your message thread with that contact appears (as it does with text messages). Again, messages from multiple services (SMS, Facebook Chat, Messaging) can be comingled here: Messaging is a universal messaging client. What the Online view buys you, of course, is the ability to see who's online for live conversations at that exact moment. When you send a text message, you don’t really have any idea whether that person is available or will see the message immediately. But the Online view taps into an important advantage of Facebook Chat and Messenger: Both services provide presence information—which Windows Phone calls chat status—allowing you to reach out to people you know to be online. Unless they’re ignoring you or just stepped away from whatever PC or device they were using, they’ll probably answer you immediately.

Switch between messaging services Messenger’s universal messaging functionality aﬀords another nicety: It lets you switch between the multiple services it supports. If the contact you’re communicating with uses two or more of the services supported by Messaging, you will see a fourth app bar button, Switch, in the messaging thread view for that contact. This button lets you switch between services. For example, my Windows Secrets co-author Rafael Rivera uses text messaging on his mobile phone, Messenger, and Facebook Chat. So when I’m communicating with Rafael, I can tap the Switch button to choose between these services.

Windows Phone will automatically choose the most ideal service to use. If you start a conversation from the Threads view, it will use SMS ﬁrst, if available, then Messenger, and then Facebook. From the Online view, it will Messenger ﬁrst and then Facebook. If a contact only uses a single service, it will obviously use that.

Customize Messaging Perhaps because of its multi-function nature, Messaging feature are conﬁgured in a few diﬀerent locations. The main settings interface, of course, can be found in Messaging Settings.

Use Messaging Settings To access the Settings interface for Messaging from within the app, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then Settings from the menu that appears.

As you can see, there are a number of options to choose here. Text message backup. If set to On, your text messages will be backed up to Microsoft’s cloud-based backup service for Windows Phone. When you restore the phone, or get a new phone, you’ll be prompted to restore from a previous backup. If you choose the backup from this phone, your text messages will be restored and available to you on the new (or restored) phone. Chat backup. This works just like Text message backup except that it applies to Facebook Chat and Messenger instant messages. Use Facebook Chat. This option will only appear if you have signed into Facebook through the Email + Accounts settings interface. If On, Facebook Chat is available, and your Facebook contacts will appear in the Online pane in Messaging (assuming you’ve also set your Chat status to something other than Oﬄine). Group text. This confusing option doesn’t toggle the ability to text two or more people; that option is always available. Instead, it determines whether your group texts are viewed through a discrete thread. If it’s set to Oﬀ—the default—a group text will be split into diﬀerent threads, with one thread for each recipient. If On, group texts appear separately as discrete threads of their own.

Conﬁgure Ringtones + Sounds As noted earlier, Windows Phone plays a sound when you receive a new text message. The sound that plays is determined in Settings, Ringtones + Sounds, and not in Messaging Settings. Note: Unfortunately, there’s no way to conﬁgure a diﬀerent sound for each contact, as you can for phone calls: You can only choose a single sound that chimes whenever any text message or instant message arrives.

There are three options in Ringtones + Sounds that pertain to Messaging: Ringer. If On, Windows Phone will play a sound when a new message arrives. Vibrate. If On, Windows Phone will vibrate when a new message arrives. New text or IM. Here, you can choose the sound that plays when a new message or IM arrives. This is set to Windows message by default (or Nokia message on Nokia Lumia handsets). You can choose from a long list of alternatives or choose none.

8. Maps + Location Bing Maps is integrated into every Windows Phone 8 handset, providing location and directions capabilities plus Local Scout, an amazing way to discover more about the place you’re visiting. Note: Not all Bing Maps features are available in all locations.

Bing Maps Bing Maps is an excellent solution for location and directions and includes a useful map downloading feature that allows this app to function even when your handset’s GPS and cellular connectivity is unavailable.

Find and launch Bing Maps On non-Nokia Windows Phone handsets, Bing Maps can be launched via the dedicated Maps app (or tile), or you can access it indirectly by using Bing Search to search for a location.

If you’re using a Nokia Lumia handset, you will typically use Nokia HERE Maps instead of Bing Maps, and I will be covering this and other HERE location apps in a coming update to this book. For now, you can still access Bing Maps on Lumia handsets, even though it’s hidden by default. To do so, launch the Bing Search experience by pressing the hardware Search button on the front of your handset. Then, search for the term location. In the search results page that appears, you will see an entry called Map around me.

Tap that, or the map thumbnail, to launch Bing Maps.

Note: Though the Bing Maps tile doesn’t oﬀer a particularly dynamic view on its own, as you’ll soon see, you can pin locations from within Bing Maps and the tiles that are created for these locations are a bit more interesting.

The Maps interface is deceptively simply, with most of the onscreen real estate dedicated to the actual map. The app bar provides access to oft-needed functions like Local Scout, directions, your current location, and search. Note: Oddly, Maps doesn’t support landscape view, which might present a better presentation for use in a vehicle while driving.

Find your current location To ﬁnd your current location, tap the Me app bar button (it resembles a bull’s-eye).

Maps will center the map view on your current location.

Navigate through Maps As a multi-touch app, Maps works exactly as you’d expect and supports the following navigational actions: Navigate in any direction. You can swipe around the screen to navigate in any direction. Zoom in. Double-tap the screen or use the stretch gesture to zoom in. If you zoom in enough, Bing Maps will switch automatically to a satellite view, the theory being that a photorealistic representation of the area will be of more use to those out in the world.

Zoom out. Use the stretch gesture, or “reverse pinching,” as I call it, to zoom out. Center the view. Remember: If you ever lose sight of where you are, just tap the Me button to center the view once again on your current location.

Find your way inside a mall or other location Maps also provides some pretty amazing interior maps, so not only will you know you’re at the local mall, you’ll be able to tell where you are inside the mall, so you can ﬁnd your way more quickly to the closest Microsoft Store.

Frankly, these are kind of hit or miss on Windows Phone. If you view Bing Maps from a PC web browser, you’ll ﬁnd that far more interior locations are available there.

Find a location To ﬁnd a location, tap the Search app button.

Here, you can type in pretty much anything, including speciﬁc addresses, ZIP codes, speciﬁc place names (including restaurants, stores, and so on) general place types (restaurant, perhaps, or coﬀee), and more. If you search for something very speciﬁc, like an address, you will generally get a single search result and Maps will simply display that location.

Search more generally, however, and you’ll likely see more results.

Either way, the map will display one or more ﬂags indicating each search result. Tap one to display its name, if not available. Tap it again and a quick card will appear for that location.

From this quick card, you can ﬁnd out the address (and tap that to get directions). If it’s a speciﬁc place— like the Dunkin’ Donuts store noted above, you’ll see a lot more information, including its phone number.

Clear the map If you’ve searched for a location and Maps is littered with ﬂags you can clear the view by tapping the More (“…”) app bar button and then Clear Map from the app bar menu that appears.

Get directions Though Maps lacks true turn-by-turn navigation capabilities it does provide walking and driving directions between two locations. (You can get voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation with apps such as Nokia HERE Drive and Drive+, which will be covered in coming update to this book.)

Get driving directions To get driving directions to a new location, tap the Directions app bar button (it resembles a northpointing compass arrow).

An overlay will appear at the top of the screen, oﬀering both Start and End ﬁelds.

The Start ﬁeld is auto-ﬁlled with your current location. But you can edit that, and the End ﬁeld, by tapping in the ﬁeld and typing a location name. Maps will think for a bit and then eventually provide you with a step-by-step route for getting to where you’re going.

If you’re in a car, you can simply begin driving and Maps will keep up with you, alerting you when a change, such as a turn, is coming. You can also tap on any step in the directions to hear the audible instructions again.

Get walking directions Maps can also provide walking instructions for those on foot. Simply get directions normally and then tap the little Walking icon at the top of the directions.

Change between map-only and directions list views You can also toggle between the map view and the directions list while using directions. To jump into a purely map-based view, tap anywhere in the map. To view the directions list again, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Directions List from the app bar menu that appears.

Stop using directions To stop using directions, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Clear Map from the app bar menu that appears.

Conﬁgure the view By default, Maps utilizes a clean and simple view in which streets, rivers, and other locations are clearly identiﬁable. But you may wish to change the view, adding real-time traﬃc updates or possibly an aerial view, which is particularly useful when you’re in a major metropolitan area.

Show traﬃc updates To show live traﬃc updates, select More from the app bar and then Show Traﬃc. Real-time traﬃc updates appear in the form of colored lines on the roads. Green lines indicate no traﬃc, yellow is for light traﬃc, orange is for serious traﬃc, and red represents “parking lot.”

Show an aerial view Maps also supports an aerial view that more closely resembles satellite imagery at ﬁrst. To enable aerial view, tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then Aerial View On.

Aerial view gets more interesting when you zoom in and are viewing a major metropolitan area with signiﬁcant sights.

Note: As noted previously, aerial view displays automatically if you zoom in close enough even if aerial view is set to oﬀ. Note: You can toggle traﬃc and aerial view independently and can thus mix and match between each of the available views.

Favorite places Maps supports the notion of Favorites, much like Internet Explorer. In this case, of course, you’re storing locations you need to visit frequently so you can get directions from your current location or access other information about that location using its quick card. Note: This feature is unavailable in Bing Maps on Nokia Lumia handsets. You can add and access favorite places on those devices using Nokia HERE Maps instead.

Add a location to Favorites To add a location to Favorites, simply ﬁnd it with Maps (using Search) and then view its quick card. Then, at the bottom, tap the Add button (which resembles a star with a plus sign on it) and, if required, choose a name that will identify it in Favorites.

Favorite places show up in Maps automatically, each with a little star ﬂag.

Access your favorites places You can access your favorite places when you need to navigate to a saved location, call, or perform other common actions. To access this list, tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then Favorite Places. This will display My Places.

Just tap one of the places to view its quick card, from which you can trigger a directions search, access the phone number, and more.

Access Bing Maps while oﬄine Bing Maps provides an oﬄine maps feature that lets you download maps for a particular area so that you can still use the app if your handset’s cellular or GPS connectivity stops working properly, or if you’re roaming and simply would prefer to disable them yourself to avoid excess charges. To view which maps are available—as you’ll discover, it’s an amazing collection that spans virtually the entire globe, press the More (“…”) app bar button, then Settings, and then tap the Download Maps button. This displays the Downloaded Maps screen, which is empty by default. So tap the Add app bar button.

First up is the Choose a Continent screen, from which you can begin whittling down the choices and getting to actual maps to download.

I happen to live outside Boston, Massachusetts, so for my usage near home, it makes sense to start with North and Central America. From there, I can choose USA from a list of countries, and then All Regions or an individual state. In this example, the entire United States is a fairly big download, about 2.5 GB. But my own state, Massachusetts, is a more reasonable 74 MB. Just choose the region you want and the download will begin.

Map downloading works similarly around the world. If you live outside of Paris, France, for example, or will be visiting there soon and wish to use Maps for navigation while traveling, you might download the Paris-Isle-of-France/Picardy map.

Pin a location to the Start screen Maps provides a way to pin frequently-needed locations to the Start screen. You do so from any location’s quick card, where you’ll see a Pin app bar button.

Tap the Pin button, and a new tile for that location is added immediately to the Start screen. This tile rotates between a plain text description of the place (“Jasper White’s Summer Shack”) and a map. So the two possible tile states will resemble the following.

Share your location As with the location pinning feature, you can also share locations using the Share app bar button that appears in app bar for any location’s quick card. This triggers a standard Share screen, from which you can share a location via email, NFC Tap + Send, messaging, or social networks like Facebook.

What’s shared is a Bing URL. So if the recipient has a Windows Phone (or another Windows-based device), they can tap this URL and see the location in Bing Maps. In Windows 8/RT, that may resemble the following.

Access Bing Maps from other apps If you receive an address via email (Mail), an appointment or meeting (Calendar), or an SMS text message (Messaging), you will often see an address, which will appear as a tappable hyperlink.

To view that location in Bing Maps, tap the address link. (On Nokia Lumia devices, this will actually open in the similar Nokia HERE Maps.)

Customize Maps Aside from the view customizations discussed previously, you can conﬁgure various Bing Maps features through its Settings interface. This is accessible from within the app: Tap the More (“…”) button in the app bar and then choose Settings.

Only a few basic options are available: Use my location. This option must be set to On for Maps to work properly. Check for updates. If you’ve downloaded any maps for oﬄine use, this button will manually check to see whether there are any newer versions available. Delete history. Tapping this button will delete previous searches and temporary ﬁles from your handset.

Local Scout Local Scout is a unique Bing Maps feature that helps you find restaurants, sites and attractions, shopping, and other places that are near your current location. It’s one of the best features in Windows Phone, acting as a digital concierge and guide whenever you’re out and about in the world.

Find and launch Local Scout You can launch Local Scout in a variety of ways. Using a tile. Your wireless carrier or handset maker may have conﬁgured a Local Scout tile on your Start screen. If not, you can pin a Local Scout tile yourself, as described below.

From Bing Search. Press the Search hardware button on the front of your handset and then tap the Local Scout app bar button at the bottom of the Bing Search experience.

From Bing Maps. Launch Bing Maps and then tap the Local Scout app bar button.

Understand the Local Scout interface Local Scout displays information about your current location using a unique panoramic hub experience. So while you can only see part of the Eat & Drink part of its display by default, you can keep panning (left or right) to view other items of interest.

If you were able to view the entire Local Scout panorama at once, it may resemble the following.

You can also tap in the map view at the top of any view to see the listed locations in Bing Maps.

Find local places Local Scout offers the following sections, each of which is a highly customizable view. Eat + Drink. A list of local restaurants, bars, coffee shops, diners, and cafes. You can show only those locations that offer specific cuisines—Chinese, Indian, or Mexican, for example, or any combination of them—and sort the view by distance, rating, or by suggestions for you (which requires you to enable the Windows Phone personalized suggestions service). See + Do. This list includes local attractions like amusement parks, historical sites, movie theaters, parks and more, as well as events such as dance, fairs and festivals, music, and more. As with the previous view, you can filter the view to show only certain location types and sort, in this case by distance or suggestions. Shop. Here, you can find shopping of all kinds: antiques, books, music, furniture, and more. You can filter by those shopping types, or by stores that are currently open or offering deals, and sort by distance, rating or suggestions. For You. This view requires that you enable the Windows Phone personalized suggestions service. If you do, it lists nearby locations that people you know have “liked” on services such as Facebook. It’s pretty clear that my friends aren’t all that discriminating based on what I see locally. But that’s OK, because For You is also a bit different from the other Local Scout views in that it doesn’t offer the same sorting and filtering options. Instead, you can type a Refine app bar button to select local places you don’t like and then remove them from this view.

The first three views—Eat + Drink, See + Do and Shop—are sorted by distance, with the closest places at the top of the list. To sort by other criteria, including the filtering options listed above, just tap the Sorted by link that appears under the name of each view. You’ll be presented with a Set Filters screen that lets you sort by distance, rating and/or suggestions, depending on which you’ve chosen, and filter the view in various ways. For example, the Eat + Drink view lets you choose between and choose the

cuisine(s) you’re looking for. For Eat + Drink and Shop, you can also specify only those places that are open and those that are offering deals.

Regardless of the kind of place you’re looking for, eventually something will look interesting. Each place listed in Local Scout includes a lot of useful information, including the place name, type, distance, relative expensiveness, address, and rating. But if you tap the item in the list, you’ll be shown a quick card for the place, with even more information.

As with any other Bing quick cards, there’s a lot going on here, and interactive links for you to get more done. For example, you can tap the address to see the place on a map or get directions using Bing Maps, tap Drive to navigate there, or tap the phone number to call the place. You can pin a tile for the location to your Start screen or share it in various ways—which we examined earlier in the chapter—or add this place to your favorites (on non-Lumia handsets). In other quick card views, you can see what the buzz is around the place by reading reviews and discover related apps. It’s all very full-featured.

Find places in a diﬀerent location By default, Local Scout does as its name suggests: It finds places nearby. But sometimes you want to research a location before you visit it, and as it turns out, Local Search will let you do this if you know the trick. To use Local Scout to discover places at a different location, tap in the Map view at the top of Local Scout to show Maps full-screen, and then tap the Search button to enter the name of the location you’re visiting soon (like Boston, MA). Then, when Maps changes to the location for which you searched, just tap the Local Scout app bar button to see listings for that place. Looks like Paris, France has a lot going on. Who knew?

Pin Local Scout to the Start Screen If Local Scout isn’t pinned to your Start screen—or if you removed the tile before you discovered how useful it is—you can pin the tile there yourself. To do so, launch Local Scout, select More (“…”) from the tiny, almost invisible app bar at the bottom, and then choose Pin to Start from the app bar menu that appears. Voila.

9. Email Windows Phone 8 includes a full-feature email client called Mail that supports multiple account types, modern email features, and supports a unique linked inbox view in which you can combine multiple accounts into a single view. Where other mobile platforms require you to use diﬀerent clients for diﬀerent email accounts, Windows Phone oﬀers a truly integrated experience. Note: Technically, the Mail app is the latest iteration of what Microsoft calls Outlook Mobile and as such it is also technically part of the Oﬃce suite of mobile apps that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote Mobile. I refer to this as the Mail app to avoid confusion with the Outlook application for the PC, the Outlook.com email service and the Outlook Web App web-based front-end to Exchange and Oﬃce 365.

Email and accounts If you’ve been using email for a long time, there is one conceptual barrier you may need to overcome as you move to Windows Phone: Unlike traditional PC-based email solutions like Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, and the like, the Mail app is designed to work exclusively with Internet email services where your email data is stored in the cloud and not on a single PC or device. That is, Mail is a front-end to your email, and while it can cache some of that email on your phone, the central email store is in the cloud. And that’s true no matter which account types you use: You cannot permanently download email from an email service and store it exclusively on your Windows Phone handset. That said, Mail is a full-featured email solution and it supports many account types. In fact, everyone reading this book should have one email account already conﬁgured: When you ﬁrst set up Windows Phone, the ﬁrst-run wizard prompts you to sign-in with a Microsoft account, which is conﬁgured as the primary account on the phone. This account adds contacts to the people app, scheduling information to Calendar, your games history to the Games hub, your SkyDrive-based photos to the Photos hub, your SkyDrive-based documents to the Oﬃce hub, and more. It also adds email to the Mail app. In the section Customize Mail at the end of the chapter, you can learn how you might customize each email account you add to the phone. (And you will want to do so: Few email-based accounts, including that primary Microsoft account, are ideally conﬁgured by default.) For now, however, let’s look at how you might add new accounts to the phone, speciﬁcally those account types that support email.

Understand which accounts support email There are several. If you navigate to Settings, System, Email + Accounts, you’ll be confronted by a list of the accounts that are currently conﬁgured on your handset. This list includes accounts that include email support—like your Microsoft account, Hotmail, Outlook, and a few others—as well as some that do not (Facebook, for example, and Twitter, among others).

If you tap the link titled Add an account, you can add more accounts to the phone. Windows Phone supports the following types of email accounts natively, though your wireless carrier could have added one or two other types as well: Outlook. This misnamed entry—it should be called Exchange, perhaps, or Exchange ActiveSync— supports all email services that use the de facto standard Exchange ActiveSync, or EAS, to establish a push-based connection between the client (in this case Mail on Windows Phone 8) and the server/service. It explicitly supports Microsoft email services such as Outlook.com, Exchange Server, Exchange Online, and Oﬃce 365, but it will work with any EAS-compatible email service, including Hotmail. And that “push-based” bit means that the server is doing all the work, rather than forcing the client to continually poll the server looking for updates, an activity that can impair battery life. Hotmail. This entry provides the obvious place for Hotmail users to conﬁgure their account, but it’s really just a renamed version of the Outlook account type, in that it too uses EAS to connect to the Hotmail servers. So why use this instead of Outlook? It provides a diﬀerent icon on the Mail tile, so if you’re conﬁguring multiple accounts, you may want to use one of each in order to keep them visually unique as well. Yahoo! Mail. This entry allows you to connect to Yahoo! Mail only (it doesn’t support Yahoo! contacts or calendar) via IMAP, so it is also push-based and therefore pretty eﬃcient.

Google. Use this entry to connect a Gmail email account to Windows Phone 8. You’ll be prompted whether you’d like to use just Gmail (email only) or Gmail with contacts and calendar as well. Gmail connects via IMAP, like Yahoo! Mail. Other account/Advanced setup. These two entries let you conﬁgure other, less high proﬁle email services using email protocols like IMAP and POP. You can use the Other account entry to see if autodiscovery works—it just needs an email address and password—or Advanced setup if you know your email service’s server settings. This latter process can be fraught with diﬃculty and is only recommended for power users who understand the intricacies of old-school email accounts.

Add a new email-based account To add a new account, tap Add an account. The Add an Account screen appears.

Tap the account type you’d like to add. For this example, I will add an Oﬃce 365 account, but the process is basically identical for any Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, or Google account type. In the next screen, enter your email address (user name, including the domain bit after the @ sign) and password.

Then, tap Sign In. Settings will display a small notiﬁcation indicating that it is looking for the email service settings, and then another when it ﬁnds them. (When you connect to an Exchange-based server such as Oﬃce 365, you’ll also prompted with some additional information about device integration and given the chance to download the Lync mobile app.) Then, the account is added to the bottom of the accounts list in Email + Accounts. After a bit of syncing, you’re good to go.

Tip: Don’t forget to read Customize Mail for information about conﬁguring this and your other email accounts.

Understand the Mail app The Mail app is unique among the core Windows Phone apps in that it doesn’t automatically aggregate all of the accounts you’ve added to the phone by default, as do apps like Calendar and People. Instead, a unique instance of the Mail app is created for each email account you add. And that means a unique entry for each of these account in the All apps list and, by default, a unique tile for each account on the Start screen.

As you can see, a Mail tile can have a number next to the icon. This number represents the number of unread messages that have arrived in that account since the last time you viewed the inbox. Simply opening the inbox (by tapping the tile) will clear the number from the tile, even if you don’t read any of the new messages. Note: If you prefer to access two or more of your email accounts from a single app, you can use a feature called linked inboxes, as described later in the chapter. When you launch the Mail app, you’re presented with a view of the associated account’s inbox. This multi-page app lets you pivot between diﬀerent views of the inbox. By default, you see all emails in the folder, but you can swipe over to view only unread emails, ﬂagged emails, or urgent emails.

By default, the Mail app utilizes a Microsoft email feature called Conversation view that keeps each message from an email thread together visually. Email threads are denoted by a vertical line to the left of the title of the most recent email message in the thread.

To expand the conversation and see the other emails in the thread, just tap the message.

Select one or more messages To perform many of the actions described below—such as marking one or more messages as read, moving or deleting a message, and so on—you must ﬁrst learn how to select messages. There are two ways to do so. With the ﬁrst method, you tap just to the left of the message you wish to select.

When you do so, a selection box appears next to each message in the list, and the message you selected in visually checked.

Now, you can continue selecting other messages by tapping in the appropriate selection boxes. With the second method, you display the selection boxes ﬁrst. To do so, tap the Select app bar button.

When you do, the selection boxes appear next to each method as described above, allowing you to select the messages you wish to act on. To remove this selection UI, de-select any selected messages. If none were selected to begin with, tap Back.

Mark a message as read or unread You can manually mark one or more messages as read—or unread—changing the way it appears in the inbox view (or in other folders). As you may know, unread messages appear bolded in the Mail app while read messages appear normally. To mark one or more messages as read, select the message(s) you wish to aﬀect and then select Mark as Read from the app bar menu (More, Mark as Read). To mark one or more messages as unread, select the message(s) you wish to aﬀect and then select Mark as Unread from the app bar menu (More, Mark as Unread).

Note: Unread messages are automatically marked as read when you view them. See “View an email message” below for details. Note: You can also mark an email message as read or unread while you are viewing it. See “View an email message” below for details.

Use message ﬂags Microsoft invented an email convention called the ﬂag for its own services and applications that helps you mark a message for follow-up. Flagged messages are visually diﬀerentiated with a little graphical ﬂag, and naturally the Mail app in Windows Phone can interact with ﬂags set in Exchange/Oﬃce 365, Outlook.com and elsewhere. This means you can set a ﬂag (mark it as follow-up required) clear a ﬂag (delete the ﬂag), or a mark a ﬂag as completed any email and have it transmitted to the back-end email service. To set a ﬂag on an email message, select that message (or select multiple messages) and then select More (“…”) in the app bar and then Set Flag.

A small graphical ﬂag will appear next to the message(s) in the message list.

To mark a ﬂag as complete or clear it, select the message (or select multiple messages) and then select More (“…”) in the app bar and then Complete or Clear Flag as required. Flagged messages marked as complete will display a tiny graphical check mark to the right of the message(s) in the message list.

Note: Remember that you can view only ﬂagged messages by pivoting to the Flagged view. Note: You can also set or clear a ﬂag on an email message while you are viewing it. See “View an email message” below for details.

Delete a message To delete an email message, select it in the messages list and then tap the Delete button in the app bar. Be careful: The message will be deleted immediately, with no conﬁrmation notiﬁcation.

You can also delete multiple items simultaneously by using the selection boxes and then tapping Delete. Note: Deleted email messages are not actually deleted permanently. Instead, they are sent to a special folder at your email service. In Exchange (including Oﬃce 365), this folder is called Deleted Items. In Outlook.com it is called Deleted.

Note: You can also delete an email message while you are viewing it. See “View an email message” below for details.

Compose a new message To write a new email message, tap the New button in the app bar. The New Message screen appears.

Here, you can add the following information: Recipient(s). In the To: ﬁeld, which is selected by default, you can choose one or more recipients for the email message. There are two ways to add recipients to the list. You can tap the small “+” sign at the far right to access a full-screen Contact chooser and select a contact from the People hub. (And do so repeatedly to add more.) Or you can type the name or address of a contact, or any email address, in the To: ﬁeld directly.

If you choose the latter route, Mail will auto-complete contacts from your People hub as you type.

Subject. Select the Subject ﬁeld to add a subject line for your email. Email body. Select the email body area to write the actual email message using the on-screen keyboard. Attachments(s). The Mail app allows you to attach one or more photos as an attachment that will be sent with the email message. When you tap the Attach button in the app bar, a Picture chooser screen will appear, allowing you to navigate through the albums in the Photos hub and select one or more photos. You can repeatedly tap Attach to add more photos.

Priority. By default, a new email message is sent with normal priority. But you can tap the Priority app bar menu item (More, Priority) to choose between high, normal, or low priority. Generally speaking, the only reason to select this option is to choose high priority, which will cause your email to arrive with a “!” notiﬁcation in most email applications, alerting the recipient(s) that you think your message is important.

CC and BCC recipients. In addition to the normal recipient list, you can also optionally enable CC (“carbon copy”) and BCC (“blind carbon copy”) recipient lists, which appear as additional ﬁelds at the top of the New Email screen. CC is used for recipients who are not considered the “main” recipients but may still be interested in the email. BCC is used for recipients you wish to hide from the other recipients; no one will see the email addresses of recipients in the BCC list.

When you’ve completed composing the email message, tap the Send button in the app bar to send it.

Voice to text: Compose a message with voice It’s not completely hands-free, but you can compose email messages with voice if desired. To do so, open the New Message experience and add one or more recipients normally. When you select the

Subject or Body ﬁelds, the Speak app bar button becomes available: Select the ﬁeld, tap Speak, and then record your voice when prompted.

When you ﬁnish speaking, Windows Phone will translate the speech to text and paste it into the selected ﬁeld.

As you can see, it’s not perfect: As with any speech-to-text exercise, it pays to speak clearly and do so in a quiet environment when possible.

Work with other folders While the Mail defaults to the inbox view, you can also access other folders on the email server.

View other email folders By default, the Mail app displays the contents of your inbox. But you can change the view to any other folder in your email service. To do so, tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then choose Folders. Then, tap the name of the folder you wish to view. (If it’s not visible, tap Show all folders ﬁrst.)

The Mail messages view will change to display the selected folder. Now, tap Sync this folder to sync the email messages it contains. (By default, Mail will not sync all email, but will instead only sync mail that falls within the date ranged established in Sync Settings, in Settings. Read the section Customize Mail for information about this and other Mail settings.) Note: To return to the normal inbox view, you can duplicate the step described above and choose More from the app bar, Folders, and then the inbox. Or, you can simply leave the Mail app and relaunch it: The app will always start up in the inbox view.

Move a message to a new folder While the Mail app doesn’t support a formal Archive feature, you can achieve the same eﬀect by marking the message as read and then moving it to another folder. This method works equally well with multiple messages too. To move one or more messages to a new folder, select the messages you wish to aﬀect. Then, select the Move button in the app bar.

Then, select a folder in the folder list view that appears.

Note: You can also move an email message to a new folder while you are viewing it. See View and interact with an email message below for details.

Pin another folder to the Start screen If you need to work with another mail folder frequently, you might ﬁnd it more eﬃcient to pin that folder to the Start screen as a new tile. To do so, navigate to the folder as described in the previous section. Then, tap More (“…”) and choose Pin to Start from the menu that appears.

The new tile is added to the Start screen. From here, you can resize, move, or delete the tile.

Note: Earlier, I noted that each email-based account creates what is essentially a new instance of the Mail app. A pinned email folder works identically: It’s a standalone way to run the Mail app that launches directly into the folder you conﬁgured, instead of the default inbox view.

View and interact with an email message To view an email message, simply tap the message in the inbox or any other folder view. The message view appears.

Note: The Mail app will not display images in email messages by default. To download the images in an email, just tap one of the image placeholders.

You read the email message using your normal smart phone skills, such a scrolling, stretch/pinch to zoom/unzoom, and so on. Phone numbers and addresses in messages are automatically hyperlinked so that you can tap them to call a number with Phone or locate an address in Maps. Note: The Mail app is pretty powerful for those of you using corporate email servers based on Exchange. It supports technologies like Information Rights Management (IRM, for protecting internal messages), Out of Oﬃce messages, searching the email server for messages, and more. You can perform a number of tasks from the message view, as described in the next several sections.

Communicate more with the sender To ﬁnd out more about the person or business that sent the email you’re currently reading, tap the sender name at the very top of the message view. You’ll see a contact card with Proﬁle and History pages. The Proﬁle page provides basic information for senders who aren’t in your contact lists, and more detailed information for those who are.

From here, you can contact the sender via whatever means are available: Email (using the Mail app), phone, text messaging, or even by mapping directions to the sender’s location if available. The History page provides a rundown of all the communications you’ve exchanged with the sender.

This list, too, is interactive, and allows you to navigate through a potentially length of email conversations with that sender.

Communicate with other people who received the email message To ﬁnd out more about other people who received the email message, tap one of the names of the other recipients, which you can ﬁnd in the To: list under the email subject line and date/time. As with the previous section, you will be shown a contact sheet with Proﬁle and History pages so you can go from there.

View an attachment Modern email solutions on the web, the PC, and other mobile platforms all support the ability to send attachments, which are ﬁles that accompany, or “are attached to” email messages. Not surprisingly, the Mail app provides the ability to access these attachments, so you can view attached photos, download and view attached documents, and so on. When you receive a message with an attachment, you will see a paper clip icon next to the message in the inbox view.

And when you open such a message, the attachment(s) can be seen at the top of the email. (You may have to tap a link to expand the view to show multiple attachments.)

To download an attachment, tap the attachment. The tiny paperclip icon will display a small down arrow and a “Downloading…” notiﬁcation text will appear at the top of the screen. (You must individually download each attachment.) You can tap an in-line Cancel link to cancel the download as well.

When it’s done, the paperclip icon next to the attachment will change to a new icon that indicates the type of the attachment.

To open the attachment and view the attached ﬁle, tap it. Attached ﬁles will open in the appropriate Windows Phone app. For example, a photo attachment will open in the Windows Phone 8 photo viewer, part of the Photos hub.

Likewise, Word documents and text ﬁles open in Word Mobile. And PDF ﬁles will open in whatever PDF reader you’ve installed. (You may have to download one from Windows Phone Store ﬁrst. I recommend Microsoft’s PDF Reader.) And so on. To download an attachment to the phone, open it ﬁrst and then use the launching app’s save function. Each works a bit diﬀerently. In the photo viewer, for example, you can tap More (“…”) and then Save to Phone. In Word Mobile, tap More and then Save As. Oﬃce documents—Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations—are downloaded to the phone automatically when you view them and are made available via the Oﬃce hub.

Reply or forward a message from the message view To reply to or forward the message you’re currently reading, tap the Respond button in the app bar.

You’ll be presented with a pop-up list of choices.

Reply. To send a reply only to the person who actually sent the message, tap Reply. Reply All. To send a reply to everyone involved with the message, including the sender and any other people listed in the To:, CC:, or BCC: lines, tap Reply All. Forward. To forward the current email message to someone else, tap Forward. In each case, a new email message is created with the email quoted in the body so you can add a reply or other message. Note: If the email message you are forwarding contains attachments, you must download the attachments before forwarding. Otherwise, the attachments will not be forwarded. See the section View an attachment, below, to learn how to download attachments.

Delete a message from the message view To delete the current message, tap the Delete button from the app bar.

Be careful: The message will be deleted immediately, with no conﬁrmation notiﬁcation. That said, these messages are not actually deleted permanently. Instead, they are sent to a special folder at your email service, as noted previously.

Switch to a newer or older message from the message view Using the Newer and Older app bar buttons, you can navigate to a new email message in the message list.

Toggle a message ﬂag from the message view You can toggle a message ﬂag between three possible states—set, complete, clear—by tapping More (“…” in the app bar) and then Toggle Flag. Each time you choose this option, the ﬂag is toggled to the next available state and, in the case of set and complete, you will see a small icon appear in-line in the email message indicating the state.

Mark a message as read/unread from the message view When you view an email message in the Mail app it is automatically marked as read. To undo this change and mark the message as unread, tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then Mark as Unread from the menu that appears. If you wish to reverse the change, tap More and then Mark as Read.

Move a message to a new folder from the message view To move the current message to a new folder, tap the More (“…”) app bar button and then choose Move from the menu that appears. Then, select the folder you wish to move it to from the list that appears.

Manually sync with the email service While you will usually conﬁgure modern email services to sync items to the phone as they arrive, you may be using a less capable service or have conﬁgured things diﬀerent to save on bandwidth. Whatever the reason, you can manually trigger a sync with the email service by tapping the Sync button in the app bar.

If you look closely at the top of the screen you will see a message like “Hotmail – Syncing…” during the sync process, followed by “Hotmail – Email is up-to-date” (or similar). Note: If you’re using a linked inbox as described below, this process will sync each linked account in turn.

Link inboxes By default, the Mail app creates a unique instance of itself for each email account you add to the system. If you sign-in with a primary Microsoft account (as you should, and as I assume you do), then you

probably have an account named Microsoft Account (unless you changed the name, as noted later in the chapter). But many people have multiple email accounts. And while it’s certainly possible to maintain a separate version of the Mail app for each account—and in some cases even advisable; for example, some people like to separate personal and work email—many people will prefer something a bit more elegant. Fortunately, you can link multiple email accounts together into a single view, called a linked inbox, that lets you access email from two or more accounts via the same instance of the Mail app. Windows Phone lets you link any number of email accounts into one or more linked inboxes, and you can maintain whatever combinations of individual accounts and linked inboxes you prefer.

Link two or more inboxes To link two or more inboxes, open the Mail app for the email account that is not the primary Microsoft account. (It’s not possible to link inboxes from the primary Microsoft account for some reason.) Then, tap the More (“…”) button in the app bar and then Link Inboxes.

In the Links screen, choose an email account to link from the Other Inboxes list. You can also continue adding accounts from here if you’d like. Tap the Rename Linked Inbox link to change the name of the Mail app instance from the default, Linked inbox, to something better. (I usually just use the name Email.)

When you’re done, tap the Back hardware button.

Understand how the Mail app changes when you link inboxes A number of things change when you link inboxes. First, the tile design used for the Mail app changes to a new linked inbox design.

When you launch the app, you’re provided with a very familiar view (called Inbox – Email in my case). But this inbox view is an aggregate of the inboxes from each email account you’ve linked. That is, you’ll see messages from each account, comingled, so that they appear in the correct order regardless of which account the messages are from.

When you compose a new email message, you’re asked to choose which account to use.

When you choose Folders from the app bar menu, you can choose the server-side folders from all accounts.

Fortunately, the linked inbox works properly when it comes to email message management. If you choose to move an email to a new folder, the folders you can choose from are from the same service that the message is contained within. But if you choose to move multiple emails from two or more services, you can choose from folders on each aﬀected service.

Respond to meeting requests The Mail app integrates with the Calendar app in Windows Phone, allowing you to respond to meeting requests directly from Mail. When you receive an email with a meeting request that needs a response, you will see a “Please respond” message in the message view in Mail.

From here, you can tap the Respond button in the Mail app’s app bar to see additional options related to the meeting, including Accept, Tentative, and Decline. Note: For more information about the Calendar app, please refer to 10. Calendar.

Customize Mail Like most of the built-in Windows Phone 8 apps, Mail supports a centralized Settings interface that lets you customize various features of the app. But it diﬀers from other apps in that these settings are conﬁgured indepedently for each conﬁgured account, or instance of the Mail app. And there are two main areas of settings.

Customize Mail settings To access Mail settings, navigate to the inbox view in the Mail app, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then Settings. If you are using a linked inbox, you’ll need to choose the accout you wish to conﬁgure before you can access the Settings interface.

Here you will see the following options: Sync settings. This button navigates you to the sync settings for the email account in question. That interface, which can also be access through the main system Settings interface, is described below. Automatic replies. Tap this button to display the Automatic Replies screen. From here, you can enable automatic replies—such as when you’re on vacation—and enter a message that will atuomatically be sent to the sender of every email you receive. Turn automatic replies oﬀ when needed (such as when your vacation ends.)

Conversations. By default, the Mail app uses a Microsoft email feature called Conversation view to keep all of the messages in an email thread together. If you don’t like this feature, turn Conversations to Oﬀ. A sub-feature, titled “In conversations, show replies and email from all your synced folders,” can be toggled oﬀ if desired as well. This option is obviously unavailable when Conversations is set to Oﬀ. Signature. This toggle determines whether each new email message or reply you send includes an automatic signature, which is a short block of text that will appear at the bottom of messages. By default it’s set to On and, annoyingly, the signature text is set to “Sent from my Windows Phone.” I recommend turning oﬀ this feature or changing the text. Always BCC myself. Set to Oﬀ by default, this option when enabled will send a copy of every email message you send to yourself by BCC (blind carbon copy, meaning that no one else in the email thread will be aware of this activity). This feature is generally not required since all of the email you send from Windows Phone is stored in the Sent folder (or equivalent) of the email service you used. But in some cases—such as corporate accounts with automated deletion policies—this sent email may not be saved for a long time, and enabling this feature may be advised. Use light background for email. By default, the Mail app uses a dark background, which can make email and other text hard to read, depending on the accent color you’ve chosen. I recommend enabling this option, since the light background (essentially black text on white) is much easier to read. Compare the dark and light backgrounds below.

Customize account sync settings If you choose Sync Settings from within the Mail app’s settings interface you can access the sync settings for the curently selected account. Otherwise, navigate to Settings, System, Email + Accounts. Then, choose the account you wish to conﬁgure.

The settings will vary from account type to acount type, but you will see the following options. Account name. The name of the account and, for non-linked inboxes, the name of the associated Mail app instance. Download new content. This option conﬁgures how frequently the server is polled for new email. If you are using an EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) type account—meaning, a Hotmail or Outlook account type— you should consider changing this to “as items arrive,” which uses push technology. Otherwise, you can set a download schedule or choose manually. Download email from. This option conﬁgures how much email is cached locally on the phone. By default, one week of email is cached, but you may wish to to change this to 2 weeks or one month, depending on your needs. Content to sync. For your primary email account, you will only see the option Email here. But with other Hotmail and Outlook accounts, you will see Email, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks. Uncheck the items you don’t wish to sync with Windows Phone. User name. You can’t change it here, but this is your email account user name. Password. The password associated with your email account.

Server. The email server. Generally speaking, you will not need to mess with this setting. Server requires encrypted (SSL) connection. For Exchange-type accounts, you can optionally conﬁgure whether your account requires an SSL connection.

Customize email alerts on the lock screen By default, each email account you conﬁgure in Windows Phone is given an icon in the status strip at the bottom of the lock screen. That way, it’s easy to pick up your phone, glance at the lock screen, and quickly determine how many unread email messages you have in each account.

You may wish to conﬁgure this behavior. To do so, navigate to Settings, System, Lock Screen.

Here, you can conﬁgure a single app—typically Calendar—to provide a detail status and up to ﬁve apps that will provide a quick status. (For Mail, this means a number that indicates how many unread email messages are available.) You can tap the app boxes in either area to determine which apps will provide either status type. If you wish to remove an email account from the quick status area, tap that box and then choose None.

10. Calendar Cloud-based calendars are a pervasive part of most smart phone users’ lives, and whether you’re using personal calendars like those provided in Outlook.com or work calendars from Exchange or Oﬃce 365— or both—we all expect to have access to this critical information at any time, from any device. In Windows Phone, the Calendar app provides everything you’ll need to manage your schedule at both home and work. The Calendar app is what’s called a connected app, in that it is used almost exclusively with online calendar sources, and not with calendars that exist only on your phone, or calendars that are synced from your PC. (Indeed, as with most other Windows Phone apps, Calendar oﬀers no integration with PCbased applications like Microsoft Outlook at all.) Calendar is part of the Outlook Mobile set of solutions—Mail is another—which is in turn part of the broader Microsoft Oﬃce Mobile suite that’s available as part of Windows Phone. That said, Calendar behaves a bit diﬀerently than Mail or the other Oﬃce apps in Windows Phone: It is a standalone app and not part of the Oﬃce hub. And unlike Mail, it does not create separate tiles for each account but instead aggregates all of your connected accounts into a single view.

Understand how accounts aﬀect Calendar Before taking a look at the actual app, it’s important to understand how Calendar obtains the information it provides. Like other connected apps in Windows Phone, Calendar interacts with the accounts that you conﬁgure on the device. However, Calendar can only work with a subset of the available account types in Windows Phone. These include Microsoft account, Outlook, Hotmail, Google, and Facebook. The Yahoo! and Other Account types do not provide calendaring information to Windows Phone. Note: While you can technically use Calendar in a standalone, device-only mode in which the app is not connected to any account, I will not be covering or supporting that usage in this book. Everyone with a Windows Phone handset should sign in with at least a single Microsoft account, since you can only obtain the many unique beneﬁts of this platform by doing so. One of those beneﬁts, indeed, is interaction with your Outlook.com-based calendar. When you conﬁgure a supported account type in Windows Phone, you are connected to whatever calendars are associated with that account. This can be a single calendar or, as is increasingly the case, multiple calendars. For example, my Outlook.com calendar includes three separate calendars: Paul’s Calendar, Birthday Calendar, and US Holidays. But my work calendar includes just a single calendar (which Exchange imaginatively names Calendar). As you will see later in Customize Calendar, you can conﬁgure Calendar to display only the calendars you wish to see—and be alerted when any upcoming events trigger notiﬁcations. Accounts are added and conﬁgured in Email + Accounts in Settings. For more information about accounts and Windows Phone, please refer to the section Set up and conﬁgure accounts in Chapter 1: Getting Started.

Launch Calendar Since Calendar is among those apps that is pinned to the default Windows Phone 8 Start screen by default, you will typically launch this app by tapping the tile, which supports all three of the possible tile sizes. Each tile type progressively shows more information, with the larger two tile sizes oﬀering information about your next event.

If you don’t see a Calendar tile on your Start screen, you can ﬁnd the app in the All Apps list.

Calendar tour The Calendar app provides a single-screen user experience with a pivot that switches the display between Day, Agenda, and To-do views.

Note: Unlike some other Windows Phone apps, Calendar can also be used eﬀectively and fully in landscape view, by which you physically rotate the phone away from its normal, portrait orientation.

(For consistency, the descriptions and ﬁgures in this chapter will depict Calendar in its default portrait view.) An always-visible app bar at the bottom of the screen provides Today, New, and Month buttons, and you can tap More (“…” in the app bar) to display a single menu item, Settings.

Navigate between the Day, Agenda, and To-do views If you’re familiar with a desktop-based calendar like Microsoft Outlook, or a cloud-based calendar like that in Outlook.com, navigating around the Calendar app and changing between the available views should be pretty straightforward. To navigate between the Day, Agenda and To-do view, simply swipe left or right in the Calendar app. Calendar’s Agenda view displays upcoming appointments in a textual list, chronologically, with the newest items at the top.

Note that the app bar doesn’t change between Day and Agenda view. However, when you swipe, or pivot, to the To-do view, the app bar does change. This view, of course, displays items in your To-do list, or what some calendar solutions (like Exchange) call Tasks. By default, this view works a lot like the Agenda view, in that your to-do items are displayed in a textual list, chronologically, with the newest items at the top. That is, the list is sorted by due date by default. Note: You will learn more about the To-do experience later in this chapter.

Navigate within the Day, Agenda, or To-do views The Day, Agenda, and To-do views may look diﬀerent from each other, but they work in similar ways, and each can be scrolled up and down to display more information. (Remember, if you swipe left or right in any of these views, you will change to one of the other views.) In each of these views, you can scroll down to tomorrow and future days by swiping up on the display. Tap the Today button (in the app bar) at any time to return to today.

Use Month view If you’re familiar with other calendar clients, you are probably used to views such as Week, Work Week and Month, in addition to Day and Agenda views. Oddly, the Calendar app supports just one of these

additional views, Month. And equally oddly, you enable this view by tapping the Month button in the app bar, and not via the pivot as you may expect.

The Month view isn’t useful for managing your schedule. Indeed, if you squint enough you’ll see that the text it displays on each day is just boilerplate text and not your actual appointments. Instead, Month view is provided a handy way to navigate quickly from date to date, especially to those days that are not chronologically close.

Navigate to today The Today app bar button allows you to navigate quickly back to today—i.e., today’s date—if you’ve gotten lost in time, so to speak, while navigating around and managing your schedule.

Navigate to a speciﬁc day in the current month To navigate to a speciﬁc day in the current month, simply tap the day. Calendar will navigate to that day and use the view—Day, Agenda, or To-do—you were previously using. Nice.

Navigate to a diﬀerent month To navigate between subsequent months, swipe to the up or down while in Month view. To go back in time, swipe down. To go forward in time, swipe up.

Navigate to a diﬀerent month or year To navigate between months and even years, tap the year and month header at the top of Month view. A Choose Date screen will appear, giving you a standard Windows Phone date choosers. (The month part oﬀers choices such as 01 January, 02 February, 03 March, and so on, while the year part has year choices like 2011, 2012, 2013, and the like.) Simply scroll to the values you want and then tap the Done app bar button.

Manage appointments No one uses Calendar to pretend they’re a time traveler. Instead, you will typically use this app because you want to view information associated with a speciﬁc event, which Calendar refers to as an appointment. (Or, as discussed below, you wish to create or modify an appointment, or engage in some other appointment-related activity.) Note: Calendar also supports a special appointment type called a meeting. All appointment features are available to meetings, but meetings add the notion of multi-person involvement and, as such, are covered separately later in the chapter.

View an appointment The Day and Agenda views both provide a good overview of the appointments that are coming up next, today and in the near future. If you wish to view the details about an individual appointment, simply tap the appointment, which will be color coded to the calendar in which it is found. When you do, the Appointment Details screen is shown. This is a read-only view that displays all of the available information of the appointment.

At the bottom of the Appointment Details screen, you will ﬁnd two buttons in the app bar, Edit and Delete, which are used to edit and delete the appointment, respectively. Both are covered a bit later in the chapter.

Find an appointment location in Maps If an appointment includes an address, you’ll see that it is underlined like a hyperlink when you view the appointment’s Details screen. This indicates that you can tap the address to view that location in the Maps app.

Tap the address and Maps will load and navigate to that location. From here, you can get directions (by tapping the Directions app bar button, which resembles an arrow) and ﬁgure out how long it will take to get to your next appointment via car or foot.

Create an appointment There are two ways to create a new appointment in Calendar. You can use the New button in the Calendar app bar from the Day or Agenda view. Or you can use a feature called Quick Event to more quickly enter just some basic information about an upcoming appointment. You can only create a Quick Event from Day view. To create an appointment with all possible options, tap the New button from the Day or Agenda view. This will display the New Appointment screen, which provides a plethora of ﬁelds you can ﬁll in to fully describe the appointment.

Available ﬁelds include: Subject. This text ﬁeld lets you enter the name of the appointment, such as “Flight to Barcelona,” “Status update meeting,” or whatever. Location. This text ﬁeld lets you enter a location for the appointment, such as “Barcelona, Spain,” “Room 51,” or similar. Note that while the information you enter here is plain text, if you enter location information, such as an address, Calendar will hyperlink it so that you can later tap on the address and see it in the Maps app. That said, could enter anything here if you wanted, like “Bob” or “yoghurt.” It’s up to you. Calendar. If you tap this ﬁeld, you will be presented with a full-screen Calendar chooser, from which you will choose the calendar with which this new appointment will be associated. Tap the appropriate calendar and you will return to the New Appointment screen.

When. This set of ﬁelds let you pick the date and time for the appointment, respectively. Each uses a standard Windows Phone chooser interface, with separate blocks, or tiles, for the month, day, and year, which together make up the date.

To change one of these data parts, swipe vertically up or down to scroll through all of the available choices. The month part oﬀers choices such as 01 January, 02 February, 03 March, and so on.

In both choosers, tap the Done app bar button to save the changes, or the Cancel button to cancel. Either way, you will return to the New Appointment screen. How long. Tap this ﬁeld and you’ll be presented with a full-screen interface for choosing the duration of the appointment, via a list that includes the choices 0 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 90 minutes, 2 hours, all day, and custom. Tap the choice you prefer. If you choose custom, you will return to the New Appointment screen and the view will expand to include an All day checkbox, a start time and date, and an end time and date, so you can enter the values you need.

For many appointments, the preceding ﬁelds will be enough. But if you tap the More Details button, you will obtain access to additional appointment options. These include: Reminder. By default, Windows Phone will remind you about a pending appointment 15 minutes before the actual time of the appointment. Tap this ﬁeld to change the reminder, choosing from a list of options that includes no reminder, at start time, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 18 hours, 1 day, or 1 week. While there’s no custom reminder option, you can also snooze reminders as they occur. Occurs. This ﬁeld determines whether the appointment repeats and, if so, how frequently. The default is once. But if you tap it, you will see a list of available values that also includes every day, every weekday, every [day of appointment], every [day number of appointment] of every month, and every [month of appointment] [day number of appointment]. So if the date of the appointment you’re creating is Saturday, September 15, this list will read as follows: once, every day, every weekday, every Saturday, day 15 of every month, every September 15. Status. This option determines your status for the duration of the event, which can have ramiﬁcations for your co-workers or others with whom you’ve shared your calendar. Unlike most of the preceding choices, this option doesn’t load a full-screen chooser list but instead expands in-line right on the New Appointment screen.

In a typical Exchange environment, status is the only appointment detail that is made available to most co-workers when the appointment is marked as private. So while you may be away on vacation, or whatever, they will only see that you are out of the oﬃce, and thus will know not to include you in any meeting invitations they are creating. Basically, what they can see is your free/busy information, or what Calendar calls your status. Attendees. By tapping the Add someone button, you can add one or more required and optional attendees, an act that turns this appointment into a full-ﬂedged meeting. (You can ﬁnd out more about special meeting features later in the chapter.) These choices occur via a standard Contact chooser, which is a full-screen interface to the contacts contained by the People hub.

Choosing attendees can get a bit tedious. In addition to managing separate required and optional contact lists, you can only choose one contact at a time. And if a selected contact has more than one email address, you must further specify which to use. That’s because attendees will be sent a meeting request for this appointment via email. When you’re done adding attendees and return to the New Appointment screen, the Add someone button will change to reﬂect the number of attendees you’ve requested. So if you added two attendees, this button will now read “2 attendees.”

Private. This option, which is a check-box toggle, determines whether the appointment is public (the default) or private. Note, however, that a public appointment is not one that is available to anyone online. Instead, it’s public to those you’ve shared the appointment with—such as coworkers in an Exchange environment—meaning that they can view details about the appointment. If you mark an appointment as private, coworkers will only be able to view your status information. Notes. This text block lets you enter up to 255 characters of text so that you can provide even more information about the appointment. The contents of this ﬁeld are of course completely up to you, and can be literally anything textual.

Create a Quick Event appointment While the appointment functionality in Calendar is fairly comprehensive, sometimes it’s a bit much. Maybe you just want a quick reminder about an upcoming one-time event (“Pick Kelly up from school”). Or perhaps you just want to get something into your schedule for now and intend to edit it later and add additional details. Whatever the reason, the Calendar app in Windows Phone includes a useful feature called Quick Events that lets you create a simple appointment very quickly. The one caveat? This feature is only available in Day view. To create a basic appointment with Quick Event, navigate in Day view to the correct day and time. Then, simply tap the time at which you’d like to create the appointment. Calendar will enter an edit mode, letting you type the name of the appointment. This corresponds to the Subject ﬁeld when you use the full New Appointment experience.

To enter only the name of the appointment, just tap Enter when you’re done. Otherwise, you can tap the Edit button—which resembles a pencil—in the app bar to jump into the full New Appointment experience (which works exactly as described previously in the chapter). If you do just enter the name of the appointment, be aware that the appointment will be added to your default calendar, which is the main calendar associated with your primary Microsoft account. It will be conﬁgured to last for one hour. And a reminder will trigger 15 minutes before the start time of the appointment.

Modify an appointment To modify an existing appointment, simply view the appointment and then tap the Edit button in the app bar. (It resembles a pencil.) The Edit Appointment screen looks and works just like the New Appointment screen, except of course that many ﬁelds will be conﬁgured with values.

To save any changes you’ve made to the appointment, tap the Save button in the app bar. Tap Cancel to ignore and changes.

Delete an appointment To delete an appointment, locate it in Day or Agenda view and then tap and hold on the appointment. A pop-up menu will appear. Tap the Delete choice and then conﬁrm in the Delete appointment notiﬁcation that appears.

Manage meetings In addition to supporting appointments, Calendar supports a special kind of appointment called a meeting. While the diﬀerences between the two may seem somewhat subtle, it’s useful to think of appointments as events that apply only to you, whereas meetings are events in which other people you know—those who are in your contacts list—will also be attending. That is, meetings are formal, multiperson appointments. And since corporate calendar system such as those based on Exchange provide excellent scheduling tools for those who need to create and manage meetings, Windows Phone’s Calendar app does as well. Meetings appear in Calendar much like normal appointments. And when you view a meeting, you will see a screen that is nearly identical to that for an appointment, with a Details view providing access to information about this event. But meetings also provide an additional screen called Attendees along with more capabilities, some of which are exposed through the app bar. Meetings support several unique features.

Accept or decline a meeting request To accept a meeting request, tap Accept from the app bar menu. To decline, tap the Decline app bar button. You can also optionally choose Tentative—a “maybe” response—from the app bar menu if you’re unsure whether you’ll make it.

Reply to a meeting request To reply to a meeting request, tap the Respond app bar button. This displays the Respond screen, which lets you choose between Reply, Reply All, Forward, and Propose New Time. The ﬁrst three will trigger a new email message, each with the expected results. The latter, however, displays the Propose New Time screen, from which you can add a date, time, meeting length, and comments that will be sent to all attendees.

View meeting attendees To view the list of other people that are attending the meeting, swipe over to the Attendees pivot, or screen. The person who created the meeting will be at the top and have the text “Meeting organizer” appended to their name. Below that, alphabetically, will be the other attendees.

View information about an attendee To learn more about an attendee, tap their name in the attendees list. This will display a standard contact card, as described in 5. People + Me, with Proﬁle and History views.

Add a meeting attendee To add a new attendees to a meeting you created, open the app bar menu and choose Edit. Then, in the Edit Appointment screen, tap More Details. Then, scroll down to Attendees and click the Attendees box. (If this is a recurring meeting, you will need to choose between this occurrence and all occurrences when making such a change.)

Tell meeting attendees you’re running late If you’re running late for a meeting, open that meeting in Calendar and tap the Late app bar button, which resembles a running ﬁgure. After choosing whether to send this message to the meeting organizer or all attendees, a new Mail message will open with a pre-typed message:

You can of course edit this email message as you see ﬁt.

Delete a meeting Deleting a meeting works much like deleting any other appointment except that you’re given the opportunity to alert other attendees about the deletion and optionally add a textual explanation.

Access a meeting from an email If you’re utilizing the Exchange (or Exchange ActiveSync) meetings functionality at work, you will be able to view and respond to meeting requests directly from Windows Phone’s Mail app: Exchange and other email servers and services provide the ability for those creating a meeting to request a response. And since those requests go out via email, those with Windows Phone handsets can respond to the meeting requests eﬃciently. When you receive an email with a meeting request that needs a response, you will see a “Please respond” message in the message view in Mail.

From here, you can perform a number of activities. Respond. If you tap the Respond button in the Mail app’s app bar, you will see additional options related to the meeting, including Accept, Tentative, and Decline choices that appear above the normal Reply, Reply All, and Forward options that are normally available with email messages.

Tap the appropriate choice to respond to the meeting request. (Tentative, of course, equates to a “maybe” reply: Maybe you’ll attend, maybe you won’t.) View the meeting request in your calendar. Tap the Show calendar link to view the meeting request in Calendar alongside your other appointments. This way, you can see whether there is a conﬂict, helping you decide whether you can attend the meeting. Conﬂicts are highlighted with small clashing arrow icons, helping you quickly identify the oﬀending appointments and take action.

Propose a new time. If there is a conﬂict, you can propose a new time for the meeting. To do so, tap Propose new time in Mail’s app bar menu. This will trigger a new screen from which you can select a date, time, and length for the new meeting time along with whatever explanatory comments you think are necessary.

Show the attendees. The email message containing the meeting request will include lists of required and optional attendees, along with their responses, which can be used as another aid for determining whether to attend the meeting. (Oh, Bob’s going? I’m going to be busy that day.)

Use Facebook Events The popular social networking service Facebook maintains a calendar service of its own called Facebook Events. This service works somewhat like other calendar services in that it lets you create and manage appointments (which Facebook of course calls events), access and reply to invitations to your friends’ events, and be reminded of important events, in this case personal experiences like birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries. And if you’ve conﬁgured a Facebook account through Settings, System, Email + Accounts in Windows Phone, you automatically gain access to any Facebook events that are tied to that account. Facebook Events appears as a calendar in the Calendar app. If you want to turn it oﬀ, you can do so from Calendar settings; you can also choose to only view those events you’ve accepted. (You can ﬁnd out more about Calendar settings in the section Customize Calendar later in this chapter.)

You cannot create an event from the Calendar app. Instead, you must navigate to the Facebook web site on your PC or, optionally, on Windows Phone using Internet Explorer. To create an event, just tap the Create button. (Or, from the mobile web version of the site, tap the link titled Create Event.) You can perform a number of other Facebook events-related activities on Windows Phone, however.

View details for a Facebook event You view a Facebook event in Windows Phone just as you do with any other calendar appointment: Simply tap the event in either Day or Agenda view. This will load the event’s Details screen. Some events, like birthdays, are read-only. This means that you can view the event but not modify it or perform other actions. But many events will have a rich set of information associated with them, and if so you will see there are three pivots, or screens, associated with the event.

Accept or decline a Facebook event For events that are not read-only, you will see a Respond button in the app bar at the bottom of the screen. This button lets you signal whether you intend to attend the event, via choices such as Attending, Maybe Attending, and Not Attending.

View Facebook event comments To view the comments on a Facebook event, navigate to the Wall screen. Here, you will see a list of the comments that have been added by those invited to the event.

Add a Facebook event comment or “like” To comment on or “like” an existing comment, tap the small conversation bubble to the right of the comment. (It has a plus sign in it.) Then, in the next screen, you can add a comment or tap the Like app bar button.

To post directly to the event’s wall, tap the New app bar button at the bottom of the Wall screen. This will display the Write On Wall screen, which lets you add your own unique new comment.

View a Facebook event guest list To view the guest list for the event—which will included everyone that was invited, not just those that accepted the invitation—navigate to the Guests screen using the pivot control at the top of the screen. Here you will see a list of invitees. (Well, assuming there are fewer than 250 of them: Windows Phone tops out at that number for performance reasons.)

You can tap any invitee to see their contact card in the People hub.

Manage to-do’s (tasks) In addition to appointments and meetings, Calendar also supports to-do’s, or what most other calendars call tasks. Whatever the name, this functionality provides an interesting and useful twist on the standard appointment, providing you with a way to associate events with concepts like priorities, due dates, multiple reminders, task completion, and more. As with appointments, individual to-do’s are associated with a particular calendar, and thus with a particular account. However, only Exchange ActiveSync (EAS)-type accounts—Microsoft account, Outlook, and Google—support to-do’s. (Facebook does not.) To-do’s are managed via the To-do view in the calendar app. However, you can also view your pending to-do’s in the Agenda and Day views. (And if you’d rather not, you can disable this display in Calendar settings, as described later in the chapter.)

From this interface, you can sort and ﬁlter your to-do list in various ways, view and edit existing to-do’s, create new to-do’s, and more.

Change the display of the to-do list To change how the to-do list is displayed, tap the More (“...”) button on the app bar. You’ll see two relevant options here: Sort by priority/Sort by due date and Show completed. The Sort by priority/Sort by due date menu item toggles the to-do list between two views, with Sort by due date being the default. Show completed is another animal entirely: It will show only those to-do’s that you have completed, rather than those that are still pending. (To exit from this view, you must press the Back button your handset.)

Mark a to-do as complete To mark one or more to-do’s as complete, tap the Select button in the app bar. When you do, the view changes to include check boxes, letting you select one or more of the to-do’s in the list so that you can multi-select them and perform this action on more than one to-do.

Select the to-do(s) you wish to mark as complete, and then tap the Complete app bar button. (It has a checkbox on it.) Note: There’s a faster way. If you tap to the left of the to-do you wish to complete, the check boxes will also appear. Note: You can also mark an individual to-do as complete from its Details view, as described below. Or, just tap and hold on a to-do and choose Complete from the pop-up menu that appears.

Delete a to-do To delete one or more to-do’s from the To-do list, use one of the methods described above to display the selection check boxes. Then, tap the Delete app bar button. Note that the deletion is permanent, and that deleted to-do’s will not appear in the Completed list.

View and edit a to-do To view or edit a to-do, simply tap the to-do’s title from the To-do view (or the Completed view). This will display the Details view for that to-do.

From this view, you can view more information about the to-do and access other options. For example, you can edit the to-do by tapping the Edit app bar button, mark a to-do as complete (with the Complete app bar), “uncomplete” a completed to-do (from the Completed view, using the Activate app bar button), or, via the app bar menu, access other options such as Delete, Postpone a Day, or Do Today.

Add a new to-do To add a new to-do, tap the New app bar button from the Calendar app’s To-do view. This displays the New To-Do screen.

The following options are available by default: Subject. As with an appointment, this text ﬁeld lets you enter a name for the to-do, such as “Complete writing Calendar chapter,” “Call Rafael,” or similar. Account. This ﬁeld lets you choose the account with which the to-do will be associated. As with the Calendar ﬁeld in an appointment, tapping this will result in a full-screen interface, in this case the Account chooser. Reminder. Disabled by default, this option conﬁgures the to-do to integrate with Calendar reminders. When enabled for the current to-do, the view will expand to include three two ﬁelds, Reminder date and Reminder time, which let you ﬁre a reminder ahead of the actual due date. Due date. Tapping this ﬁeld triggers a full screen Due Date view, letting you pick from the following choices in a list: No due date, Today, Tomorrow, [two days from now], [three days from now], [four days from now], or custom. (If the current day is a Tuesday, this list will be as follows: No due date, Today, Tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, custom.) The custom option brings up a Calendar chooser so you can pick an exact date.

Priority. To-do’s have an associated priority level so you can denote that some to-do’s are more important than others. (For this reason, you can optionally view to-do’s by priority rather than due date, as described previously.) Available priority levels include high, normal (the default), and low. Notes. This works like the Notes block in an appointment, letting you enter up to 255 characters of text so that you can provide even more information about the to-do. And yes, the contents of this ﬁeld are completely up to you, and can be literally anything textual.

Handle appointment, meeting and to-do notiﬁcations In a perfect world, you will always remember to complete the to-do’s you’ve created, and of course marking these tasks as complete brings with it a sense of accomplishment. But sometimes you need a bit of prodding, and that’s where reminders come in. By conﬁguring a to-do to provide a reminder at an opportune time, you may be more likely to actually complete that to-do. To-do reminders work much like appointment reminders, and they utilize the same underlying notiﬁcation system.

Understand Calendar notiﬁcations Calendar alerts you whenever a reminder is triggered. (You can conﬁgure a reminder when you create any appointment, meeting, or to-do, as noted earlier in the chapter.) These alerts surface as interactive pop-ups that appear visually over the screen—and they will appear no matter what you’re currently viewing, including the lock-screen—and (if conﬁgured this way) will play a reminder chime.

Reminders oﬀer a lot of information about the event that triggered this display, including the app name (Calendar), the subject, the location, the time or time range, and more. You can choose to snooze or dismiss the reminder, and optionally provide a snooze time value, with the choices shown below, which appear inline when the “Snooze for” item is tapped.

If you choose Dismiss, the reminder is cancelled and you will not be alerted again. Note: Reminders are very similar to alarms triggered by the Alarms app. The only signiﬁcant diﬀerence is that alarms do not oﬀer a “Snooze for” menu. You can customize whether a sound plays when a reminder appears. This is discussed in Customize Calendar later in the chapter.

Understand Calendar tile notiﬁcations The Calendar app’s live tile can be particularly useful since it can display information about your next appointment, though its ability to do so is determined, in large part, by how you’ve conﬁgured the tile’s size. If you conﬁgure Calendar’s tile to use the small size, all you’ll see is the current day number on a small calendar icon. It’s not very dynamic or terribly useful.

Bump up the tile size to medium, however, and you’ll realize some the beneﬁts of live updating. Here, you can see the subject and start time of the next appointment, as well as the day of the week and the day number. Very useful.

If you would like even more information, however, you can conﬁgure the live tile to be wide. In this case, you get all of the information you do with the medium sized tile, plus the address, when available, and the full time range (start time plus end time) of the next appointment. (You also get the app title, Calendar, just in case it wasn’t obvious what you were looking at.)

Since Calendar is so useful, I recommend using the medium or wide tile, and positioning the Calendar tile near the top of the Start screen so that you can see it without scrolling.

Understand Calendar notiﬁcations on the Lock screen The Windows Phone lock screen provides a number of “at a glance” capabilities, providing you with a way to ﬁnd out what’s going on in your world before you even access the Start screen. The Calendar app, and thus your own schedule, is aﬀorded a special spot on this interface. That is, while many apps can provide quick status icons, like Mail and Messaging, only a few can provide detailed status information. Calendar is one such app. By default, the lock screen displays information about your next appointment, much like the Calendar app’s live tile when conﬁgured to use the wide tile size. That is, you can view the event’s subject, location, and time range (with both start time and end time).

If you’d prefer not to see this information, however, you can disable this display by visiting Lock Screen Settings (Settings, System, Lock screen). Here, you can see that (among other options), the lock screen provides two types of notiﬁcation displays: A detailed status area for just one app (Calendar, by default), and ﬁve spots for app icons that can provide quick status information only.

To remove Calendar from the detailed status notiﬁcation area, simply tap that button and choose a diﬀerent app, or none.

Note: I recommend using Calendar as the app that displays detailed status information. This is incredibly useful, and since Calendar can’t be used as a quick status app on the lock screen, it’s the only way to surface your schedule on this interface.

Customize Calendar Calendar can be customized in a variety of ways. In addition to the live tile and lock screen customizations discussed earlier in the chapter, you should spend a bit of time in two diﬀerent Settings interfaces to make sure this app is conﬁgured optimally for your needs. These are Calendar Settings, which you access from the Calendar app, and Ringtones + Sounds in Settings, System.

Use Calendar Settings You can access the Settings interface for Calendar from within the app: Just choose Settings from its app bar menu. As you can see, there are a number of options to examine here.

These options include: Enabling/disabling individual calendars. Every Exchange ActiveSync (EAS)-based account that you conﬁgure on Windows Phone, including your initial Microsoft account, can oﬀer one or more calendars, each of which will be automatically added to the calendar app. You will see each listed separately in Calendar settings, and can individually determine which will appear in Calendar by using the appropriately on/oﬀ slider.

Choose a color for individual calendars. You can customize each calendar by choosing a color. To do so, tap the Color box for the calendar you would like to change, and you’ll see a scrollable Select Color screen from which you can choose between the available colors.

Show to-dos on the calendar. This option determines whether Calendar lets you interact with to-do’s (tasks). This option is set globally, so there’s no way to show to-do’s from one account but not others. Only show Facebook events I’ve responded to. This option, which appears only when you’ve conﬁgured a Facebook account, determines which Facebook events appear in Calendar. If checked, only those events you’ve responded to will display. Otherwise, all Facebook events you’ve been invited to will display.

Use Ringtones + Sound Settings This interface, available in Settings, System, Ringtones + Settings, includes a number of global options, some of which implicitly apply to Calendar. At the top of this screen, for example, you will see options related to whether the phone will vibrate when the ringer is on or oﬀ, respectively. Both of these options impact Calendar since the vibrate eﬀect will occur (if conﬁgured) when a Calendar reminder triggers.

Scroll down to the bottom of this list of options, and you’ll see a section called “Play a sound for.” If the Reminders option is checked, you will hear the Reminder chime when a reminder triggers. If this is not desirable, you can uncheck this option.

Note: One thing you can’t do, oddly, is determine which sound plays when a reminder is triggered. All you can do is enable and disable the one built-in reminder chime.

11. Internet Explorer Windows Phone includes a modern and standards-compliant web browser called Internet Explorer Mobile that can handle all of your web browsing needs. Based on the PC version of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8 and RT, this mobile browser includes many of the same features, from its underlying rendering engine with hardware-accelerated performance to user-facing features like its smart address bar, tabbed browsing, Favorites, History and even security features like the SmartScreen Filter. This is a powerful, high-performance, and highly-compatible solution for browsing the web on the go.

Find and launch IE Mobile Internet Explorer Mobile can be launched from the Start screen or the All Apps list like other apps. The tile is non-dynamic—it displays no live content—so in this case, you can save onscreen real estate by conﬁguring it to use the smallest tile size.

Note: You can also pin frequently-accessed web pages to the Start screen and implicitly open Internet Explorer Mobile that way. This option is discussed in the section Pin a web page to the Start screen.

Tour of IE Mobile Internet Explorer Mobile is a simple, single-screen app with an obvious user interface. The main view of the app consists largely of the area in which the current web page is displayed, with an app bar always visible at the bottom. This app bar includes just three UI components: A button (set to Stop/Refresh by default, though this is conﬁgurable), an address bar, and a More (“…”) button.

As in other Windows Phone apps, the More button is used to access further commands. In IE’s case, this is a fairly long list, one that extends oﬀ the bottom of the screen. (You can scroll the list to see more.)

IE Mobile also works perfectly well in landscape mode, which is often desirable since the relatively small screen size of smart phone handsets can make some text hard to read.

Note: The remaining screenshots in this chapter were taken in the default, portrait orientation. But remember that you can always switch to landscape view on the ﬂy by rotating your phone. Because of the proliferation of mobile devices in recent years, many web sites are now oﬀered in diﬀerent versions that target tablets and smart phones as well as PCs. Those that target tablets and smart phones are called mobile web sites, while the default, or traditional version is sometimes called the full site version. Internet Explorer can display both types of sites without any issues. A mobile site, like that oﬀered by my SuperSite for Windows, is specially tailored for the dimensions of a smart phone screen, and thus will typically oﬀer a layout that is tailored to these devices and unique from the traditional version of the web site. Here’s the mobile version of the SuperSite, on the left, compared to the traditional version, on the right.

Note: IE Mobile is conﬁgured to load the mobile version of a web site, when available, by default. To learn how to change this behavior, visit the section Customize Internet Explorer Mobile at the end of the chapter. You may think that viewing a traditional web site will be diﬃcult given the small screen. But that’s not the case: IE Mobile uses multi-touch so you can easily zoom in and out of areas of a web page and read the text more easily. Consider the screenshot of the New York Times web site at the beginning of this section. It would be diﬃcult if not impossible to read any of the text in the article columns on that very busy and complex page on a typical 4-to-5-inch Windows Phone handset screen. But there are two ways to zoom in and view the information more closely: Stretch to zoom. You can arbitrarily zoom in at any time by using the standard stretch gesture on the screen. (You can also zoom out by using a pinch gesture.) This isn’t super-precise, but you can also move around on the display using your ﬁnger to swipe in any direction.

Double-tap to zoom. To zoom into a very speciﬁc area—such as a text column in that New York Times home page, just double-tap the area in which you’d like to zoom. When you do, that area—the column in this case—will ﬁll the screen. (Double-tap again to zoom back out.)

Zoom into text entry boxes. If you select a text-entry box, as you might when entering a user name or password, IE Mobile will automatically zoom into that area so you can more easily see what you’re typing. For example, the login area on the page at the left is hard to read, but when you select one of the text boxes, the display zooms in automatically, as shown on the right.

Web page navigation Internet Explorer Mobile supports all the expected web page navigation functionality.

Navigate to a web page To manually navigate to a web page, select the address bar and type the address, including the domain suﬃx (.com or similar). As you type, search suggestions will appear in a pop-up menu above the address bar. These suggestions are based in part on previously visited web sites, so if you’re typing the address to a site you visited recently, you may be able to select it from the list and save yourself some typing.

Note: You do not have to type the “www.” preﬁx before the address. But if you leave oﬀ the domain suﬃx, you will trigger a web search instead. See the section Search the web for more information. Tip: As you can see above, Internet Explorer utilizes a special web version of Windows Phone’s virtual keyboard when you select the address bar. This keyboard includes a dedicated “.com” key, since this web suﬃx is so common. You can tap and hold this key to choose from other suﬃxes, however, including .org, .edu, and .net.

To load the page, tap the Enter key on the virtual keyboard (or select an auto-suggest entry). As the page loads, the address bar displays a subtle progress indicator and the Stop/Refresh button changes to Stop.

When the page completely loads, the Stop/Refresh button changes to Refresh and the progress indicator disappears.

Stop a web page from completely loading If a web page is taking too long to load or you realize you’ve mistakenly started loading the wrong page, you can stop that from happening and regroup. To stop a web page from loading, tap the Stop address bar button.

Note: Technically, the Stop button is really a Stop/Refresh button that diﬀers depending on the situation. After a web page has completely loaded, it changes to Refresh. Note: The address bar button is conﬁgured as Stop/Refresh by default, but you can change it to be a Tabs or Favorites button instead if desired. This customization is described in the section Customize Internet Explorer Mobile at the end of the chapter.

Refresh the current web page To refresh the currently display web page, tap the Refresh address bar button. Alternatively, tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then Refresh from the app bar menu.

Navigate to the previous web page To navigate to the previous web page, tap the Back hardware button on your Windows Phone handset. Note: Curiously, IE Mobile does not support a corresponding “Forward” command as you see in desktop web browsers.

Find text on the current web page If you’re looking for something on a web page, you can use the Find on Page feature to locate speciﬁc text. To do so, tap More (“…”) and then Find on Page. Enter the text you’re looking for in the Find on Page box that appears.

When you tap Enter, the Find on Page interface appears. Here, each instance of the text you’re looking for is highlighted and you can use the Previous and Next app bar buttons to navigate between each instance.

When you’re done, press the handset’s Back button to exit Find on Page.

Search the web Like desktop web browsers, Internet Explorer Mobile lets you search the web and even supports changing the default search engine to Google.

Search the web from IE Mobile To search the web while using Internet Explorer Mobile, tap the address bar and start typing. As you type, search suggestions will appear in a pop-up menu above the address bar so you don’t need to type long search queries if you see what you’re looking for.

To trigger the search, select an item from the suggestions list or tap the Enter key. Search results will appear in your conﬁgured search engine (you can choose from Bing, the default, or Google, as described below). If you are using Bing as your search engine, results are shown ﬁltered for the web in the Bing search experience.

Tap a search result to launch that page in Internet Explorer Mobile. Note: You can learn more about the Bing search experience in 4. Search.

Search the web with Bing You don’t have to launch Internet Explorer Mobile to search the web. Instead, press the hardware Search button on your handset to directly access the Bing search experience. From here, simply tap the search box at the top of the screen, type your search, and go.

Bing will display search results segregated by web, local, media, and shopping ﬁlters as it does when you launch a Bing-based search from within IE Mobile. When you tap a link, it will display in IE Mobile. Note: You can learn more about the Bing search experience in 4. Search.

Change the browser search provider By default, Internet Explorer Mobile utilizes Microsoft’s Bing search engine for web searches that are performed from within the browser. To change this, tap More (“…”) and then Settings. In the Settings screen, tap Advanced Settings. Then, in the Advanced Settings screen, tap the Default search provider drop-down and choose Google.

Note: Other browser settings are discussed in the section Customize Internet Explorer Mobile at the end of the chapter.

Tabs Like PC-based web-browsers, Internet Explorer Mobile supports tabbed browsing, a way to open multiple web sites simultaneously. And like PC-based web browsers, you don’t view these pages, or tabs, simultaneously, but rather must switch between them in some way. Because of the relatively small screen sizes on Windows Phone handsets, however, the ways in which you access and navigate between tabs is a bit diﬀerent.

Access tabs To view the available tabs, tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then Tabs. The Tabs interface displays each of the web pages that are currently open in a grid of thumbnail images. If you’ve not used tabbed browsing yet, you will only see one tab in the list.

Note: IE Mobile allows you to keep six open pages in tabs. When you open a seventh tab, the oldest tab is removed from the tabs list.

To navigate to a diﬀerent tab, tap its thumbnail.

Delete a tab To delete a tab, open the Tabs interface and then tap the close “X” icon in the upper-right corner of the tab you wish to delete.

Note: If there is only one tab open and you close it, it will be replaced by a blank page.

Create a new tab To create a new tab, open the Tabs interface and then tap the New app bar button.

A new blank page will appear, and you can navigate from there, selecting a new page from Favorites, the Recent list (see below) or by searching or manually entering a web page address in the address bar.

Open a link in a new tab Normally, when you tap a hyperlink in a web page to navigate to a new page or web site, it opens in the current tab. To open a link in a new tab, tap and hold on the link until a pop-up menu appears. Then, choose Open in New Tab.

You’ll see a page ﬂipping animation to indicate that the page is opening in a new tab. You can return to the previous tab by pressing the phone’s hardware Back button, or by accessing the Tabs interface.

Access tabs from the address bar button If you use tabs frequently, you may wish to change the single available address bar button from its default (Stop/Refresh) to Tabs. To do so, visit the Settings interface—More (“…”), Settings—tap the option titled Use address bar button for, and then select Tabs. When you do, the address bar button changes to reﬂect the change.

(You can still access Refresh from the app bar menu.)

Open links from other apps in a new tab By default, if you tap a web page hyperlink in another app in Windows Phone, it will open the page in IE Mobile using the current tab. To change this behavior, navigate to More (“…”), Settings, Advanced Settings and then ﬁnd the option titled Open links from other apps in.

Note: This and other settings are discussed in the section Customize Internet Explorer Mobile at the end of the chapter.

Recent Internet Explorer Mobile maintains a lengthy list of the web pages you’ve visited called Recent, allowing you to easily go back and ﬁnd an interesting page you previously viewed.

Access Recent To access the Recent list, tap More (“…”) and the choose Recent from the app bar menu that appears.

From here, you can scroll down the list and tap any page to load it in the current tab.

Manage pages in the Recent list You can delete one or more of the pages in the Recent list. To delete a single page, tap and hold on it in the list and choose Delete from the pop-up menu that appears.

To delete multiple pages, tap the Select button in the app bar. This will place a selection box to the left of each entry in the list. Tap the box next to the page(s) you wish to delete and then tap the Delete app bar button.

Note: There is no prompt when you tap Delete, so be sure you mean to delete the selected pages from Recent before proceeding.

Note: You can delete the entire list of recently visited sites—and other browsing history information—by navigating to More, Settings and tapping the Delete History button. See Customize Internet Explorer Mobile at the end of the chapter for more information.

Favorites As with desktop versions of Internet Explorer, IE Mobile maintains a list of your favorite web sites, imaginatively called Favorites. And in addition to oﬀering a traditional Favorites interface, IE Mobile also oﬀers other ways to access favorite web sites, such as pinning them to your Start screen for quicker access.

Access Favorites To access the Favorites interface, tap More (“…”) and then select Favorites from the app bar menu that appears.

Note: The Favorites list will generally be pre-populated with sites by Microsoft, your mobile carrier, and perhaps your handset maker. Note: Favorites sorts the pages it displays in alphabetical order. To navigate to a page in the Favorites list, simply tap it.

Edit a Favorite A Favorite consists of two pieces of information: The name, or title, of the web page and its web address, or what’s called a URL (“uniform resource locator”). You can edit each of these items, and in many cases you will want to. For example, the name used by a Favorite comes from the page’s title as created by the site designer. But these titles are often very long, where a simpler name might do. To edit a Favorite, open Favorites, tap and hold on the Favorite in question, and then select Edit from the pop-up menu. In the Edit Favorite screen, you can edit both the name and web address.

Simply select either ﬁeld and edit the text as required. Tap the Save button when you’re done, or the Cancel button to cancel. Tip: If you have a long list of favorite web sites, you can rename sites to make them appear near the top of the list. For example, you could add a “_” character to the beginning of a Favorite’s name to make it appear at the top of the list.

Delete a Favorite To remove a web site from Favorites, open Favorites and then tap and hold on the page in question. Then, select Delete from the pop-up menu that appears. There’s no conﬁrmation, so select this option carefully.

Add a web page to Favorites To add the current web page to Favorites, tap More (“…”) and then select Add to Favorites from the app bar menu.

In the Add Favorite screen that appears, you can optionally edit the name and web address of the page. Considering editing the name: The default name used by the page is often very long and obscures its true purpose. For example, “Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows Home Page” is a ridiculously long name that might be edited down to the more concise “SuperSite for Windows” or similar. When you’re ready to save, tap the Done app bar button. Or, tap Cancel if you’ve had a change of heart.

Access favorite web pages from the address bar When you select the address bar in IE Mobile and start typing, the browser accesses your Favorites, recent browsing history and other information to make suggestions are you type. For example, if you were to type the word “tips,” one of the entries in the suggestion list will be “Windows Phone Tips,” because Microsoft adds that page as a Favorite in IE Mobile by default. (This assumes you haven’t deleted that Favorite, of course.)

Access Favorites from the address bar button If you use Favorites frequently, you may wish to change the single available address bar button from its default (Stop/Refresh) to Favorites. To do so, visit the Settings interface—More (“…”), Settings—tap the option titled Use address bar button for and then select Favorites. When you do, the address bar button changes to the new button.

(You can still access Refresh from the app bar menu.)

Pin a web page to the Start screen In addition to saving web pages to the Favorites list, you can also pin frequently-accessed sites to the Start screen. When you do so, the tile utilizes a thumbnail of the page itself, helping you ﬁnd it on the screen. To pin the current web page to the Start screen, tap More (“…”) and then Pin to Start. A new tile, featuring a thumbnail of the pinned site, will appear at the bottom of the Start screen.

When you tap this tile, the underlying page will open in IE Mobile. Note: By default, it will replace the page in the current tab in IE. But if you have set the option “Open links from other apps in” (as discussed in Customize Internet Explorer Mobile at the end of the chapter) to “a new tab” it will open a new tab instead. From here, you can reposition the tile, resize it, or delete it. Note: Don’t confuse pinning a web page with adding it to Favorites. Pinning a site does not automatically add it to your Favorites list.

Save a picture from a web page to your phone If you ﬁnd a photo or other picture online that you like, you can save it to your phone. To do so, tap and hold on the picture and choose Save Picture from the pop-up menu that appears.

During the save process, you will see a quick notiﬁcation that reveals that the picture is being saved to Saved Pictures. This is an album in the Photos hub. To ﬁnd photos you’ve saved from IE Mobile (and elsewhere in Windows Phone), open Photos and navigate to Albums, Saved Pictures.

Note: You can learn more about the Photos hub in 14. Photos.

Watch a YouTube video While there are various YouTube apps available for Windows Phone, Internet Explorer Mobile works very well with this Google service, negating the need to download a standalone app. To watch a YouTube video, navigate to youtube.com and select or search for a video. When you select a video, its landing page will be shown in a nice mobile-oriented design.

Tap the Play button in the center of the video to being playback. The video will display full screen so be sure to rotate the phone for the best experience.

YouTube videos play back with the standard video player, which is also used by the Music + Videos hub and elsewhere in Windows Phone. The simple on-screen playback controls disappear quickly so you can focus on just the video content. Tip: If you are a heavy YouTube user and subscribe to YouTube channels, be sure to sign in to YouTube from IE Mobile as well.

Share information from web pages Windows Phone provides various ways for you to share information from the web with others.

Share a web page To share the current web page with others, tap More (“…”) and then choose Share Page from the app bar menu. The standard Share screen appears, allowing you to choose from a variety of sharing methods.

In each case, what you’re sharing is the name of the page, its web address, and, in most cases, an optional message explaining why you’re sharing it. The exception here is Tap + Share since this requires you to physically tap two NFC-compatible devices together; presumably, you’ve already explained to the other person why you’re sharing the page.

Share or copy a link To share a hyperlink—essentially a clickable link to a web page—tap and hold on the hyperlink you wish to share and then choose Share Link from the pop-up menu that appears.

As with the page sharing, the standard Share screen appears, allowing you to choose from a variety of sharing methods. In this case, what you’re sharing is just the web address (and not the name of the page).

Copy and paste text from a web page You can also copy text from a web page and then use it elsewhere in IE Mobile or in many other apps in Windows Phone. To copy text in IE Mobile, tap anywhere in text in the browser display. When you do, the word you tap is selected, with selection handles on each side and a ﬂoating Copy button.

If you intended to select more than that one word, use the selection handles to increase the size of the selection in either direction. Just tap one and drag it in either direction.

When it’s just right, tap the Copy button to copy the text to the clipboard. Now, navigate to the place where you’d like to paste the text. For example, to paste it into Microsoft Word Mobile, open the Oﬃce hub and then open a new or existing Word document. Then, when you’re positioned correctly inside the document, tap the Paste button you see at the top of the virtual keyboard.

After you’ve pasted text once this way, the Paste button will move oﬀ to the left but is still available if you need to paste the text again. This is true if you launch another app as well.

Customize Internet Explorer Mobile As you might expect, Internet Explorer Mobile oﬀers a number of conﬁgurable options. These are available via Setting, which you can access in the app via More (“…”), Settings or by navigating to Settings, Applications, Internet Explorer.

Here you will ﬁnd the following options. Website preference. This option determines whether to load the normal or mobile versions of web sites when both are available. By default, IE Mobile loads the mobile version. Use address bar button for. Here you can conﬁgure which command is available via the single app bar button in IE Mobile. By default, its set to Stop/Refresh, but you can optionally choose Favorites or Tabs instead. Delete History. Tap this button to delete your browser history, including your History, cookies, saved passwords, and temporary Internet ﬁles. (Unfortunately, there’s no way to just delete some of this information.) You will be prompted before the action is completed. Advanced settings. Tap this button to access the Advanced Settings screen for IE Mobile.

The following advanced settings are available: Allow access to my location. Some web sites—forecast.io is a good example—utilize your device location information in the same way that native apps do. This option determines whether you allow this behavior.

Get suggestions from Bing as I type. Enabled by default, the option determines whether IE Mobile displays suggestions as you type a search or URL in the address bar. Send browsing history to Microsoft to help improve Bing services. This refers only to anonymous usage data, and no correlation between this data and you or your Microsoft account is made or stored. Use SmartScreen Filter to help protect against unsafe websites. Enabled by default, this feature will help protect your Windows Phone handset against electronic attacks online. Despite the fact that most such attacks are PC-based (or, in the mobile world, Android-based), I recommend leaving this enabled. Send a Do Not Track request to websites you visit. Like Internet Explorer 10 on the PC desktop, IE Mobile enable Do Not Track by default. This coming web standard is a voluntary system, not yet in widespread use, by which browsers can opt you out of advertising tracking online. Cookies from websites and apps. This option can be set to one of three settings: Accept all (in which all cookies are accepted, not recommended), block some (in which only cookies from the current web site are accepted, the recommend and default setting), and block all (in which all cookies are blocked, not recommend because many web features require cookies). Open links from other apps in. If you tap a hyperlink in another Windows Phone app, Internet Explorer Mobile will launch and can open the linked page in either the currently loaded tab (the default) or a new tab. Default search provider. Set to Bing by default—naturally—this setting lets you change the search provider (in Internet Explorer Mobile only) to Google if you prefer that service. Allow sites to store ﬁles on my phone. Enabled by default, this setting determines whether web sites are allowed to store ﬁles on your phone. You can tap the Manage storage button to see which sites are storing data locally and, if so, how much data. This Manage Storage screen also lets you delete ﬁles from individual web sites.

12. Oﬃce + OneNote Microsoft Oﬃce interoperability is one of the key reasons why many individuals and businesses choose Windows Phone over rival smart phones platforms. Though you can install Oﬃce Mobile on Android and iPhone, Windows Phone is the only mobile device platform that includes this functionality out of the box, and it provides unique features that are not available elsewhere. With Oﬃce Mobile, you can open Oﬃce documents, view and edit them oﬄine, and then save them back to the original service—SkyDrive and SharePoint, including Oﬃce 365, are natively supported—with no loss at all in the ﬁdelity of the underlying document structure. Of course, Oﬃce Mobile is diﬀerent from the desktop PC and web versions of Oﬃce. This is due in part to the limitations of the relatively small screens found on smart phones and the lack of a full-sized hardware keyboard. (That said, it should be mentioned that Windows Phone is in fact just a slightly modiﬁed version of the desktop versions of Windows and certainly has the processing and hardware needed to accommodate more full-featured Oﬃce apps.) But many of the diﬀerences are not technical in nature, and smart phone users have diﬀerent expectations when it comes to viewing and editing Oﬃce documents on the go. For example, while it’s unlikely that anyone would expect to create and fully edit an important corporate budget or presentation on a smart phone, many might wish to view and lightly edit such documents from their handset. That said, some Microsoft Oﬃce capabilities make plenty of sense for those needing to create and edit things like to-do lists and reminders while away from home, and apps like Word, Excel, and OneNote Mobile have been created with an eye towards these scenarios. The point here is simple. While the Oﬃce Mobile apps are surprisingly powerful, none are on par with the Oﬃce Web Apps (which are available for free in SkyDrive on the web, or via Oﬃce 365) or the fullfeatured Windows-based Oﬃce productivity suites. They provide light editing functionality on the go, and in a way that preserves the full ﬁdelity of the underlying documents so that when opened later in Oﬃce Web Apps or a Windows Oﬃce version, no formatting is lost or altered. Oﬃce Mobile consists of two main entry points in Windows Phone: The Oﬃce hub, which provides access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile, as well as your cloud-based document libraries, and OneNote Mobile, which is available as a separate app because of its unique versatility on Windows Phone. (You can also access OneNote-based notebooks from within the Oﬃce hub, though this is less common given OneNote Mobile’s standalone nature.) Note: The Mail and Calendar apps are also technically part of Oﬃce Mobile and are even sometimes referred to collectively as Outlook Mobile. These apps are discussed elsewhere in the book.

Oﬃce hub The Oﬃce hub is the front-end to your virtual oﬃce on the go, providing access to your SkyDrive- and SharePoint-based document libraries (including those in Oﬃce 365) as well as the Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile apps.

Note: You cannot launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint Mobile separately from the Oﬃce hub, nor can you pin tiles for these mobile apps to your Start screen for some reason. As you’ll discover, however, you can pin individual Oﬃce documents and OneNote notebook pages (or “notes”) to the Start screen.

Tour of the Oﬃce hub The Oﬃce hub is a panoramic experience that provides both location- and document-centric views of your Oﬃce-based work. That is, it allows you to ﬁnd the Oﬃce documents you need in the two most obvious ways, by location, or via a most recently used list. As such, the Oﬃce hub user interface is split neatly into just two panels, or views: Places, a list of the locations in which you might store Oﬃce documents, and Recent, a list of the Oﬃce documents you’ve most recently accessed. If you could view the entire Oﬃce hub in one view, it might resemble the following.

Understand and conﬁgure Places By default, the Places view consists of just a handful of locations. These include Phone, which lists the documents that are downloaded to (or existing solely on) your Windows Phone handset, Email, a dynamic view that lists Oﬃce documents that were sent as attachments in email messages through any of your connected accounts, SkyDrive and Oﬃce 365. Each of these items leads to a fairly straightforward interface that is essentially a list view with folders (when present) and ﬁles.

Since the SkyDrive and Oﬃce 365 items are more deeply connected with online services, let’s look at those two options a bit more closely before moving on.

Use SkyDrive with the Oﬃce hub If you signed into a Microsoft account when you ﬁrst conﬁgured your phone—and, again, this book assumes you did so as it provides the optimum Windows Phone experience—the SkyDrive item in Places will automatically be conﬁgured for the SkyDrive storage that is associated with your primary Microsoft account. Actually, it’s a bit more intelligent than that. Rather than provide you with access to your entire SkyDrive-based folder hierarchy, the SkyDrive item in the Oﬃce hub presents only those folders in your SkyDrive that are marked as type Documents, (SkyDrive also supports folders of type Pictures), nicely winnowing the possibilities.

Note: If you need to browse your entire SkyDrive folder hierarchy from the phone, be sure to grab Microsoft’s free SkyDrive mobile app from the Windows Phone Store. The SkyDrive interface also provides a Shared view that displays SkyDrive locations that contain Oﬃce documents that were shared with you by others. Note: You cannot connect more than one SkyDrive account to the Oﬃce hub, which is unfortunate, as some users maintain multiple Microsoft accounts, each with its own associated SkyDrive storage. There are two workarounds to this issue, however: You could sign into a secondary Microsoft account with the SkyDrive app noted above, or you could share SkyDrive folders in a secondary Microsoft account with your primary Microsoft account, making those locations available via the Shared view in SkyDrive in the Oﬃce hub. (Admittedly, neither of these workarounds is very elegant.)

Use Oﬃce 365 with the Oﬃce hub In addition to supporting SkyDrive, the Oﬃce hub also supports SkyDrive Pro document libraries that are found in on-premises (corporate) servers or through SharePoint Online in the business versions of Oﬃce 365, Microsoft’s family of online productivity services. Because of the cloud-based nature of Windows Phone, the Oﬃce hub includes an Oﬃce 365 item in Places by default, but it’s not conﬁgured for you automatically, as is SkyDrive, because it’s not connected to your Microsoft account.

You can conﬁgure Oﬃce 365 for use with the Oﬃce hub in two ways: Via the normal Email + Accounts interface in Settings, which is covered elsewhere in this book, or via the Oﬃce 365 item in the Places list in the Oﬃce hub. But if you choose the latter options, you’re hurried oﬀ to the Add an Account interface in Emails + Accounts anyway. So maybe there’s really only one way to do this. However you do it, once you’ve conﬁgured your Oﬃce 365 account on the phone, you should see an Account Added screen, which, among other things, notes that your SkyDrive Pro document library in SharePoint Online has been added to the Oﬃce hub.

Note: Previous to the SharePoint 2013 family of products, SkyDrive Pro was called SharePoint My Site. To see this, return to the Oﬃce hub. In the Places view, you should see that your Oﬃce 365 SkyDrive Pro location and Team Site has replaced the old Oﬃce 365 placeholder.

Note: I’ve actually had mixed success with this, and in some cases the SkyDrive Pro and Team Site are not automatically added to the Places list. That’s OK, as you can add them manually. See the next section for details.

Add a SharePoint document library to Places in the Oﬃce hub One of the advantages of SharePoint (including SharePoint Online in Oﬃce 365) is that you can arbitrarily add as many SharePoint document libraries to the Oﬃce hub in Windows Phone as you need. This is important for two reasons. One, at your workplace, you may be using some number of document libraries over and above the default document libraries—SkyDrive Pro and your Team Site—that every user gets. And two, for whatever reason, it’s possible that the Oﬃce hub didn’t correctly conﬁgure these document libraries when you connected your Oﬃce 365 account to the phone. Whatever the need, you can add any SharePoint- or SharePoint Online-based document library to the Oﬃce hub on your phone. To do so, visit the document library using a web browser on your PC. For example, you can ﬁnd the SkyDrive Pro document library that is associated with your account by signing into Oﬃce 365 and clicking the SkyDrive link in the service’s toolbar. When you do so, observe the URL in the browser’s address bar.

To add this SkyDrive Pro location to the Oﬃce hub on your handset, tap the New app bar button in the Places view.

In the Add SharePoint Site screen, type the full URL from the PC’s web browser into the text box. Then, sign in with your SharePoint/Oﬃce 365 credentials. If you do it right, you should be presented with the same location on the phone. (As you can see, this matches the view in the previous PC-based view.)

This method works with any SharePoint- or SharePoint Online/Oﬃce 365-based document library.

Access recent documents To view a list of the Oﬃce documents you’ve accessed most recently—not just on the phone, but on any PC or device connected to your Microsoft account—launch the Oﬃce hub and swipe over to the Recent view.

Here, the documents are listed in order from newest back in time, and segregated into groups such as Today, Yesterday, Last Week, Two Weeks Ago and Older. At the bottom of the list you’ll also ﬁnd three sample documents, one each for Word, PowerPoint and Excel Mobile.

Create a new document You can create a new Word or Excel document directly from the Oﬃce hub. To do so, navigate to the Recent pane and then tap the New app bar button.

Then, in the New screen, choose a blank Word or Excel document or choose from one of the supplied document templates.

Work with documents Whenever you come across a document—which includes Word documents as well as Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations—in any view in the Oﬃce hub, there are a number of actions you can take.

Open a document To open a document, simply tap it in any view in the Oﬃce hub, including the Recent list or from any location oﬀ of the Places view. When you open a document, it is downloaded, or cached, to the phone and the appropriate Oﬃce Mobile app launches to display it. This is for oﬄine access only; if you later save the document, it will be saved to its original location—in SkyDrive or SharePoint, perhaps—if you have an Internet connection.

Pin a document to Start If you ﬁnd yourself working with a document a lot, you may wish to pin it to your Start screen so you don’t need to navigate into the Oﬃce hub every time you wish to view or edit it. To do so, tap and hold on the document in any list and choose Pin to Start from the menu that pops up. A pinned document will appear as an individual tile at the bottom of the Start screen.

Delete a document from the phone To delete a document from your phone, tap and hold on the document in any list and choose Delete from the menu that pops up. If you do not see this option, the document is not on your phone. (The Oﬃce hub does not let you delete documents from online locations like SkyDrive or SharePoint.)

Save a document to a diﬀerent location To save a document to a diﬀerent location, tap and hold on the document in any list and choose Save To from the pop-up menu that appears. Then, choose between the available destinations—typical choices include SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro, the latter of which will be named something like SkyDrive @ Company Name. Note: Remember that you can download a copy of a document to your phone by opening it.

Share a document To share an Oﬃce document from the Oﬃce hub, tap and hold on the document in any list and choose Share from the pop-up menu that appears. Then, in the Send From screen, choose the sharing method.

Note that you can also share Oﬃce documents from within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Mobile. (This is described below.)

Understand commands that are common to Word, Excel and PowerPoint When you open an existing Oﬃce document—or create a new Word or Excel document—the appropriate Oﬃce Mobile app opens and you can get to work. Each of these document-based Oﬃce Mobile apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile—are described in subsequent sections in this chapter. But before moving on to that, here are some commands that are common across all three.

Exit To close a document and return to the previous view in the Oﬃce hub, press the Back button on the handset. (If the virtual keyboard is displayed, you will need to press Back twice.)

Save If you make an edit to a document, you can save it at any time by choosing More (“…”) from the app bar and then Save from the app bar menu. (This option will be unavailable if no changes have been made since the last time the document was saved.) When you save a document, it is saved to the same location as the original document. Note: If you exit a document that has had changes since the last save, Word, Excel or PowerPoint Mobile will prompt you to save it before exiting.

Save as To save a document with a diﬀerent name, preserving the original, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then Save As from the app bar menu. In the Save Document screen that appears you can edit the name of the document and choose between two locations: the current location (such as SkyDrive) and the phone.

Open the location that contains the current document When you’re viewing or editing a document, you can view the other documents that are available in the same location—potentially opening one of them instead—by tapping More (“…”) in the app bar and then Open Location from the app bar menu. A standard Oﬃce hub view will appear, displaying the location that contains the document.

Share To share an Oﬃce document from within Word, Excel or PowerPoint mobile, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Share from the app bar menu that appears. Then, in the Send From screen, choose the sharing method.

Word Mobile Word Mobile oﬀers access to those document viewing and editing features that make sense for the relatively small screens found on Windows Phone handsets, while retaining the underlying formatting ﬁdelity of SharePoint- and SkyDrive-hosted documents. It provides basic spell checking but not grammar checking, and even supports the Commenting part of Word’s Track Changes capabilities. Word Mobile is also useful for those who wish to create new documents on the go, though it’s worth pointing out that OneNote is perhaps the better solution for common mobile text-editing scenarios like shopping and to-do lists.

Open a word document When you open an existing document, Word Mobile presents the document in reading mode, where there are no onscreen controls at all and you can navigate through the document by swiping up or down.

To display the app bar, tap anywhere onscreen. To edit the document, tap the Edit button.

Edit a document When you create a new Word document in Word Mobile, or tap the Edit app bar button with an existing document, you’re presented with the Word editing experience, with the virtual keyboard ready to go. The insertion cursor appears in upper leftmost part of the document, so any new typing will appear at that point in the document.

As you type, the virtual keyboard will make suggestions in the area just above the keyboard. These suggestions range from guesses about the next word based on context to auto-correct suggestions for (potentially) misspelled words. To accept a suggestion, simply tap the word in the suggestion area and it will be added to the body of the document at the current insertion cursor.

Navigate around a document You scroll through a document as expected: Just ﬂick up and down with your ﬁnger. To move the insertion cursor you so you can edit elsewhere in the document, tap and hold anywhere on screen. As you do, an i-beam insertion cursor will appear onscreen just above your ﬁngertip. Now, move your ﬁnger around the document to position the i-beam cursor. It will follow your ﬁnger movements, providing you with a precise way to position it. When you release your ﬁnger from the screen, the i-beam cursor will change back into the normal insertion cursor so you can begin entering text at that point.

Select a word or a block of text To select a word, tap it. Two changes occur at this point: A Copy pop-up appears above the selection so you can copy that text into the system clipboard and paste it elsewhere in the document or in any other Windows Phone app that supports the pasting of text. Also, the suggestion area provides possible suggested changes so you can replace a misspelled or incorrect word. You can also simply type from here to replace the selected text.

To select an arbitrary block of text, ﬁrst select a word. Then, tap and hold on one of the two selection handles—which appear as tiny circles at either end of the selected text—and drag up, down, left or right to expand or contract the selection area. When you’ve selected the text you wish to act on, you can then overwrite it or copy it to the clipboard.

Copy and paste text within a document As noted above, when you select text in Word Mobile, a Copy pop-up appears above the selection. Tap this pop-up button to copy the selected text into the clipboard. When you do, a new Paste button appears in the suggestion area.

To paste the clipboard text in the document, position the insertion cursor where you wish the text to appear. Then tap the Paste button. When you do, the text pastes as expected, and the Paste button slides over to the left so that it’s half-hidden.

This isn’t just a visual cue: Windows Phone moves the Paste button over so that you don’t accidentally re-paste text you’ve just pasted. However, you can continue to use the Paste button and re-paste the clipboard text elsewhere in the document-or elsewhere in Windows Phone—by tapping the half-hidden Paste button. When you do, it slides back over to its normal position so you can tap it again. To cut and paste instead of copy and paste, ﬁrst copy the selected text to the clipboard. Then, tap the Delete key on the virtual keyboard. Then, paste as before.

Toggle the virtual keyboard To hide the virtual keyboard, press the hardware Back button on your handset. To display a hidden virtual keyboard, just tap anywhere in the document area.

Format text Word Mobile supports limited text formatting features. To format text, select it and then tap the Format button in the app bar.

When you do, the Format screen appears.

Here, you can access the following tools: Format. Choose between bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, increase font size and decrease the font size. Annoyingly, you can’t apply multiple format changes at once: Each selection closes the Format screen and returns you to the Word editing experience. Highlight. You can change the text highlight color to yellow, green, or red. (To reverse this change, select the highlight color that is currently in use.) Font color. You can change the text color to brown, green or red. (To reverse this change, select the text color that is currently in use.)

Find text To ﬁnd text in a Word document, tap the Find app bar button.

A Find box opens inline above the suggestion area. Type the text you’d like to ﬁnd and then tap Enter. (Optionally, you can ﬁrst select text in the document to ﬁnd other instances of that text; that text will appear in the Find box automatically.)

When you tap Enter, the virtual keyboard disappears and the ﬁrst instance of the text is highlighted.

Tap the Next app bar button to ﬁnd the next instance of the text. You can move forward through the text in this fashion by repeatedly tapping the button. When you reach the end of the document, it will jump back to the beginning. Tap the Back app bar button to quit the Find experience.

Use Outline view To view the structure of the document and navigate quickly through a large document, tap the Outline app bar button.

An Outline pane appears. In this pane, you will see a list of the headings in the document.

Tap a heading to move to that point in the document. Press the Back button on your handset to exit this view.

Add a comment to a document To add a comment to a document, navigate to the point you wish to leave the comment and position the insertion cursor. Then, tap the Comment app bar button.

Note: If you have not conﬁgured your user name as described in Customize Oﬃce and OneNote, you will be prompted to do so as each comment will include the name of the commenter. A Comment box will appear above the suggestion area. Type the comment normally. You can select text, copy and paste text, and navigate around the Comment box as you do in a document.

When you’re done with the comment, tap Back twice. You can see that the commented text is highlighted in a unique color and resembles a squared oﬀ speech balloon.

If you’re familiar with the desktop version of Word, you may know that comments appear as small speech bubbles to the right of the text.

When you tap a comment bubble, you can view the comment text. This includes comments that were made or edited in Windows Phone.

View document comments To view a comments in a document, tap the commented text with your ﬁnger. (Remember: Text that has an associated comment is colorized.) When you do, the virtual keyboard disappears, a Comment pane appears in its place, and two new app bar buttons, Next and Previous, appear.

To view the next comment in the document, tap Next. Likewise, tap Previous to view the previous comment. Press Back on your handset to exit this view.

Delete a comment To delete a comment, view it as described above. Then, tap the More (“…”) app bar button and select Delete Comment from the app bar menu that appears.

Excel Mobile Excel Mobile is your personal and portable electronic spreadsheet engine, capable of working with many PC-based Excel creations as well as those the more humble lists, budgets, schedules, trackers, and other spreadsheets you create on the phone itself. And while no one is likely to mistake Excel Mobile for its full-featured PC cousin, the app does include many core Excel features, such as functions, automatic sum calculation, sorting, ﬁlters, and cell formatting. Note: An Excel document is called a workbook. These workbooks consist of one or more worksheets, or sheets. Many people confusingly use the term spreadsheet interchangeably with both workbook and worksheet/sheet.

Warning: Excel Mobile can be rather unforgiving in that there’s no Undo function. Sometimes, the only way to reverse a change is to exit the workbook and choose not to Save it. So be sure to manually save frequently. And be careful.

Open a workbook When you open an existing workbook, Excel Mobile presents it without any virtual keyboard to get in the way of the underlying data.

Unlike in Word Mobile, the Excel Mobile app bar is always visible. To display the virtual keyboard, tap the Formula Bar at the top of the screen.

Navigate through a workbook You can navigate through a workbook by swiping in any direction. This includes up, down, left or right, of course, but also arbitrary angles that let you quickly move from one corner of the sheet to the other. To zoom out, pinch the screen. To zoom in, use a stretch gesture—sort of a “reverse pinch,” if you will.

To return to 100 percent zoom—the default zoom—double-tap anywhere on the screen.

Select a cell or a range of cells To select an individual cell in the current sheet, tap it. The cell will appear selected.

To select a range of cells, drag the small grab handles on the top left and bottom right corners of the initially selected cell to select adjacent cells. You can select in any of four directions.

Switch between available worksheets If you’re familiar with the desktop version of Microsoft Excel, you know that it uses a series of tabs at the bottom of its display to represent the diﬀerent worksheets in the currently-displayed workbook. You navigate to a diﬀerent sheet by tapping the appropriate tab. Excel Mobile doesn’t have as much onscreen real estate to play with, but you can still easily navigate to a diﬀerent worksheet. To do so, tap the Sheets app bar button.

When you do, a Sheets panel appears letting you select a diﬀerent sheet.

Note: Excel Mobile doesn’t let you add a new sheet to a workbook.

Format a cell Excel Mobile supports reasonable cell formatting features. To format the text or numbers in a cell, select the cell—or a range of cells—tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then select Format from the app bar menu that appears. The Format screen appears.

Here, you can access the following tools: Format. Choose between bold, italics, underline, date, currency and percentage. The ﬁrst three apply to text/number style, but the last three are unique to Excel and will format numbers accordingly. Annoyingly, you can’t apply multiple format changes at once: Each selection closes the Format screen and returns you to the Word editing experience. Font color. You can change the text color to red, brown or green. (To reverse this change, select the text color that is currently in use.) Fill color. You can change the background color of the cell to red, yellow or green. (To reverse this change, select the ﬁll color that is currently in use.)

Use a function Excel Mobile supports a surprisingly wide range of functions, built-in formulas that let you easily perform special calculations on selected values. Some functions are immediately obvious—SUM adds up all of the values in a range of cells, for example—while others are pretty esoteric to us non-accountant types. So let’s stick with the basics. In this example, I’ll use the SUM function to add a column of numbers.

To use the SUM function in a worksheet that already has a column of cells with number values, tap the ﬁrst cell below the column of numbers and then tap the Insert Function button, to the left of the Formula Bar.

When you do, the Functions list appears below the Insert Function button and Function Bar, but is partially obscured by the virtual keyboard.

If you know which function you’re looking for, you can start typing its name and the Functions list will ﬁlter to display only those functions that match what you’ve typed.

Or, you can tap the Back button on your handset to hide the keyboard, giving the Functions list more onscreen real estate. Now, just scroll down the list until you ﬁnd the function you want. Either way, when you ﬁnd the SUM function, tap it in the list. When you do, the Formula Bar will automatically be ﬁlled with an equal sign, the function name, and then a set of parenthesis that must be ﬁlled with the range of cells on which the function will act. In the case of the SUM function, this will read as: =sum(range_of_numbers) The text range_of_numbers is selected, indicating that anything you type—or any cell you now select— will overwrite that temporary value. Since we’re adding a column of numbers, the ﬁrst thing to do is select the ﬁrst value in the range. To do so, tap that cell (you may need to swipe to scroll up to see it ﬁrst). When you do, the value of the cell is added to the parenthesis of the function.

As it currently stands, the function is only “adding” the value of a single cell, so the next step is to add additional cells or, better yet, a range of cells. While you could manually type in additional cell names— as in sum(B1+B2+B3) or whatever—it’s often better to indicate a range of cells instead. Not only is it less typing, but this type of functional declaration can accommodate rows of data that are added to the worksheet later, as well as other changes. Here’s how you indicate a range of cells in a function.

Next, type the character : in the function at the current insertion point, which should be to the right of the previously inserted cell number and to the left of the second parenthesis. (If it’s not, use your text selection skills to move the insertion cursor to that point. The function should now read: =sum(B1:) Then, tap the ﬁnal cell in the range of cells that will be aﬀected by the function. In my example workbook, this cell is B12. When done, the screen resembles the following:

With the function now reading as: =sum(B1:B2) To complete the function and apply the SUM value to the cell, tap Enter. Now, when you make changes to any of the values in the previously selected range of cells, the cell that contains the function will automatically change to reﬂect that change as well. Note: While it’s not possible to provide a thorough rundown of every Excel Mobile function, this is an area worth exploring and is arguably one of the more powerful features of this amazing app. Hopefully, this quick look at just one function will inspire you to see what else is possible.

Use AutoSum While the ability to use functions is quite powerful, it’s also a manual process that may be diﬃcult or uninteresting to you. Sometimes you just need a simple summation. And that’s what the AutoSum tool is all about: It automatically runs certain sum and sum-like calculations against a range of values. To use AutoSum to perform the same sum calculation described in the previous section, select a range of values in a column of cells and tap the AutoSum button.

An AutoSum panel appears listed the sum of the values, as well as the average of the values, the maximum value (max), the minimum value (min), and the count (the number of selected cells that contains a number).

Tap Sum to insert the sum of the values. Or, tap one of the other AutoSum calculation types to insert that value. The AutoSum value will appear in the cell directly below the selected cells.

Tap this AutoSum cell to see the calculation that created this value in the Formula Bar. (Hint: It’s the same as above.) As with a manually-created function, when you make changes to any of the values in the previously selected cells, the AutoSum cell will automatically change to reﬂect that change as well.

Find text or numbers To ﬁnd text or numbers in a worksheet, tap the Find app bar button.

A Find box appears above the virtual keyboard.

Type the text—or number/number sequence—you’d like ﬁnd and then tap Enter. The virtual keyboard disappears and the Find experience appears with the cell that contains the ﬁrst instance of the text or number selected.

Tap the Next app bar button to ﬁnd the next instance of the text or number. You can move forward through the text in this fashion by repeatedly tapping the button. When you reach the end of the document, it will jump back to the beginning. Tap the Back app bar button to quit the Find experience.

Sort a range of values To sort a range of values, select the cells you wish to sort and then tap the Sort app bar button.

The Sort screen appears, allowing you to choose various options related to the resorting, including whether to sort in descending or ascending order.

Note: Tap More Options to see many more sorting options. Here’s how my simple example budget workbook looks sorted in descending order.

Apply a ﬁlter Like its desktop cousin, Excel Mobile supports a powerful ﬁlter feature that lets you dynamically ﬁlter the data in a worksheet to display only certain cells based on certain criteria. Unlike the desktop Excel version, however, this feature is a bit limited on Windows Phone and can’t perform more advanced ﬁlters like Greater Than, Less Than, Between, and so on. Instead, Excel Mobile can only ﬁlter individual cell values. To apply a ﬁlter, select the aﬀected cell range, tap the More (“…”) app bar button and then choose Apply Filter from the app bar menu. When you do, arrows appear in the header cells of the selected cells.

Tap one of the arrows to apply a ﬁlter. For example, on a column of number values, you can choose to ﬁlter by all (the normal, default view), or select individual values.

When you done, tap the Done app bar button. The workbook reappears but displays only those rows that correspond to the applied ﬁlter.

From here, you can continue to apply other ﬁlters or change the ﬁlter you added previously. To return to the normal view, choose More (“…”) from the app bar and then choose Remove Filter from the menu that appears.

Make a chart Visualizing data is one of the more useful features in the desktop versions of Excel, so it should come as no surprise that Excel Mobile oﬀers basic chart creation capabilities. To make a chart, select a range of cells and then tap the Chart app bar button.

The Insert Chart screen appears.

Select the chart type you like and the chart will appear. (You can zoom and pan around a chart just as you can any other worksheet data.) Here are two example chart types, line (left) and column (right).

Note: Unlike with the desktop version of Excel, charts added via Excel Mobile appear on a new worksheet rather than on the same worksheet with the data.

PowerPoint Mobile PowerPoint Mobile is quite a bit less functional than either Word Mobile or Excel Mobile. You can’t create a new PowerPoint presentation on the device, for example, but must instead open an existing presentation that’s stored in a connected Place. And once you’ve opened a presentation, you’ll see far less in the way of editing, too: PowerPoint Mobile is aimed primarily at reviewing a presentation on the go and making very light text edits—in the slides and in slide notes—only.

Display a slide show When you open a presentation with PowerPoint Mobile, the app displays it in Slide Show mode, which lets you quickly navigate between the presentation slides as if you were presenting it on a big screen. This is an ideal way to see how well the presentation reads and ﬂows. If you hold the phone in its normal portrait orientation, you’ll see additional commands that are unrelated to viewing the slide show.

But if you hold the phone in landscape orientation, you’ll see a view that is truer to the ﬁnal presentation, with no additional commands.

Either way, you can navigate from slide to slide by swiping left or right on the screen.

View the slides in a presentation To view the slides in a presentation as thumbnails, tap the Slides app bar button.

This view allows you to move quickly through a large presentation. Simply tap the slide you’d like to view or edit to move immediately to that slide.

You can also press the Back hardware button to return to the normal Slide Show mode.

Edit text in a presentation To edit the text in any text ﬁeld, tap the Edit app bar button.

When you do, the current slide will display an edit box around the ﬁrst instance of text in that slide.

You can tap this box to enter edit mode. Or, tap any other text in the slide to move the edit box to that text. Then, tap the box to enter edit mode. In edit mode, the selected text will appear as plain, unformatted text. Here, you can use the virtual keyboard and your ﬁnger selection skills to edit the text.

Tap the Done app bar button when you’re done editing.

Move a slide To move a slide to a new location in the deck, display the slide normally and then enter Edit mode. Then, select More (“…”) from the app bar and then Move Slide. In the Move Slide screen, use your ﬁnger to drag the current (and selected) slide to a new location in the deck hierarchy.

Once you’re on this screen, you can also select other slides to move them around as well. Just tap the slide you wish to move. When you’re done relocating slides, tap the Done app bar button.

Hide or unhide a slide PowerPoint Mobile also lets you hide slides so that they do not appear in Slide Show mode on the phone (or, when you present the presentation elsewhere). Conversely, you can also unhide a hidden slide. To hide a slide, display the slide normally and then enter Edit mode. Then, select More (“…”) from the app bar and then Hide Slide. To unhide a slide, perform the same steps, but select Unhide Slide.

Return to Slide Show mode When you’re done making edits in edit mode, you can return to the default view, Slide Show, by tapping the Slide Show app bar button.

Add or edit slide notes You can add or edit notes for a slide while in Slide Show mode. To do so, tap the notes (or the text “No notes added”) below the slide. (You must be holding the phone in the default portrait orientation to see this.) This will display an edit screen where you can add or edit notes with the virtual keyboard.

Tap the Done app bar button when you’re done working with the notes.

OneNote Mobile OneNote Mobile occupies a special place in Oﬃce Mobile for Windows Phone because this app is particularly well-suited to mobile use in general and to smart phone usage in particular. Consider OneNote’s core mission as a cloud-based notebook—you can and should store your notebooks in SkyDrive or SharePoint Online/Oﬃce 365—that lets you create or access your notes from your PC, tablet, or Windows Phone. OneNote also excels at lists. Sure, you could use a tool like Word or Excel to create a list of any kind—a to-do list, a shopping list, whatever—but only OneNote includes integrated list-making with the ability to mark individual items as complete. So you might make a shopping list, say, on your PC, but you can check items as complete on your phone as you shop. Of course, OneNote is about far more than lists. It can be used to store notes of any kind, and can include handwriting (on compatible PCs or tablets), pictures, and even audio; that latter capability makes OneNote Mobile particularly well-suite for recording meetings and other events. And because OneNotebased notes are stored in the cloud by default, they’re available from anywhere.

Indeed, OneNote is currently the most pervasive of the Oﬃce apps: Notebooks stored in SkyDrive or SharePoint Online/Oﬃce 365 are accessible from desktop versions of OneNote on your PC, the mobile (or “Metro”) version of OneNote in Windows 8 or RT, the Oﬃce Web Apps, or OneNote Mobile on Windows Phone, iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch), or Android handsets and tablets.

A OneNote primer Before getting into the speciﬁcs of OneNote Mobile, it may be helpful to understand the unique terminology used to describe this app’s user interface. OneNote Mobile (like the desktop- and webbased versions of OneNote) is a digital representation of a physical, paper-based notebook. And as such the language used to describe the various parts of the UI are derived from that inspiration. Here are some of the terms you’ll see throughout this discussion of OneNote. Notebook. Where Excel uses workbooks, OneNote uses notebooks. And like an Excel workbook, each OneNote notebook is a standalone ﬁle, one that can contain a diverse variety of information. When you tap on a OneNote notebook in the Oﬃce hub—or in the standalone SkyDrive app—OneNote will launch and display that notebook. The sheer amount and diversity of information that can be contained with a notebook is a big diﬀerence from traditional Oﬃce documents—notebooks are not technically “documents”—and makes this entity more akin to a database than a spreadsheet. But it’s more than that. Documents need to be saved to local or cloud-based storage. With OneNote notebooks, this is automatic, and there’s no “Save” or “Save As” command to worry about. Instead, OneNote Mobile will automatically save every change you make to any notebook, no questions asked. In the desktop version of OneNote, notebooks look like so:

Whereas in OneNote Mobile, they look like this:

Section. As with a paper-based notebook, OneNote notebooks are divided into sections. And as with a paper-based notebook, these sections are visibly identiﬁed by colored tabs. In the desktop version of OneNote, these section tabs look like so:

In OneNote Mobile, the same range of section tabs looks a bit diﬀerent:

Note. Individual notes, or what the desktop versions of OneNote call pages, are like individual pages in a notebook. Each note can contain a variety of information, including typed text, handwritten text (though that can only be created on full-powered PCs with electromagnetic styluses that work like pens), pictures, audio, videos, comments, and much, much more. (Not all OneNote content types can be inserted via OneNote Mobile.) A simple note (page) in the desktop version of OneNote—in this case, representing hastily-typed meeting notes—will look like the following.

This note will render as expected in OneNote Mobile because it is very basic.

List. While OneNote-based notebooks can contain a diverse range of information, many of those using the smart phone-based OneNote Mobile app are particularly interested in creating lists where individual lines can optionally be marked as “to-do” items that can be completed while on the go. (A grocery list is a classic example of this usage.) A simple to-do list is shown here in the desktop version of OneNote.

This same list is faithfully represented in OneNote Mobile as well, and as you’ll discover you can easily tap the check box next to individual items to mark them as complete.

Launch OneNote There are two primary ways to launch OneNote Mobile in Windows Phone: Via its dedicated tile in the All Apps list or on the Start screen, or by opening a notebook in the Oﬃce hub. The OneNote tile isn’t dynamic in any way, so if you do pin this app’s tile to the Start screen, you should consider resizing it to the smallest possible size to save onscreen real estate. To launch OneNote from this tile, simply tap it.

In the Oﬃce hub, OneNote notebooks have a distinctive purple tile. To open the notebook in OneNote, tap the notebook.

Note: You can also launch OneNote from a pinned notebook page. This is described later in the chapter.

View and manage available notebooks If you launch OneNote from its tile, you will be presented with its default view, a simple, single-screen experience that lists the notebooks that are available to you in your connected SkyDrive and SharePoint/SharePoint Online/Oﬃce 365 services. This view is divided into two sections, opened notebooks, which includes those notebooks that have previously been opened and cached on the phone (and are therefore available when you’re oﬄine), and closed notebooks.

From this view, you can also perform a number of notebook-related management tasks, each of which is available from the app bar or the app bar menu. These include: Recent. Tap this app bar button to see a list of the notes (or what desktop versions of OneNote call pages) that you’ve most recently accessed from the handset, regardless of which notebook they’re contained within. This is a handy way to get quickly back to where you were. Search. This app bar button lets you search for a text phrase across all of the open notebooks on the phone. Tap a search result to navigate directly to that note.

Sync. While notebooks will automatically sync sections and pages as you view them, this process can sometimes be tedious and can’t help if you wish to ensure you have the most recent version of a cloudbased notebook synced to the phone so you can access it while oﬄine. To sync all open notebooks, tap the Sync app bar menu item. Hide closed notebooks. By default, OneNote Mobile displays all of your cloud-based notebooks in this default view, but if you’d prefer to hide the closed notebooks—that is, the notebooks that are not cached to the phone—tap this app bar menu item. (If you do hide closed notebooks, this item will change to a Show closed notebooks item.)

Open a notebook To open a notebook, tap it. If the notebook is listed under Closed Notebooks, it will download to the phone and cache an oﬄine copy. Note: There is no way to create a new notebook from the OneNote app.

Navigate through a notebook Because of the relatively small screens found in today’s smart phone handsets, OneNote Mobile presents the various parts of its user interface—notebooks, sections, and notes—on a single screen each, rather than all at once as is possible with the desktop version of OneNote. To understand the diﬀerence, consider a typical PC-based OneNote display, in which you can see notebooks on the left, sections of the current notebook as tabs across the top, available notes (pages) on the right and, in the middle, the currently displayed note.

Viewing all of the information shown above requires four diﬀerent screens in OneNote Mobile. So in order to view the same note shown above, you’d need to navigate through each of those screens in turn, a task that might resemble the following. (The circles represent where you’d tap in each screen to move to the next screen.)

Let’s quickly consider each step.

As noted previously, when you initially launch OneNote Mobile, you’re presented with the Notebooks view. Here, you’ll see each of the OneNote notebooks that are stored in your connected SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro (SharePoint/SharePoint Online in Oﬃce 365) cloud storage services. You tap on a notebook to open that notebook. In the Notebook view, you see the name of the notebook and then a list of the available sections. Each section is represented with a small, colored tab. To return to the previous screen, you can of course press the Back button on your handset. But OneNote Mobile also includes built-in navigation: Just tap the NOTEBOOKS link at the top of the screen to return to the previous screen, in this case Notebooks.

To navigate into a speciﬁc section, tap the section in the list. The section will open, displaying a list of the available notes. From here, you can tap a note to view that note, tap the section name at the top (WINDOWS WEEKLY in this example) to return to the Notebook view, or delete one or more notes (also described below). When viewing a note, you can perform a variety of tasks, such as editing it, and adding lists, and other objects, among other things. Curiously, one of them is to create a new and separate note. All of these tasks are described soon. Note: In the Notebooks, Notebook, Sections, and Note views—virtually everywhere in OneNote Mobile, as it turns out—you will ﬁnd a Sync app bar button. By default, OneNote Mobile will attempt to sync the notebook you’re viewing or editing when you open it and as you remain

Delete one or more notes To delete one or more notes in a section, navigate to the notebook section you wish to change. Then, tap the More (“…”) app bar button and choose Select Pages from the app bar menu that appears. When you do, checkboxes appear next to each note in the section.

Select the note(s) you wish to delete and then tap the Delete app bar button.

Create a new note To create a new note, navigate to the notebook section you wish to change. Then, tap the New app bar button.

When you do, a new note appears, allowing you to enter a title and other information in the note.

Edit a note While OneNote Mobile isn’t as full-featured as its desktop- and web-based cousins, it does oﬀer a reasonable feature set for those that wish to edit notes on the go.

Edit text To edit text, tap inside any area of text in a note—this area is technically called a text block—and you’ll see that the virtual keyboard appears, allowing you to begin typing. You can also of course use your touch skills to position the insertion cursor exactly so you don’t overwrite something important.

Note: In a new note, the insertion cursor is placed inside the note-taking area for you automatically (what OneNote thinks of as the default text block) and the virtual keyboard is ready for you to begin typing.

Add a to-do list To add a to-do list to a note, position the insertion cursor where you want it and tap the To-Do app bar button.

When you do, an empty check box will appear, and the insertion cursor moves to the right of that box so you can begin typing the entry.

To type subsequent items in the to-do list, just tap Enter after each item. A new empty check box will appear and the insertion cursor will move accordingly.

To complete the to-do list, tap Enter twice. Later, when you’re completing tasks in the list, you can tap each check box to mark items as completed.

Add a bulleted list To add a numbered list to a note, position the insertion cursor where you want it and tap the List app bar button.

When you do, a bullet will appear and you can begin typing to create the item represented by that bullet point.

To type subsequent items in the list, just tap Enter after each item. A new bullet will appear below the previous line and the insertion cursor will move accordingly.

To complete the list, tap Enter twice.

Add a numbered list To add a numbered list to a note, position the insertion cursor where you want it and tap the More app bar button (“…”); then, choose Numbered List from the app bar menu. When you do, a number one will appear and you can begin typing to create the item represented by that ﬁrst number.

To type subsequent items in the list, just tap Enter after each item. A new number (2, then 3, 4, 5 and so on) will appear below the previous line and the insertion cursor will move accordingly.

To complete the list, tap Enter twice.

Insert a picture To add a picture to the note, position the insertion cursor where you want it and tap the Picture app bar button.

When you do, a Picture chooser appears, letting you choose between various photo albums from the Photos hub. Or, you can tap the Camera button in the app bar to take a new picture with the handset’s camera.

When you choose a picture, it is added to the note and the insertion cursor moves to a position below the picture.

There’s no real picture formatting possible with OneNote Mobile, but you can delete the image: Just tap it to select it and then tap the Backspace key on the virtual keyboard.

Add an audio note OneNote Mobile is a great choice for recording meetings and other situations in which an audio recording—or what the app calls an audio note—is desirable. To record an audio note, position the insertion cursor where you want it and tap the Audio app bar button.

When you do, OneNote Mobile immediately beings recording, as evidenced by the Recording pane that appears. While the app is recording audio, you can’t use it for anything else.

When you’re done recording, tap the Stop button, or press Back on your handset. You’ll return to the note, where you’ll ﬁnd an audio recording icon.

From here, you can continue editing the note. Or, tap the audio recording icon to listen to the recording.

Increase and decrease the indent OneNote Mobile supports basic text indention functionality, which lets you visually oﬀset text from the surrounding text.

To indent a block of text, or create a new block of indented text, position the insertion cursor accordingly. Then, tap the More app bar button (“…”) and choose Increase Indent from the app bar menu. When you do, the leftmost edge of the block of text will visually move to the right.

If you continue typing, subsequent lines and paragraphs will also be indented. You can choose the Decrease Indent app bar menu item to reverse this eﬀect.

Format text Like other Oﬃce Mobile apps, OneNote Mobile includes basic text formatting tools. They work as they do in Word Mobile, though the choices are even more limited: Select a block of text and then tap the More app bar button (“…”) and choose Format from the app bar menu. When you do, the Format screen appears.

Here, you can access the following tools: Format. Choose between bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough. You can’t apply multiple format changes at once: Each selection closes the Format screen and returns you to the Word editing experience. Highlight. You can change the text highlight color to yellow only. (To reverse this change, select the yellow highlight color again.)

Search for text across all of your notebooks Where other Oﬃce Mobile apps oﬀer a simple Find command that hunts for text in the current document, OneNote Mobile provides a more powerful Search command that searches for text across all of your open notebooks. To search for text, tap the Search app bar button that’s available in the Notebooks, Notebook, Sections or Note views (the latter only when the note isn’t being edited).

In the Search screen that appears, type the search term in the box—it’s automatically selected—and then tap Enter. Search results will appear, and as you’ll see as you scroll down the list, these results extend to notes across all your open notebooks.

To view a particular result—i.e. the referenced note—just tap it in the search results list.

Share a note OneNote Mobile lets you share a note—which is a *.one ﬁle—with others via email only. This ﬁle is sent as an attachment, and the text in the note is sent as the email body. The recipient can take just the text, or they can open the attachment and the note will be added to their default OneNote notebook. To share a note with others, display the note you wish to share. Then, tap the More app bar button (“…”) and choose Share from the app bar menu. In the Send From screen that appears, choose the email account you’d like to use to share the note.

Pin a note to the Start screen OneNote allows you to pin individual notes to the Start screen so that you can access them more quickly. To do so, display the note you wish to pin. Then, tap the More app bar button (“…”) and choose Pin to Start from the app bar menu. A new note tile is added to the bottom of the Start screen.

Customize Oﬃce and OneNote Considering the sheer number of features available in the Oﬃce Mobile apps, you might assume that this powerful mobile productivity suite was accompanied by a plethora of settings. Alas this is not the case. In fact, there are only three options you can conﬁgure in Oﬃce Settings. (And there’s no separate OneNote settings.) Equally oddly, you cannot access this interface from any of the Oﬃce Mobile apps, or from the Oﬃce hub. Instead, the only way to reach Oﬃce Settings is to navigate to Settings, Applications, Oﬃce.

The three available options are: User name. Set to User by default, you should replace this with your own full name (e.g. Paul Thurrott). Why? It’s used to set the owner name for new documents and notebooks, and in Word Mobile’s Comments feature. Open SharePoint links in the Oﬃce hub. Selected by default, this option ensures that any SharePoint links (e.g. URLs) that you open in Mail, Messaging, or other locations opens that location in the Oﬃce hub instead of your SharePoint/Oﬃce 365’s web site using Internet Explorer. Trust me, you want the former. Reset Oﬃce. This option removes all saved Oﬃce settings, oﬄine (locally cached) documents, and other ﬁles associated with Oﬃce, and resets the Oﬃce hub to its default conﬁguration. You’re prompted before this “nuke from space” command is completed.

13. Music, Videos and Podcasts Windows Phone is at the forefront of the move to cloud computing, where your data is stored in the cloud, not on a single PC, and synced to all of your PCs and devices, including tablets and smart phones. In this new way of doing things, a Windows Phone 8 handset is not subservient to your PC, and doesn’t typically need to rely on your PC to, among other things, access your collections of digital music, digital videos, or podcasts. This is a big change from the previous model, where portable devices often needed to be tethered, or connected, to a PC in order to sync content. In the cloud computing model, however, your data is in the cloud, not on the PC. Each of the digital entertainment experiences in Windows Phone 8 is impacted by this design. In this chapter, we’re going to examine the audio/visual experiences, in particular, and how you access music, videos, and podcasts through the device’s Music + Videos hub.

Find and launch the Music + Videos hub The Xbox Music services and your cloud collection are accessed in Windows Phone 8 through the Music + Videos hub, which can typically be found on the Start screen. By default, it is a small, square, green tile with a headphone icon. But you can conﬁgure this tile, as with other Windows Phone tiles, to be larger (square) or wider (rectangular).

As you’ll see in a bit, the two larger tile sizes are dynamic and will display artist imagery while music is playing. (The smaller tile is static and doesn’t change.) So if this capability is important to you, choose one of the larger tile sizes. If you can’t ﬁnd Music + Videos on your Start screen, you can also launch it from the All Apps screen. To do so, swipe to the left from the Start screen. Then, scroll down until you see the Music + Videos entry in the list. When you ﬁrst launch Music + Videos, it will display the default Collection view, which includes options for videos, podcasts, and the Windows Phone Store in addition to music.

Tour of the Music + Videos hub The Music + Videos hub is a panoramic experience that extends to the right of the default, Collection, view. If you were able to view the entire hub onscreen at once, it would resemble the following.

The hub oﬀers the following panels.

Collection Here, you ﬁnd entry points into the various parts of your own digital media collection, both on the device and, in the case of music, in your Xbox Music-hosted cloud collection, as well as the Windows Phone Store. The collection pane includes the following: Now Playing. When audio is playing (typically music or an audio podcast, but also audio from third party apps such as Audible), a small Now Playing tile appears at the top of the list so that you can quickly get back to the play experience. In Music + Video, this experience is called Now Playing, but it can vary from app to app.

Music. Tapping this item will bring you to the Music experience, which provides you with access to your music collection, which can include content that is stored locally on the device and in your Xbox cloud collection online. The Music experience is described in the section Digital music, below. Videos. This item displays the Videos experience, which is described in the section Digital videos, below. Podcasts. This item displays the Podcasts experience, which provides access to audio and video podcasts that you’ve downloaded to the device. This experience is described in the Podcasts section later in the chapter. Radio. This item provides access to an FM radio interface that is described in the section FM radio later in the chapter. Store. This item can be used to ﬁnd new music, podcasts, or apps and games in Windows Phone Store. Play music. This strange app bar button will ﬁll the Now Playing list with all of the songs in your music collection and begin playing them back in random order (i.e. shuﬄed).

History The History panel provides tiles that represent the music, podcasts, or videos you’ve recently enjoyed, with the most recent items displayed at the top. Tap an item here to immediately resume playback of that item.

New This panel provides a tiles-based list of the content that was most recently added to your collection, again with the most recent items displayed at the top.

Apps Here, you will ﬁnd apps that oﬀer digital audio or video content. Not all such apps oﬀer this integration— it must be added by the app maker—but those that do are taking advantage of the integration capabilities in Windows Phone, allowing you to simply think “music and videos” rather than have to remember the name of a particular app. Basically, this is just an alphabetical list of those apps that oﬀer Music + Videos integration.

Xbox This promotional panel provides access to other Xbox entertainment experiences on the phone and a Spotlight area for promoted musical acts.

Digital music In the PC-centric world of the past, the digital music revolution involved a few generations of change. First, we “ripped” our Audio CD-based music collection to MP3 ﬁles. Then we began experimenting with a wellspring of online music stores, each with incompatible proprietary DRM (digital rights management) protections, and most of which are gone today. (Both the services and the DRM: Today, all of the remaining online music services sell unprotected DRM-free music.) And then we began syncing our music collections to portable devices like MP3 players, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and, eventually, phones. This way of doing things made sense … until it didn’t. With most people owning multiple PCs and multiple devices—phones, MP3 players, tablets, and more—managing those PC-based music libraries got complex and tedious. Coupled with the move to cloud computing—a move that, as you know, Windows Phone fully embraces—it made sense for a new generation of change, in which the cloud, not your PC, was used as the center of your digital music activities (and more). Many companies have adopted this way of doing things, notably Apple (with its iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match services), Pandora, Spotify, Amazon.com—with Cloud Player and Amazon MP3—and others. But Microsoft’s solution, called Xbox Music, is perhaps the furthest reaching of them all. In fact, it’s not even fair to call it “a service,” since it is in fact a set of services that work together to create what Microsoft calls the world’s ﬁrst all-in-one cloud-based music experience, one that combines the capabilities of multiple services into a single place. Xbox Music features that are available in Windows Phone 8 include: Cloud collection. Arguably the core feature of Xbox Music, the cloud collection is what separates this service most obviously from its predecessor, Zune, and from many rival services. Under the previous scheme, you were forced to duplicate your PC-based music collection—including albums and songs, of course, but also playlists and Smart DJ mixes—across your various PCs and devices. With Xbox Music, you can store all of your music in an Xbox-hosted cloud collection which will then be accessible from all of your compatible PCs and devices automatically. This is a classic example of cloud computing, where the central store for your data is moved from a single PC to the cloud. Xbox Music Store. Like rival services such as Apple iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Google Play Music, Xbox Music does of course allow you to purchase the music you want to own, in this case via the Xbox Music Store. The purchase experience works as you would expect, though those with Xbox Music Pass subscriptions may ﬁnd that the need to actually buy music has essentially disappeared. Playlists. Playlists are lists of songs that can be played together as a group, like the modern version of a mix tape. They’re a way for to organize songs you like, or that go together well, in a cohesive, way, much like a traditional radio. Xbox Music automatically syncs playlists to the cloud so they’re available from all your devices. So playlists you create on a Windows 8-based PC are available in Windows Phone 8, and vice-versa. Smart DJ. Smart DJ helps you create a special kind of dynamic playlist, called a Smart DJ mix, which is based on “seed” music and includes content from your collection and, depending on the situation, from the voluminous Xbox Music cloud-based library. In Windows Phone 8, you can make Smart DJ mixes

based on an artist, album, or song. (Smart DJ is being renamed to Radio, and Smart DJ mixes are now called radio stations. But the Smart DJ name is still used on Windows Phone.) Xbox Music Pass. Xbox Music Pass is a paid monthly subscription service that lets you stream much of the music in Microsoft’s voluminous online music catalog with your Windows 8/RT PC or device, Windows Phone 8 handset, or Xbox 360. With Windows Phone 8, you can also download music from the service to your devices for oﬄine use. If the cloud collection is the heart of Xbox Music, Xbox Music Pass is the soul because it makes many other Xbox Music features better. For example, playlists and Smart DJ mixes can include music from the Xbox Music Store that you don’t own, helping you ﬁnd new music. Xbox Music costs $9.99 per month, or you can pay $99.90 for one year. If you’re serious about Xbox Music, it’s a must-have.

Tour of the Music experience The Music experience in Music + Videos provides a pivot interface in which a single screen is used to navigate between multiple views. In this case, those views are Artists, Albums, Songs, Playlists, and Genres, and as their names suggest, they provide fairly obvious ways to access your music.

To navigate between the views, just swipe to the left or right, anywhere on-screen. The pivot is circular so that as you move through the views, you will ﬂip over to where you started instead of coming to a hard stop at either end. Most of the views in Music are text lists, like Artists. But the Albums view is more graphical so you can help ﬁnd what you want visually, using the album art thumbnails.

Many of the views include a handy shortcut for navigating long lists of content. Just tap one of the green tiles—they’re usually letters, but you’ll also see a # character for non-letters—to display a special quick navigational menu. (This menu utilizes the accent color in the theme you selected for Windows Phone, and not the green color seen elsewhere in Music + Videos.)

From here, tap a letter to jump directly to the content that starts with that letter. For example, in the Artists view, you can tap the D tile to jump directly to artists whose names begin with D.

Otherwise, navigating through the content in each of these views is straightforward. But as you dive a bit deeper into each, some new and more involved interfaces are revealed. Some of these interfaces are discussed in the following sections.

Explore an artist While browsing through the Artists view in Music, you will often tap an artist’s name to view the albums and songs by that artist that you have in your collection. And sure enough, Albums and Songs are the ﬁrst two panels you see when you do so. What’s interesting about these views is that they don’t just show you the albums and songs, respectively, which you have in your own collection. They also provide access to other music by that artist that’s available in Xbox Music Store. And if you continue pivoting to the right, you will see other panels that help you learn more about the artist. Each of these features is described in this section. Note: You can also learn more about artists via these same interfaces when you use the Windows Phone Store, as described below. When you do, the In Collection views are hidden and the Xbox Music Store views are displayed instead.

Find more music from an artist In the Albums and Songs views, you will see a list of the music you have by the currently selected artist. Consider the Albums view shown here as an example.

Scroll down to the bottom of the list to ﬁnd a link called Xbox Music Store. Expand this link by tapping the Expand button below the text and a list of the music by that artist that is available in the Xbox Music Store appears. Now, you can browse through albums in the store just as you can with the albums in your own collection, and then download or buy any that you’re interested in. Doing either will add that music to your collection.

Note: You must have an Internet connection for this functionality to be available.

Get the buzz To the right of the Songs view, you’ll see a panel called Buzz that displays Twitter feeds, images, videos, and news feeds related to the current artist. What you see here will vary widely from artist to artist, of course, but one of the interesting aspects of the Buzz panel is that it lists friends who have liked the current artist, providing you with a deep connection between your favorite music and that of your friends.

Note: You must have an Internet connection for this functionality to be available. Note: You must also enable the personal recommendation service in Windows Phone 8 for this feature to work. You will be prompted to enable this service from the Buzz panel, but you can manually enable it in Music + Videos Settings as well.

Read an artist biography Navigate to the Bio panel to read surprisingly detailed biographical information about the current artist, written by music experts.

Note: You must have an Internet connection for this functionality to be available.

Find related artists Finally, you can navigate to the Related view to discover artists that are similar to the artist you’re currently viewing. This provides a handy way to ﬁnd new music that is similar to music you know you like.

Note: You must have an Internet connection for this functionality to be available.

Download music from your cloud collection You can download music from your cloud collection to the phone. This allows you to play music when you’re oﬄine—such as on an airplane—or don’t wish to eat up cellular data usage streaming it. You can download individual songs or a selection of songs, so it’s relatively easy to download albums as well. Note: Music downloaded from the Xbox Music Store to your phone is added to your cloud collection and will be available on your other compatible devices.

Download one song To download an individual song, tap and hold on the song and then choose Download from the pop-up menu that appears.

Download multiple songs at once Downloading multiple songs—say, in an album—is a multi-step process: In almost any view that lists multiple songs—such as an album, genre or playlist—tap the Select app bar button.

When you do, selection boxes will appear next to each song.

Tap in the appropriate selection boxes to select the songs you wish to download. Then, tap the Download app bar button.

Progress bars will appear under each song and the downloading will be indicated as it happens.

When the downloading is complete, the streaming icon that appeared next to each song will be missing, indicating that the song is on the device.

Purchase or download music from Xbox Music Store In addition to downloading music that is already in your cloud collection, you can download music from Xbox Music Store to the device (assuming you have an Xbox Music Pass). This makes the music available for playing when you’re oﬄine, and it adds that music to your cloud collection.

Those with an Xbox Music Pass subscription won’t typically need to purchase music from Xbox Music Store. But you can still do so, and of course those without this subscription may be more inclined to purchase music they like. Purchased music is also downloaded to your device so it can be played while oﬄine, and this music is added to your cloud collection as well. To download an album you’re viewing in Xbox Music Store, tap the Download link next to the album art.

To purchase the album instead, tap and hold on the download link. Then, tap Buy from the pop-up menu that appears. (If you don’t have an Xbox Music Pass, the Download link will be replaced with a price. Just tap the price to purchase the album.) To purchase a song, tap and hold on it and choose Buy from the menu that appears. This works whether you have an Xbox Music Pass or not. There’s no way to purchase a selection of songs. You need to buy them one at a time. (Oddly, you can’t download a single song, even with an Xbox Music Pass, and there’s no way to select multiple songs for download as you can with music in your cloud collection.)

Find music with Search When you’re looking for something speciﬁc, you can use search to ﬁnd music in Xbox Music Store. There are two ways to trigger search: From the Music + Videos hub. Navigate to the Collection view in Music + Videos, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and choose Search Store from the menu that appears. From Windows Phone Store. A Search button is available at the bottom of most screens in Windows Phone Store. Either way, the Store Search screen appears.

Type the name of the music you’re trying to ﬁnd and then pick from the results screen. Remember to change the view to Music if it’s not automatically selected. (Windows Phone Store also supplies podcasts, apps, and games.)

Play music Playing music is generally straightforward: Find the item you wish to play—an artist, album, song, playlist or genre—and tap the Play button next to the item’s name. (You can also tap the name of a song to play that item.) When you do, the Now Playing screen appears and music playback begins. If available, this screen will provide animated artist imagery underneath the many controls it contains.

When you play a new selection like this, that music replaces whatever music may have previously been contained in Now Playing, which is a special kind of playlist.

Control music playback The Now Playing screen provides a wide range of controls, most of which are pretty obvious. That said, a few of the tappable areas on-screen may surprise you. Previous. Tap the Previous button to return to the beginning of the currently playing song. Tap it again to jump to the previous song in the Now Playing list. Tap and hold to rewind. Note: You can also jump to the previous song by swiping the screen to the right. Play/Pause. This button toggles playback. Next. Tap the Next button to jump to the next song in the Now Playing list. Tap and hold to fast forward. Note: You can also jump to the next song by swiping the screen to the left. Artist. Tap the artist name to view the artist page for the currently playing artist. (Then tap the Back hardware button to return to Now Playing if desired.)

Album art. Now Playing will display the album art for the currently-playing song in the middle of the screen. Curiously, this graphic is non-interactive: You can’t tap or tap and hold Like/Dislike. This tiny heart-shaped button lets you toggle a rating for the currently playing between three choices: Like, Dislike, and no rating. Since this capability isn’t available elsewhere in the Xbox Music ecosystem, it is perhaps of limited usefulness. Further limiting is that Xbox Music doesn’t—currently, at least—support dynamic playlists. So you can’t use Like to build, say, a playlist that consists only of highlyrated songs. Perhaps this will be added in a future update to Xbox Music. Shuﬄe. By default, the Now Playing list will play its songs in whatever order they appear in. If you play an album, for example, it will play in the order that the artist intended. But if you tap this small button and enable Shuﬄe, the songs in the Now Playing list will play in a random order instead. Repeat. By default, the Now Playing list will play its songs through to completion once and then stop. But you can use the Repeat button to toggle between two other choices: Repeat, which oﬀer continuous playback, looping back to the beginning of the Now Playing list when the complete selection has played, and Repeat One, which will only repeat the current song. Playback progress. Below the album art you will see a non-interactive playback progress bar that shows the total length of the current song and your position, time-wise, within that song. Now Playing list. Under the playback progress area you will see the name of the currently-playing song plus the next two songs in the Now Playing list (assuming there at least that many songs in the list). You can tap this mini-list of songs to view the complete playlist.

Windows Phone doesn’t oﬀer a lot in the way of playback management. You can’t remove individual songs or move their position within the list. All you can do is save the Now Playing list as a playlist: Just tap the Save app bar button. Note: If you don’t touch the screen for more than a few seconds, the view will revert to the Now Playing screen automatically. To switch immediately to a diﬀerent song in the Now Playing list, tap that song in this list.

Control music playback from outside the app You can start playing music and then leave the app and do other things, including run other apps, and the music will continue playing. Note: Some apps, including games, will stop music playback, however, because they oﬀer their own sounds. And a phone call will temporarily halt music playback; it will resume when the call is over. To control music playback from elsewhere in Windows Phone, just press one of the hardware volume buttons on your handset. When you do, a set of mini-playback controls appear in an overlay over the top

of the screen. Here, you can view the current volume in a range of 0 (muted) to 30 and access Previous, Play/Pause, and Next buttons. Don’t like the current song? Press a volume button and then tap Next.

This mini-playback controls overlay also appears over the lock screen, and will appear if the screen went dark and you power the device back on. Optionally, you can display artist imagery for the currently playing song on the lock screen as well, replacing your normal lock screen during music playback.

To conﬁgure the lock screen to display artist imagery from Music + Videos, navigates Settings, Lock screen and toggle the option “Show artist when playing music” to On.

Return to Now Playing If you are using your phone for other purposes but wish to return to the Now Playing screen in the Music + Videos hub, you can do so. First, return to the Start screen. You’ll notice that the Music + Videos hub has changed to an animated display of artist imagery related to the currently playing song (unless you’re using the smallest tile size available, in which case the display will remain static).

Then, tap the tile for Music + Videos. The hub will run as expected, but now you will see the album art for the currently playing song at the top of the default Collection page.

Tap this album art to return to the Now Playing screen.

Automatically shuﬄe your entire collection When you view the Collection page in Music + Videos you will see a single button, Play music, in the app bar at the bottom. Tap this button to play your entire music collection, shuﬄed.

As you might expect, doing so will replace the Now Playing list with your entire collection, and the Now Playing experience will appear.

Playlists and Smart DJ mixes Like other Xbox Music clients, Music + Videos supports both playlists and Smart DJ mixes. But the way it supports these features diﬀers a bit from the other platforms. For example, playlist creation is generally pretty tedious and non-obvious on Windows Phone. And while you can create Smart DJ mixes on the ﬂy, you can only save them on the device as static playlists. And there’s no way to access the Smart DJ mixes you’ve created in Windows 8/RT or Xbox 360.

View a playlist Playlists are found in the Playlists view in the Music experience. To view the contents of the playlist, tap the playlist name. The list of songs in the playlist will appear, and you can tap a song name to begin playback anywhere in the playlist.

If you’re online, you’ll also see a green text link named All, Phone, or Cloud collection. This is a toggle that lets you choose whether to view and play all of the songs in the playlist regardless of where they’re located (the default), only those songs that are located on your phone, or only those songs that are in your cloud collection (and not on the device). Tap the link to make a diﬀerent choice.

Play a playlist If you tap the Play button next to a playlist, the music in the playlist will replace whatever is in the Now Playing list and it will begin to play, as expected. Note: You can also tap and hold on a playlist name and then choose Add to Now Playing from the pop-up menu that appears. This will add the contents of the playlist to the Now Playlist list rather than replace it.

Create a playlist Playlist creation is possible in Windows Phone but tedious and very limited, and it is more eﬃcient to create playlists in the Music app in Windows 8/RT instead and then sync them to your Windows Phone handset. You can also optionally create playlists in Apple iTunes or Windows Media Player, both of which are only available in Windows 8 (and not RT). Note: PC-to-phone sync is covered in 17. PC Integration. If you still wish to create a playlist with Windows Phone, you can do so: Simply add music to the Now Playing list and then save that as a playlist. The problem is that you cannot easily empty Now Playing and replace with a single song to start the new playlist. (You can, however, play an album, artist, or genre which will replace the current Now Playing list with the contents of that item.) Assuming you’re able to start fresh with an album, artist, or genre that you would like to use as the start of a playlist, you can then ﬁnd additional songs, albums, artists, or genres and add them to Now Playing: Just tap and hold on the item and select Add to Now Playing from the menu that appears. When the selection of songs is complete, tap More (“…” in the miniature app bar) from the Now Playing view and then choose Save as Playlist from the app bar menu. Provide a name, and the playlist will be saved.

Create and play a Smart DJ mix In the Music experience in Windows Phone’s Music + Videos hub, you can create Smart DJ mixes based on artists, albums, or songs. However, Smart DJ mixes created in Windows Phone are not saved to your cloud collection. To create a Smart DJ mix, ﬁnd the item you wish to use as the “seed” for the mix, tap and hold on it, and then choose Play Smart DJ Mix from the pop-up menu that appears.

When you do, the Now Playing experience appears and the Smart DJ mix starts playing. As you would expect, the Now Playing experience works normally. You can toggle shuﬄe and repeat, rewind and fast forward, play and pause, and view the list of songs.

Save a Smart DJ mix as a playlist While you can’t save a Smart DJ mix, you can save it as a (static) playlist. To do so, tap the More app bar button (“…”) and then choose Save as Playlist from the menu that appears. Then, in the Save Playlist screen, type a name for the new playlist and tap Enter. You will see the playlist appear in the Playlists view in the Music experience.

Pin favorite music to the Start screen You can pin an artist, album or genre to the Start screen so that you can more quickly access your favorite music. To do so, simply tap and hold on the music and choose Pin to Start from the pop-up menu that appears. The artist, album or genre will appear as its own tile at the bottom of the Start screen. Each tile can be resized to any one of the three available tile sizes.

If you tap one of these pinned tiles, the Music + Videos Now Playing experience will load and the music will immediately begin playing. Note: You can also pin music while viewing an artist, album, or genre in Music + Videos. Just tap the Pin to Start app bar button.

Add music to Kid’s Corner Windows Phone 8 includes a feature called Kid’s Corner that lets you establish a safe environment on the phone that your children can use. With Kid’s Corner—which is enabled in Settings, System, Kid’s Corner—you specify which apps, games, movies, and music your children can access when they borrow your phone in a restaurant or other situation. You can an album or playlist to Kid’s Corner. To do so, tap and hold on the item and choose Add to Kid’s Corner from the pop-up menu that appears. Note: You can learn more about this feature in the section Kid’s Corner in Chapter 16: Security + Networking.

Digital videos The digital video revolution didn’t follow the same path as that of music. That is, while people transitioned from CD-based music to digital music by ripping those CDs, few ever ripped video DVDs to build a digital video library. Part of the reason was the cost, complexity, and time required to do so. But part of it is that TV shows and movies are diﬀerent than music and with rare exception people rarely watch this content more than once. What evolved over time were two basic types of services, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video that require broadband Internet connections while viewing video, and pay-as-you-go services like Apple iTunes, Amazon Instant Video Store, and Vudu, which oﬀer optionally downloadable movies for rental or purchase and TV shows for purchase. Here, Microsoft’s eﬀorts are far less ambitious. The ﬁrm oﬀers a pay-as-you-go service called Xbox Video that oﬀers movies for rental or purchase and TV shows for purchase as you’d expect. But while it works with Windows 8 PCs, Windows RT devices, and the Xbox 360, it is not compatible with Windows Phone 8, so there’s no reason to spend too much time on it here. That is, you cannot browse the Xbox Video Store from your Windows Phone 8 handset and then ﬁnd, download, and watch TV shows and movies. Worse, even though the Xbox Video service is available from a Windows-based PC—using the Xbox Video app on Windows 8 or Zune PC software in Windows 7—you cannot sync this content to a Windows Phone 8 device either. Given this limitation, you may be wondering what video content you can sync to a Windows Phone 8 handset. Unfortunately, your only option is to use your own videos—home videos, or perhaps videos you’ve made from ripped DVDs or whatever—and then sync them to the phone using the Windows Phone desktop application, the Windows Phone Metro-style app, or via File Explorer. All three methods for copying content in both directions between the phone and PC are covered in 17. PC Integration.

Explore the Videos experience Videos stored on your phone can be found in two places within Music + Videos. The Videos view in Collection houses the videos you’ve copied to the phone from the PC. And the Podcasts view can contain video podcasts you’ve synced to the device, either from your PC or over-the-air. Since podcasts are discussed separately later in the chapter, we’ll focus solely on the Videos view here.

To ﬁnd the videos you’ve synced to the phone, open Music + Videos and navigate to Videos, which can be found in the default Collections view. The Videos view is basic enough, with an alphabetical listing of the available videos.

Note: Personal videos shot with your phone’s camera can be found in the Pictures hub.

Play a video To play a video, simply tap it. If this is the ﬁrst time you’ve played this video, it will begin playing immediately from the beginning. Otherwise, it will play from where you last left oﬀ.

The video playback experience oﬀers only a few simple controls, which disappear automatically after just a few seconds. (To make them appear again, simply tap the screen.) These controls include: Play/pause. This large center button lets you pause a playing video and play a paused video. Rewind. This button rewinds the currently playing video by 7 seconds. Forward. This button forwards the currently playing video by 30 seconds. Progress slider. You can change the playback position by tapping this slider or by grabbing the progress indicator and sliding it back or forward through the playback slider. Fit to screen. You can tap this button to toggle the video between “ﬁt to screen” (in which the video is zoomed in a bit to eliminate any black bars that may appear on the sides of the screen) or to view the video in its native aspect ratio.

Manage videos The Videos view allows you to perform two actions to any video you’ve synced to the phone. You can access these options by tapping and holding on the video you wish to manage and then selecting the relevant option from the pop-up menu that appears.

Pin to Start. Selecting this option will pin the selected video to your Start screen as its own tile, giving you quicker access to those videos you’re currently watching. Tiles for pinned videos can be square only, in the small or medium sizes.

Delete. This will permanently remove the selected video from your handset.

Podcasts Podcasts are the digital radio of the Internet age, episodic series of audio or video shows created by professionals and rank amateurs alike that cover virtually any topic imaginable. Of course, as a modern replacement of sorts for the radio, podcasts have some advantages. Listeners can subscribe to podcasts so that the most recent episodes are automatically downloaded when available, typically to a portable device (like a Windows Phone handsets). While some podcasts are played “live” so that listeners or viewers can enjoy them as they would radio or TV, all podcasts can be downloaded for oﬄine/timeshifted play. In fact, podcasts are designed for this very purpose. Podcasts are typically free, and often ad-supported. Some are paid, but since Windows Phone does not provide any facility for accessing paid podcasts, we won’t be covering that aspect of this technology. Note: I co-host two podcasts, Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Mary Jo Foley, and What the Tech, with Andrew Zarian. Both are recorded once a week and deal with tech-related topics as you might expect. And both are available through the Windows Phone Store, as described later in the chapter. The Internet’s more sophisticated answer to the radio is available in Windows Phone 8 through the Music + Videos hub, alongside music and videos.

Note: For reasons unknown, podcast support in the Music + Videos hub on Windows Phone 8 is limited to a few select markets only. If you don’t see podcast functionality in Windows Phone, refer to the section Other ways to enjoy podcasts for a few alternatives.

Find a podcast in Windows Phone Store You can browse and search for podcasts in the Windows Phone Store. To ﬁnd the podcasts area of Windows Phone Store, launch Music + Videos and navigate to Store, Podcasts. Alternatively, you can launch Windows Phone Store directly and then tap on the Podcasts link. The Podcasts experience in Windows Phone Store is a multi-page interface with pivots for Featured, Top, New, and Genres pages plus a handy Search button at the bottom. So it should be easy to ﬁnd a speciﬁc podcast that interests you.

To browse for a podcast, simply use the pivots at the top of the Podcasts interface and scan through the lists of available podcasts. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you can use Search instead. Search works well for speciﬁc podcast names—like Windows Weekly—as well as for more general topic searches, like Windows.

When you select a podcast from a list—when browsing the store or through search—you’re provided with the multi-page podcast experience. This one has two views, or pages, however: Episodes, which lists the available episodes, with the newest ﬁrst, and Overview, which provides a description of the podcast. Viewed side-by-side, these two pages will resemble the following:

Note: You can also tap the name of an episode in the Episodes view to read more about that show.

Stream or download a single podcast episode In the Episodes view, you can tap the Play icon next to an episode name to stream it over the Internet. (Note that this will require a data connection, so if you’re not connected to Wi-Fi, it can eat into your monthly cellular broadband data allotment.)

Streaming isn’t generally advisable as Music + Videos may lose your position in the recording and the podcast isn’t cached on the phone for oﬄine use. To download a single episode, tap and hold on the episode name and then choose Download from the pop-up menu that appears.

Episodes downloaded in this fashion can be played in the same way as episodes that are part of subscribed podcasts. (See below.)

Subscribe to a podcast Windows Phone makes it very easy to subscribe to a podcast: Just tap the obvious Subscribe button found at the bottom of every page in the podcast view.

Doing so triggers the Series Settings page, from which you can conﬁgure exactly how your podcast subscription will be maintained.

Podcasts oﬀer the following settings: Episodes. You can choose to keep 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or all podcast episodes. So once that number of shows has been downloaded to the device, the oldest will be removed (unless you chose “All”) when a new episode appears. Playback order. You can choose whether the newest or oldest episodes are shown ﬁrst. Some podcasts lend themselves to one format or the other. For example, you may want to organize news-oriented and other timely podcasts such that the newest episodes are at the top. But with other, less-timely or serialbased podcasts you may wish to use the reverse sorting order so you view or listen to them in the order they were created. Download over Wi-Fi only. If you tap the Settings button, you will navigate to the Settings screen for the Music + Videos hub, which includes one important (and global) podcast-related setting: Whether new podcast episodes are downloaded over Wi-Fi only. If this option isn’t checked, new episodes will download automatically using your cellular data plan, which could incur charges. (Unfortunately, you can set this option on a podcast-by-podcast basis.) Tap the Conﬁrm button to complete the subscription.

Find and manage subscribed podcasts Podcasts to which you’ve subscribed can be found in Music + Videos, podcasts. You can use the pivot at the top to switch between pages for audio and video podcasts.

From here, you can perform a number of tasks:

Pin a podcast to the Start screen To pin a favorite podcast to the Start screen for faster access, tap and hold on that podcast in the Podcasts view and then choose Pin to Start from the pop-up menu that appears.

Delete a podcast To delete all episodes of a podcast—and unsubscribe from that podcast—tap and hold on it in the Podcasts view and choose Delete from the pop-up menu that appears. (You will be prompted with an “Are you sure?” notiﬁcation before this task is completed.)

View a podcast and manage it further To view a podcast, select it from the Podcasts list. This displays the same Podcast view you see in Windows Phone Store, and in addition to the episodes you have available on-device (and listed in the In Collection section of the Episodes page), you can expand the Xbox Music Store section at the bottom to view and potentially download other episodes.

From this view, you can also unsubscribe from the podcast or change the series settings.

Play a podcast To play the most recent episode of a podcast, tap the podcast album art—which has a Play button superimposed over it—in the Podcasts view.

To play a speciﬁc podcast episode, display the podcast in question and then tap the Play button found to the left of the episode name. (If you tap the episode name, you will see information about that episode and can then tap a Play button in the app bar at the bottom.) Audio podcast playback works like that of music, and utilizes the same Now Playing experience. But there is a single major diﬀerence between podcast and music playback: With (subscribed or downloaded) podcasts, the playback position is always saved so that when you return to an in-progress podcast, you pick up right where you left oﬀ.

Video podcasts, in turn, work just like any other videos, with the same playback experience and the same position saving.

Note: While audio podcasts will continue playing in the background if you leave the Now Playing experience—and indeed if you leave Music + Videos entirely and run other apps—video podcasts will not. Video podcasts will immediately pause instead and wait for you to return.

Other ways to enjoy podcasts If you live outside the United States or select other markets, the podcast capabilities described above are more theory than reality. But you do have other options.

Sync a podcast from iTunes If you have a Windows 7- or Windows 8-based PC, you can install Apple’s iTunes software, subscribe to podcasts through that application, and then sync them to your phone using the Windows Phone desktop application. Note: The Windows Phone application can be conﬁgured to sync with either iTunes or “Windows Libraries.” If you intend to sync podcasts from iTunes to your Windows Phone, you will need to conﬁgure this application to sync with iTunes. Please see 17. PC Integration for more information. To sync an iTunes-based podcast with your Windows Phone handset, use the following steps: 1. Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. If you right-click the podcast in your library and choose Settings, you can conﬁgure how frequently iTunes checks for new episodes and how many episodes it will download and keep. 2. Connect your handset via USB and run the Windows Phone desktop application. Conﬁgure it to sync to your handset with iTunes. 3. In the Windows Phone desktop application, select the Podcasts view.

4. Conﬁgure one or more podcasts to sync. You need to select which podcast(s) and how many episodes you wish to sync to the handset. When you’re done, click Sync. Note: This method will of course require you to regularly connect your phone to your PC.

Other podcast apps Third party developers have also stepped in to the ﬁll the functional hole that Microsoft created when it neglected to natively support podcasts in many markets. While this list is not comprehensive, here are some podcast apps I can recommend. BringCast. BringCast is an excellent paid (but inexpensive) app that helps you subscribe to podcasts, stream or download episodes to the phone, build playlists to listen to or watch, and sync everything through the cloud. PODCASTS!. Available in free and paid versions, the curiously named PODCASTS! lets you browse, search, stream, download, and listen to podcasts. SlapDash Podcasts. Available in both free and paid versions, SlapDash Podcasts stores your podcast subscriptions in the cloud so you can access the same content from Windows Phone, Windows 8, or the web. It also lets you manually add podcasts that are not available in the SlapDash catalog. Podcatcher. This inexpensive app lets you subscribe to podcasts in four ways: Via search, from the list of popular podcasts provided by gPodder.net, by RSS address, or by importing your subscriptions from a gPodder.net account or OPML ﬁle. WPodder. This inexpensive app (also available in a free version) uses gpodder.net for ﬁnding and importing audio and video podcasts. Podcast Lounge. Available in paid and free versions, this app lets you browse, search, stream, download and enjoy your favorite podcasts, and uses background sync for oﬄine playback.

FM radio The Radio item in the Music + Video hub's main screen links to a nice FM radio interface which lets you listen to live radio, and create and access favorite radio stations. Note: FM radio is not available on all Windows Phone handsets. It requires a phone with an FM radio antenna, for example, and the support of your wireless carrier. And FM radio will only work when you have plugged in wired headphones as it uses the wire as an antenna. But this means you can't listen to live radio through Bluetooth headphones or speakers. As you'll see, however, you can switch to the internal speaker for playback, assuming you leave the wired headphones plugged in.

Find a radio station To ﬁnd a radio station, swipe or ﬂick left or right on the virtual radio dial at the middle of the screen. If you swipe, the dial will turn slowly and let you ﬁnd more stations. But if you ﬂick, you will move between those stations with the strongest signals only. Many stations display information about the station and the currently-playing content.

You can also navigate between stations using the Rewind and Forward buttons in the mini-playback control overlay. To access this interface, press the Volume Up or Volume Down button on your handheld.

To navigate to the next available station, tap the Forward button in the mini-playback control overlay. To navigate to the previous available station, tap the Rewind button.

Add a station to favorites Like Internet Explorer, the Photos hub, and other experiences in Windows Phone, the FM radio lets you save favorite stations so you can ﬁnd them more easily in the future. To add the current station to favorites, tap the Add Favorite button in the top left of the FM radio screen.

Remove a station from favorites To remove a station from favorites, navigate to that station and then tap the Remove Favorite button in the top left of the FM radio screen.

Access your favorite stations To access your list of favorite stations, tap the Favorites button in the bottom left of the screen.

This will display the Presets screen.

From here, you can tap a station to listen to that station, or tap Back to return to the previous screen.

Pin a radio station to the Start screen In addition to adding stations to the favorites list, you can also pin favorite stations to the Start screen. To do so, navigate to the station and then tap and hold on the station number in the middle of the screen. Choose Pin to Start from the menu that appears.

Pinned radio stations appear at the bottom of the Start screen. From here, you can resize, move or delete the pinned tile.

Pause live radio To stop playback temporarily, tap the Pause button at the bottom of the screen.

The Pause button changes to a Play button. You can tap this button to resume playback.

Switch to the internal speaker While FM radio does require you to plug in a wired headset to function, you can optionally switch the playback from the headset to the phone's internal speaker. To do so, tap and hold on the station number in the middle of the screen and then choose Switch to Speaker from the pop-up menu that appears. Later, you can perform this action again and choose Switch to Headset to reverse the change.

Conﬁgure FM radio for your region The FM radio feature should be conﬁgured correctly for your own region, but if you travel, you may wish to conﬁgure it to work with the region you're visiting. To do so, tap and hold on the station number in the middle of the screen and choose Settings from the pop-up menu that appears. In the Settings screen, choose from between the available regions: North America, World or Japan.

Customize Music + Videos Given its diverse functionality, Music + Videos oﬀers a relatively small number of conﬁgurable options. These are available via Settings, which you can access in the app via More (“…”), Settings or by navigating to Settings, Applications, Music + Videos.

The following options are available: Connect with Xbox Music. On by default, this option determines whether the Music experience in Music + Videos integrates with Xbox Music services to make your music experience more dynamic. I recommend leaving this option set to On. Xbox Music cloud collection. On by default, this option determines whether music stored in your Xbox Music cloud collection is comingled with music that is actually stored on the device. If you are an Xbox Music user of any kind—perhaps you use Xbox Music on Windows 8/RT and have matched your music to the cloud collection, or you use Xbox Music Pass—you should leave this set to On. But if you are traveling and oﬄine, you may want to temporarily switch it to Oﬀ so that you will see only that music which is downloaded to the phone. Include music from the Xbox Music Store in my Smart DJ mixes. If you are an Xbox Music Pass subscriber—which I recommend—you should ensure this option is set to On. Note, however, that doing

so may incur data charges since Smart DJ mixes will contain music from both your device and the cloud, and during playback, the cloud-based music may stream over your cellular broadband connection. Only download new podcast episodes over Wi-Fi. Set to On by default, this option determines whether new podcast episodes will download over Wi-Fi only over via your cellular broadband connection. I set this to Oﬀ, as I would prefer to download new podcast episodes under any condition, but your decision should be based on your needs and the reality of your wireless contract. Xbox Music account settings. Tapping this link opens Internet Explorer Mobile and navigates to the Xbox My Account site, where you can conﬁgure your Microsoft account and the connected Xbox services, such as Xbox LIVE Gold and Xbox Music Pass, as well as manage your music devices. Suggestions. Windows Phone 8 includes a personal suggestion service that needs to be enabled ﬁrst. When enabled, the Music + Videos hub will enable the Buzz page in the Music experience, helping you discover new information about the current artists, including concerts, Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, news articles, music videos, and more.

14. Photos Like other smart phones, Windows Phone 8 oﬀers ways to manage and enjoy your own photos, discover photos shared by family and friends, and of course take new photos with its built-in camera. Unlike the competition, however, Windows Phone oﬀers integrated experiences that don’t force you to hunt and peck for specialized photo apps to get it all done. Instead, it oﬀers just two obvious go-to points for digital photography, the Photos hub for managing and enjoying photos and the Camera app for taking photos and short personal videos.

Manage and enjoy photos In keeping with the general theme of integrated experiences in Windows Phone, Microsoft provides a centralized location for enjoying digital photos in its mobile OS called the Photos hub. This panoramic experience provides access to the photos you store on the device—including those taken with the handset’s camera—as well as to various albums found online in popular social networking services. It also provides handy tools for sharing your pictures with others and, as important, discovering and even interacting with photos shared by your friends, family, and other contacts. Put simply, the Photos hub is a one-stop shop for photos.

Set up and conﬁgure accounts for photos When you ﬁrst set up your Windows Phone, you sign-in with your primary Microsoft account, which in turn conﬁgures a number of things on the phone, including the email, calendar, and contacts that are related to that account, as well as your SkyDrive-based cloud storage. SkyDrive is accessible via a few diﬀerent places in Windows Phone, including the Oﬃce hub, from which you can access documents. But SkyDrive also accessible from the Photos hub, since SkyDrive can house photo albums too. Indeed, the ﬁrst time you conﬁgure Windows Phone for use with a Microsoft account, a few default photos albums are created for you, as you’ll see. Note: While you can technically use Windows Phone without signing in with a Microsoft account, I always assume you have not skipped this step. By default, the Photos hub will be conﬁgured to display photos albums found on your phone and in SkyDrive. And while that’s a good start, you may want to add other accounts to the phone so that you can view your photos found elsewhere as well as enjoy photos that others are sharing. The following account types can be added: Microsoft account. In addition to your primary Microsoft account, you can also add one or more other Microsoft accounts to the phone, gaining access to whatever photos are found in the SkyDrive storage associated with each. Facebook. You can conﬁgure one Facebook account in Windows Phone, gaining access to the photos you’re storing on that service and the photos that your Facebook friends are sharing with you. (Among other things.) Twitter. Twitter accounts are not conﬁgured directly in Windows Phone but are instead associated with your Microsoft account. If you choose Twitter from the list of account types, you will be forwarded to the Twitter web site, where you will connect the accounts. As with Facebook, you can have one Twitter

account, but in this case it’s per Microsoft account. (That is, you can associate one Twitter account with your Microsoft account.) LinkedIn. As with Twitter, you need to associate a LinkedIn account with your Microsoft account and you can only associate one LinkedIn account with your Microsoft account. You may have added one or more of these accounts to Windows Phone already. If not, you can navigate to Settings, System, Email + Accounts to add more. Tap Add an account, choose the account type from the list, and then supply your user name and password credentials. Windows Phone will work a bit to conﬁgure and sync the account and then report that it is up-to-date.

Launch the Photos hub The Photos hub can of course be launched via a Start screen tile or the All Apps list. But because photos are such an integral part of our daily routine, I strongly recommend pinning this tile to the Start screen and then sizing the tile to one of the larger sizes so you can take advantage of the graphical and visual nature of the resulting display. By default, the Photos hub displays a random photo from your collection as its tile background, but as you’ll soon see you can also customize this image with a slideshow of favorite photos.

Tour the Photos hub The Photos hub oﬀers a logical and simple user interface, expressed as a panoramic experience, that helps you ﬁnd the photos that matter most to you.

As a panoramic experience, the Photos hub interface actually extends oﬀ to the right. So while the default view provides a short list of entry points into your own photos—both on the device and oﬄine— you can swipe to the left (to navigate right) and see more. If you were able to see the entire hub interface in one screen, it might resemble the following.

Now, that might be a bit hard to see, so let’s consider the same view, minus the background image.

In the main pane, you see links to the Camera Roll album as well as your photos in albums, date, and people views. The Camera Roll is a special album, located on your phone, which contains the photos (and videos) you’ve taken with the device’s camera. The Albums, Date, and People views all provide a diﬀerent perspective on the same content: All of your photo albums, on both the phone and your connected online services. The Favorites pane displays photos you’ve marked as being personal favorites. This selection of photos is unique to this particular handset, because a photo must be saved on the device to be marked as a favorite. What’s New acts is an aggregated feed from your social networks—SkyDrive, Facebook, Twitter, and so on—which shows you the photos that your contacts have posted to those services. This is where you can go to discover photos that have been posted online by people you care about. Finally, the Apps pane displays any Windows Phone apps that have registered themselves with the Photos hub so that you can ﬁnd them more easily. An app like Cinemagraph may be hard to ﬁnd in your All Apps list—“What was the name of that photo app I liked again?”—but in keeping with the integrated approach of this platform, it’s much easier to ﬁnd in the Photos hub. Besides, that’s where you go to work with photos. Why bother remembering the name of a single app? Note: Windows Phone 8 also supports a special type of photo app, called a lens or lens app, that can extends the capabilities of your handset’s camera in new and often exciting ways. These special app types are found through the Camera app (of course!) and are discussed later in this chapter.

View your photo albums To view your photo albums—which consist of albums on the phone as well as in connected online services such as SkyDrive and Facebook—launch the Photos hub and then tap Albums.

This view can include the following albums: Camera Roll. This album contains the photos and short videos you’ve taken with the phone’s camera. Saved Pictures. This album contains photos you’ve saved to the phone from online sources, such as connected online services (described below) or from the web using Internet Explorer. Note that this album will not appear until you save a photo. 8. This sample album includes 8 sample images provided by Microsoft. Screenshots. This album contains screenshots you’ve saved of Windows Phone. It will not appear until you take a screenshot. To learn how to take a screenshot, see the section Take a screenshot later in the chapter. After these locally stored albums, you will also see various albums in your SkyDrive storage as well as those in Facebook if you’ve conﬁgured that account.

Note: Using the pivots at the top, you can also view your photos by date, favorites, and people. If you choose to view by date or favorites, you will only see photos that are stored on your phone. Choose the People option to see photos of you, photos stored in Rooms or Groups (features of the People hub), or favorite photos with people tagged in them; or, you can select a contact from the People hub and Photos will ﬁnd all the pictures of that person it can, using your connected online services.

View photos in a photo album To view the photos in a photo album, simply tap on that album’s tile. The photos in the album will be displayed as thumbnails in a grid.

To view an individual photo, tap its thumbnail. The photo, along with some descriptive information and links to tag a contact or add a comment, will appear in a full screen view.

To view just the photo, double-tap it. You can also use the stretch gesture to zoom in or pinch to zoom out as needed. To display the next photo, swipe from right to left. You can continue in this fashion through each photo in the album.

Share a photo You can share any photo that is stored on your phone. This includes photos in your Camera roll or Screenshots albums, or any other photo that isn’t stored in an online service like SkyDrive or Facebook. To share a photo, tap and hold on the photo—either the photo itself or its thumbnail in the album view—and choose Share from the pop-up menu that appears.

Then, in the Share screen that appears, pick the service or account through which you’d like to share the photo.

What you see here, and how the resulting sharing works, will vary a bit from phone to phone (and from service to service). But some of the commonly-found choices include: Tap + Send. This feature, which is really just a friendly name for NFC, or near-ﬁeld communication, lets you share photos (and other things, including apps, contacts, videos, and web pages) by tapping two compatible devices (two phones, perhaps, or a phone and a tablet) together. Tap + Send requires an NFC sensor, which is not included in all Windows Phone handsets. Bluetooth. This feature allows you to share photos and other content wirelessly between two Bluetoothcompatible devices. Virtually all Windows Phone handsets include the required Bluetooth antenna.

Messaging. This will share the photo using the Messaging app and, depending on the contact you choose, will do so over MMS (multimedia messaging, part of your wireless account) or Messenger (Microsoft’s instant messaging service). Email. Each email account you conﬁgure will be represented in the Share list separately. (And that’s true even if you’ve created linked inboxes.) After specifying one or more recipients, you can optionally add a subject and body text, just as you would in any other email message. Facebook. Photos shared to Facebook are uploaded to your Mobile Uploads folder on that service. You can optionally add a caption and tag one or more Facebook Friends in the photo. Twitter. Photos shared with Twitter are uploaded to the Twitter uploads folder on SkyDrive and tweeted through your Twitter account. Rooms. If you uses the Rooms feature in the People hub, you can share photos with the other people in a room. Photos shared in this way can optionally have a caption, and you can tag people, as you would with any SkyDrive-shared photo. (Photos shared this way are uploaded to a photo album in SkyDrive and can be seen in the Photos view in the room. OneNote. Photos shared to OneNote are added to Quick Notes in the default notebook that is associated with your Microsoft account (and thus found in SkyDrive).

Edit a photo You can edit photos that are stored on your phone. By default, that includes photos in the albums Camera Roll, Saved Pictures, 8, and Screenshots, but not folders from online sources such as Facebook or SkyDrive. To edit a photo, display it full-screen and then choose More (“…”) and then Edit. The editing tools will appear in the app bar.

Tip: Don’t forget to rotate your phone! You can edit photos in landscape mode, too, and you may ﬁnd this works better for landscape photos. Available editing tools include: Save. Unavailable until you make any edits, this button will let you save an edited photo. Note that when you save an edited photo you overwrite the original. Rotate. Each time you tap this button, the photo will be rotated 90 degrees to the right. Crop. This button triggers a surprisingly sophisticated cropping tool, which includes an on-photo crop area with draggable corners and an aspect ratio button that lets you lock the crop area to speciﬁc aspect ratios (like square, 4x3, 16x9, and so on) if desired.

Fix. Tap this button to auto-ﬁx the photo. If you don’t like the end result, tap again to un-ﬁx it.

Add or view tags for a photo While Windows Phone’s photo editing tools are available only for photos stored on your phone, the system does oﬀer one form of editing for photos stored on services like SkyDrive or Facebook: You can add or edit tags that identify people in those photos.

To add a tag to a photo stored online, display the photo full-screen and then tap More (“…”) and then Add or View Tags. Tools related to photo tags will appear in the app bar.

If an obvious face is found in the photo, Windows Phone will prompt you to tag the person by selecting the face with a “Who’s this?” box.

Otherwise, tap Add Tag and then tap on the person you wish to tag. The Who’s This? screen will appear, letting you choose a contact name or type a tag. (The latter option is useful when the person isn’t a contact or when you wish to add a non-name tag.)

If the person you’re tagging is you, tap Me. Otherwise, tap Choose Contact and then select a name from your list of contacts. When you return to the photo, the selection rectangle will have that person’s name associated with it. (And as you tag people in this fashion, their names will be added to a list on the Who’s This? screen so that you can tag them more quickly next time.) From here, you can add more tags if needed or tap Done to save the tags with the photo and exit.

Delete a photo To delete a photo, simply select More (“…”) from the app bar and then tap Delete. You’ll be prompted to make sure you want the photo deleted. If you select Delete, it will be deleted from your device or from the service in which it is contained.

Save an online photo to your phone You can copy photos from your connected online services to the phone so that they can be viewed while you’re oﬄine, added to Favorites, or edited. To save a photo to your phone in this way, display it full-screen, select More (“…”) from the app bar, and then tap Save to Phone. Photos saved this way can be found in the Saved Photos album.

Add a photo to Favorites Windows Phone allows you to mark favorite photos, much as you save favorite web sites to Favorites in Internet Explorer. When you mark a photo this way, it can more easily be found by using the Favorites view in the Photos hub. But there is one limitation: You can only “favorite” photos that are stored on your phone. Tip: If you would like to “favorite” an online photo, save it to the phone ﬁrst, as described previously. Then, navigate to Albums, Saved Pictures in the Photos hub to ﬁnd the saved version and “favorite” that. To add a photo to Favorites, view it full-screen, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Add to Favorites from the menu that appears.

Marking photos as favorites has a nice side-beneﬁt: You can optionally conﬁgure the Photos tile and hub background to use these favorite photos for their own dynamic backgrounds. See the section Use favorite photos as the Photos hub and tile background for more information.

Set a photo as the lock screen background You can use a favorite photo on your phone or stored in a connected online service as the background of your phone’s lock screen. This is a nice bit of personalization that really makes your phone yours.

To set a photo as the lock screen background, view it full-screen, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Set as Lock Screen from the menu that appears. You’ll be given the opportunity to crop the image to match the aspect ratio of the lock screen.

Tap Crop (the check-mark button) when done.

Set a photo as the Photos hub background By default, the background of the Photos hub will randomly display a photo from your collection. But if you’d rather set the Photos hub background to an image of your choosing you can do so. Note: This works with photos on your phone as well as photos stored online. To set a photo as the Photos hub background, navigate to the Photos hub default view and select More (“…”) from the miniature app bar and then tap Choose Background from the menu that appears. Then, navigate to the photo you wish to use, wherever it is in your collection. When you select the photo, you’re able to crop it to match the aspect ratio of the hub.

When you’re done, tap Crop (the button with the check-mark). You’ll be returned to the Photos hub, which now features the background image you chose.

To return to the normal behavior, launch Photos, select More (“…”) from the app bar and then tap Shuﬄe Background from the menu that appears.

Use favorite photos as the Photos hub and tile background The ability to use a single photo as the Photos hub wallpaper is nice, but Windows Phone also lets you use a more dynamic display consisting of multiple photos. Better still, this dynamic display is used on the Photos tile as well. Note: Curiously, there is no way to conﬁgure a single photo for use as the Photos tile background. To use your favorite photos as the background for both the Photos hub and the Photos tile, open Photos, tap More (“…”) in the app bar, and then choose Shuﬄe Background from the app bar menu. When you do, the background image for the hub will change to one of the pictures in your Favorites. Over time, it will change to other favorite photos.

Likewise, now the Photos tile will animate through a slideshow of your favorite photos as well. This happens fairly regularly, and you could in fact watch it happen in real time if you’re bored.

Note: To manually change the Photos hub background to a new favorite photo at any time, just access that Shuﬄe Background menu item again.

Take photos and videos All modern smart phones have cameras, of course, and with Windows Phone 8, the quality of these cameras has gone up dramatically compared to previous generation devices and with the competition. Indeed, some Windows Phone 8 handsets, particularly high-end Nokia models like the Lumia 1020, have exceptional cameras that can take crisp, clear photos in any conditions and high quality HD video.

What may surprise you is that the device’s camera is accessed through an app that, shocker, is called Camera. And this app provides access not only to the camera itself but to a new range of special apps called lenses that extend the capabilities of the app and make it even more fun and useful over time. Note: Nokia provides a number of specialized camera apps of its own, and one of them, Nokia Pro Cam, is conﬁgured as the default camera app on certain mid-level and high-end Lumia handsets. For this reason, I'll be expanding this book in a future update to cover Nokia Pro Cam and some other Nokia camera apps.

Launch the Camera app Thanks to the hardware camera button that’s found on every Windows Phone handset, you can quickly and easily take a photo at any time, even when the phone is oﬀ or locked. This feature is called “pocket to photo.” Of course, you need to be using the Camera app before you can take a photo. To access the Camera app’s photo-taking experience even when the phone is oﬀ or locked, simply hold down the camera button until you feel it vibrate. (This will only take 1-2 seconds.) The Camera experience will launch, allowing you to take a photo.

To quickly access the Camera app when you’re using otherwise Windows Phone, just press the camera button normally. As with the previous method, Camera will launch, allowing you to take a photo. Note: You can also launch the Camera app as you would any other app, by using its live tile on the Start screen or via the All Apps list. But because you can access Camera so easily with the hardware button, you may not want to pin the app to the Start screen, and its tile doesn’t oﬀer anything in the way of dynamic content.

Conﬁgure the Camera app Before you take any pictures, you should consider spending a few minutes reviewing the various settings associated with your phone’s camera. There are a lot of settings to consider, and worse still, the settings vary from phone to phone because Microsoft lets hardware makers diﬀerentiate their devices with unique camera hardware and capabilities.

Note: Microsoft also allows handset makers to set another app as the default camera app. This book covers only the stock Camera app, however, as it is available on every Windows Phone handset. Some camera settings can be toggled or accessed on the ﬂy. These are represented by buttons in the Camera app bar, and are discussed a bit later. Others are more permanent, or at least meant to be set and then changed infrequently if at all. Those settings are available in the app bar’s menu, which you can access by tapping the More (“…”) app bar item at any time. There are two options in this menu, Photo settings and Video settings.

Here are some common settings you’ll see in each, with some thoughts about how you might conﬁgure them. (Not all of these settings will be found on every phone.)

Set photo settings Scenes. Nokia’s Lumia handsets include a Scenes setting that lets you optimally conﬁgure the camera for unusual situations, including close-ups, night, night portrait, sports, or backlighting. Normally, you will want to leave this setting on its default, Auto. But remember that the camera can somewhat overcome poor photo environments with one of these preset scenes. ISO and Exposure value. These two settings will be familiar to photographers and like Greek to everyone else. Put simply, both allow you to micromanage aspects of the camera’s behavior, and while both have their use, neither is particularly useful for the average user. (For example, while you could increase the amount of light that enters the camera by raising the ISO value, most would be better served by enabling a night scene and leaving the focus assist light on.) White balance. Here, you can choose between Auto (the default), Cloudy, Daylight, Fluorescent, and Incandescent settings. As with Scenes, you will generally want to leave this on the default setting. But in certain conditions—indoors, cloud days—choosing otherwise can color correct your photos and make them seem more natural. Aspect ratio. By default, most Windows Phone handsets will take widescreen (16:9) images at the maximum resolution supported by the camera. But you could optional choose square (4:3) images or, on

some phones, a lower resolution. Since most people will enjoy their photos on widescreen phones, PCs, HDTVs or other devices, I recommend leaving this set to 16:9. Focus assist light. Anyone who’s used a smart phone-based camera knows that there are two basic settings when it comes to the built-in ﬂash: Oﬀ (too dark) and On (light of a thousand suns). But Nokia’s Lumia handsets oﬀer an interesting middle-ground: With this setting set to On (as it is by default), the ﬂash will trigger to assist the camera in focusing, but the resulting photos are often shockingly good, and devoid of the washed-out look you often get with the ﬂash. I recommend leaving this one on. You’ll be surprised the quality of the photos it takes indoors with the ﬂash oﬀ.

Set video settings White balance. As with the corresponding photo setting, this setting lets you auto-correct the color of videos for speciﬁc conditions, such as cloudy days or indoor lighting. Continuous focus. Leave this one on to keep your home movies in focus as you move the phone around. Video mode. Depending on the capabilities of your camera, you will be able to choose between various video modes, such as 1080p (Full HD), 720p (HD), and WVGA (800 x 480). Not all options will be available on each device. My recommendation is to record video at the highest possible resolution, though remember that Full HD video, in particular, can eat up a lot of storage space.

Take a photo Once you’re looking through the camera app’s viewﬁnder, you can take a photo in a variety of ways. Use the camera button with auto-focus. To take a photo using auto-focus, just aim at the photo target and tap the camera button. The camera app will beep on focus and issue a “picture taken” sound to indicate the photo was taken. Use the camera button with manual focus. For clearer pictures, tap the camera button lightly to manually focus on the center of the viewﬁnder. When you do, the focus reticle appears and the camera app will beep, indicating it’s ready to take the picture. Tap the camera button again to take the picture. (You can optionally use this method to focus on a particular object, then move the viewﬁnder to center the shot as you prefer, and then take the picture.) Use the touch-screen. It may seem less intuitive to take a picture with the touch-screen, but this method is a bit more intuitive because you can focus and frame the picture with fewer steps. To take a photo with the touch-screen, aim at the photo target as before, framing the picture as you prefer. But instead of tapping the camera button, tap the area of the screen on which you would like to focus. The camera will focus on that area and take the photo in one step.

Toggle the ﬂash Anyone who’s used a camera of any kind has used a ﬂash. And anyone who has used a camera on a smart phone has experienced the blinding light of its ﬂash and the resulting, whited-out photos it often creates. For this reason, many may wish to disable the use of the ﬂash. Note: The camera in Nokia Lumia handsets can use a feature called focus assist light to overcome the typical issues with a smart phone ﬂash. This feature is enabled by default and described above.

To toggle the ﬂash, tap the Flash button. It can be toggled between three states: Flash Auto (the default), Flash Oﬀ (in which the ﬂash is always oﬀ, and Flash On (in which the ﬂash is always on). Generally speaking, I recommend leaving this set to Oﬀ. You can change this setting if a photo emergency arises and there’s no other way to capture a particularly dark scene. Note: In video mode, the ﬂash is called a lamp, and it can be toggled on or oﬀ only.

Zoom the viewﬁnder You can zoom in and out with the viewﬁnder by using standard touch-screen gestures: Zoom in. You can zoom in with the stretch gesture, a sort of “reverse pinch.” Zoom out. To zoom out, pinch the screen. Note: As of this writing, no Windows Phone handsets feature true optic zoom capabilities. So this zoom capability is technically an inferior type of digital zoom that can introduce picture “noise” and blurriness to photos. When taking a photo while zoomed in, be sure to hold the handset as still as possible. Obviously, your best results will be had in well-lit environments as well.

Toggle between the cameras Many Windows Phone handsets feature both rear-facing and front-facing cameras. If your phone oﬀers both cameras, you can switch the viewﬁnder view between them. You might do so to take a photo of yourself. This is called a “selﬁe.” To toggle the view to the front-facing camera, tap the Front button.

The view will change and the button will appear visually toggled to On.

To toggle back to the normal (rear camera) view, tap the Front button again.

Record a video In addition to its picture-taking prowess, the camera in Windows Phone can also be used to record short personal videos. To switch to view mode, tap the Video button.

In this mode, you will see a larger timer on screen. This timer is part of the viewﬁnder display only and will not appear on the recorded video.

Note: You can toggle zoom through the viewﬁnder before you begin recording, but not during the recording. To start the video recording, tap the camera button—or tap the screen—and a beep will sound and the video will begin recording. As you record, the timer will count up, indicating the length of the recording.

To stop the recording, tap the camera button (or screen again). A beep will sound, audibly indicating its completion. To exit video mode, tap the Video button again.

View previous photos and videos While you could manually exit Camera and then launch the Photos hub to view the pictures you’re taking with Windows Phone—they’re found in the Camera Roll album—there’s a better way. Just tap the Back

button, found in the upper left corner of the viewﬁnder display, to view the previously taken photo or video.

Alternatively, you can swipe to the right to access the previous photo or video. From here, you can swipe to move through each of the pictures in the device’s Camera Roll, in both directions. (And if you swipe enough times to the left, you’ll return to the camera’s viewﬁnder.) And you can access the same picture options as described earlier in the chapter. This is particulary nice, however, because you can do things like share a photo you just took without leaving the Camera app.

Extend Camera with Lenses With Windows Phone, you’re not stuck with the built-in Camera app and whatever features the device maker decided to build in. Instead, you can extend the capabilities of Camera with specials Lens apps called lenses. This way, you don’t need to worry about ﬁnding and launching a certain app to obtain a special camera capability as you do on other platforms. Everything you need is available directly from the familiar Camera app. There’s only one place to go. Note: OK, not really. All lenses have an associated app as well. So you can launch them manually if you’re coming from an inferior phone like iPhone and simply can’t cope with elegant, integrated experiences. Don’t worry, you’ll get there.

Find lenses To ﬁnd new lenses for your camera, launch the Camera app and tap the Lenses app bar button. Then, tap Find More Lenses. Note: At least one lens, Bing Vision, is installed on all Windows Phone 8 handsets. But your carrier or phone maker may have installed some lenses as well.

The Lenses list in Windows Phone Store will load. Here, you can ﬁnd all of the available lenses that work with your phone. Lens are installed normally, like any other app. But as noted earlier, they integrate with the Camera app and can be launched from there.

Pick the best lenses While it’s not possible to review all of the lenses that are available in Windows Phone Store, a few do stand out. Here, I’m focusing on high quality entries from Microsoft and Nokia. (Remember that most Nokia apps—including lenses—are only available to users of Lumia handsets.) Create panoramic experiences. Nokia panorama and Microsoft Photosynth are two capable panorama apps, with the former offering traditional picture stitching in both portrait and landscape formats and the latter offering amazing interactive panoramic experiences, or synths. Augmented reality. Bing Vision is built into Windows Phone 8, and you can find out more in the section Find out what you’re looking at in Chapter 4: Search. It understands QR codes, Microsoft Tags and bar codes; and CD, DVD, video game, and book covers and can even scan and translate text. Nokia’s stunning HERE City Lens overlays the best shops, restaurants and points of interest right on your display as you’re looking through the camera’s viewfinder. Pick the best from multiple shots. Nokia Smart Shoot and Microsoft BLINK both offer interesting takes on the same concept. With Smart Shoot, you can take multiple images of a group shot and then pick out

individual pieces—one person’s face from one photo, another from a second photo, and so on—and then stitch them into a single image in which no one is blinking or looking away. BLINK lets you capture a burst of images in sequence and then pick the best pictures from the series to save. And much, much more. There are of course many other lenses, including those that offer various filters and effects, time lapse, night vision, and more.

Take a screenshot You can take a screenshot at any time—in the Start screen or in any app or game—by tapping the handset’s Power button and Start button simultaneously. The phone will utter a shutter sound, as you hear when taking a photo. Screenshots are saved to an album on the phone called Screenshots.

Customize the Photos hub and Camera app The Photos hub and Camera app share a Settings interface called Photos + Camera. You can ﬁnd this in Settings, Applications. The following options are available. Press and hold camera button to wake up the phone. Checked by default. If not, you must wake up the phone by pressing the hardware power button before you can use the camera. Prevent accidental camera launch when phone is locked. Unchecked by default. When enabled, this option helps prevent normal camera button presses from opening the Camera app when the phone is locked. Tap screen to take pictures and videos when using the built-in Camera app. Checked by default. If not, you must use the device’s hardware camera button to take pictures andv videos. Include location info in pictures I take. Checked by default. If unchecked, location information will not be written into the meta-data of the photos taken with the phone. Generally speaking, I recommend leaving this enabled as it enables an interesting history of your travels. But those with privacy concerns can certainly make an argument for the reverse. Pressing the camera button opens. This option, which is unavailable on some devices, lets you choose which camera app is used by default. You can choose between the built-in Camera app and other camera apps like Nokia Pro Cam, depending on which apps are installed on your handset. As noted previously, some Nokia Lumia handsets are preconﬁgured to use Nokia Pro Cam instead of the Camera by default. Auto-upload. Through a SkyDrive Storage interface, you can determine whether your photos and personal videos are backed up to SkyDrive automatically and, if so, under what conditions. For photos and videos, separately, you can choose between Don’t upload, Good quality (will use your cellular data plan), or Best quality (needs Wi-Fi). I strongly recommend changing this to Best quality for both items.

Reset camera. Tapping this button will reset the camera customizations you make from within the Camera app (via More and the Photo Settings and Video Settings).

15. Games Like any other modern smart phone, Windows Phone oﬀers a wonderful selection of fun games to choose from, ranging from homespun, enthusiast-created titles to professional arcade shooters and everything in-between. In keeping with the integrated design of this system, however, Windows Phone also oﬀers a unique Games hub interface that consolidates all of your gaming activities into a single place. On Windows Phone, when you want to play a game, you just need to remember “games.” Support for the Xbox LIVE video game service is another key diﬀerentiator: Windows Phone supports both Xbox LIVE games, which provide a number of unique capabilities, and non-Xbox LIVE games, the latter of which can be created by any developer and sold or given away to users. By comparison, Xbox LIVE games must adhere to a strict set of rules, and while they are generally more “professional”—in the sense that the cost and the diﬃculty of creating them means that most are indeed created by professional game developer studios—that doesn’t mean there aren’t many great options among the non-Xbox LIVE games too. Since Xbox LIVE is such a central part of the Windows Phone game experience, and a major diﬀerentiator between this and other smart phone platforms, let’s examine that ﬁrst.

Understand Xbox LIVE Xbox LIVE is an online video game service that now spans the Xbox 360, Windows (both desktop games and so-called “modern” mobile game apps that run in Windows 8/RT), and Windows Phone. Under the covers, it uses the same Microsoft account identity infrastructure that you see elsewhere in Microsoft’s products and services, including Hotmail/Outlook, SkyDrive, and Xbox Music and Video (among others). What this means to you is that the Microsoft account you signed in with when you ﬁrst set up your Windows Phone handset is also the account you’ll use with Xbox LIVE. It is what we call your online persona. Your Xbox LIVE account, or persona, consists of a number of attributes, many of which are available via Windows Phone (others are available in Windows or the Xbox 360). Some require an Xbox LIVE Gold account, which costs $60 per year (as opposed to the free Xbox LIVE account. Some of the more relevant attributes include: Gamertag. This is your name as it appears to others on Xbox LIVE, and is the same name you conﬁgured for your Microsoft account. For example, my Xbox LIVE Gamertag is Paul Thurrott. (Inventive, I know.) Avatar. This cartoon-like character can be designed to look like you and represents you visually online. Gamer Picture. This is a small picture that represents you online. You can only conﬁgure this picture on the Xbox 360 console, but it does show up in Windows Phone sometimes as well. Motto. This is a textual representation of who you are and what you stand for. My current motto is Xbox 360 + PC + Phone. No, it doesn’t mean anything. Name. This can be your real name or a nickname.

Bio. Text you can use to describe your history or other information. My bio reads, You have a camping problem. That’s OK, I’m the solution. (This will only make sense to you if you player Xbox 360-based shooters regularly, as I do.) Location. Text for describing your general location. Don’t be too speciﬁc. Mine is Dedham, MA. Proﬁle. This is a combination of your Gamertag, Avatar, Motto, Name, Bio, and Location, as well as the list of games you’ve played and associated achievements you’ve earned. Gamerscore. Every Xbox LIVE game assigns Gamer Points to individual in-game achievements, which are described below. Each point you earn is applied to your Gamerscore, so the higher your Gamescore, the more experienced you are, at least theoretically. Friends. As with Facebook and similar social networking services, you can send and receive friend requests, see what your friends are doing online, send messages to friends, and more. Messages. Xbox LIVE members can send text messages to each other via Windows Phone (and audio and video on some other platforms). You can send new messages to your friends and view and respond to messages you’ve received, similar to email. Games. Xbox LIVE tracks all of the games you've played on the Xbox 360, Windows Phone, Windows, and Windows 8/RT, as well as the achievements associated with each. Friends can view your proﬁle to see which games you've played, and which achievements you've earned, and compare them to their own results. When you play an Xbox LIVE game on Windows Phone, it will oﬀer a set of achievements that together can total up to 200 points. (Xbox LIVE games on Windows, Windows 8/RT, and Xbox 360 oﬀer more points.) It will also oﬀer a leaderboard, which helps you determine how well you’re doing against others, including your friends. And it can oﬀer multiplayer capabilities, which can be turn-based (as in a game of Chess or Checkers, where the game takes place over time) or can occur in real-time. Each of these will be available from within the game and you can view game achievements from your proﬁle in the Games hub. Note: While this chapter deals exclusively with the games and Xbox LIVE experience on the phone, you should spend a few minutes on Xbox.com, using your PC’s web browser. There, you can view and conﬁgure your account (including your subscriptions), your proﬁle, your friends list, your messages, and more.

Get additional Xbox Games apps While the Games hub is, as its name suggests, the hub of all your video gaming activities on Windows Phone, dedicated Xbox LIVE gamers will want to grab two additional Xbox apps before proceeding any further. Both of these free apps extend the Xbox LIVE experience and can be found in the Xbox Games Store. They are: Xbox Extras. This app lets you customize your Xbox LIVE avatar, the cartoon-like character that represents your online persona to others. We’ll brieﬂy look at this app a bit later in the section View and conﬁgure your online persona, but it’s straightforward.

Xbox SmartGlass. This app opens up new types of integration between your Windows Phone handset and your Xbox 360 video game console. From a purely game-based perspective, the big news here is more about Xbox 360-based games than it is about phone-based titles, but a coming generation of games that run on both platforms will also oﬀer innovative two-screen capabilities.

Find and launch the Games hub All of the games you play on Windows Phone are made available via the Games hub. That is, when you install a game, you will ﬁnd it in the Games hub and not in the All Apps list. That said, you can still pin individual games to your Start screen, as you can with apps. You can launch the Games hub via the Start screen or the All Apps list. The Start screen tile supports all three of the Windows Phone 8 tile sizes and while it is dynamic, the animations it portrays are related to your Xbox LIVE avatar, and not to any games you’re playing. For this reason, I prefer to leave it conﬁgured to the smallest size.

Tip: OK, the avatar animations are actually pretty cute. Watch the tile on one of the larger sizes for a few minutes before you decide.

Tour of the Games hub The Games hub is a special environment for ﬁnding, managing, and playing your installed games (as well as a handful of related Xbox apps), viewing and modifying your own Xbox LIVE persona, interacting with your Xbox-based friends, and enjoying other games-related activities. Like many other hubs in Windows Phone, it’s presented as a panoramic experience. The default view shows your game and Xbox app collection.

Like other panoramic experiences, the Games hub interface actually extends oﬀ to the right. So while the default view provides a list of the games you have installed on your phone, you can also swipe sideways and see more. If you were able to see the entire hub interface in one screen, it might resemble the following.

The following groups are available in the Games hub.

Collection. Here you will see a list of the games and Xbox apps that are installed on your phone. Similar in look and purpose to the All Apps list that is available via the Start screen, the Collection group is divided into two sections, Xbox (for Xbox LIVE games and Xbox apps like Xbox Extras and SmartGlass) and Other (for non-Xbox LIVE games), plus a link, Get More Games, that triggers a trip to the Games Store, part of Windows Phone Store. If you’re just getting started, you won’t see an Other section, and the Xbox section will be ﬁlled out with links to try popular Xbox LIVE games, as shown above. But as you install games (and Xbox apps), the list will ﬁll out. The Other group will appear when you install the ﬁrst non-Xbox LIVE game.

Xbox. This unusual group actually spans two screens-worth of space and encompasses a lot of information and activity. In the ﬁrst screen, you will ﬁnd your avatar, your Gamertag, ﬁrst name, Gamerscore (the total points award by your Xbox LIVE achievements), and tile-based links for achievements and Xbox Extras, the latter of which lets you customize your avatar. In the second screen, there are tiles for Xbox SmartGlass, Friends, and the Games Store.

Notiﬁcations. If you have any pending notiﬁcations—including friend requests, new messages, and game invites and other requests—you will see a Notiﬁcations group with a tile representing each notiﬁcation. This group will not appear if there are no notiﬁcations. Spotlight. Here you will ﬁnd a simple, tile-based group for games and events that Microsoft is promoting in the hub. Each of these groups is interactive and each is described in this chapter. Well, except for Spotlight, which isn’t particularly noteworthy.

Find a game in the Games Store You can ﬁnd new games in the Games Store, a special part of the Windows Phone Store dedicated to this type of app.

Launch the Games Store There are several ways to launch the Games Store. From the Games hub, select the Get More Games link at the bottom of the Collection section. Or, navigate to the second screen of the Xbox section and tap the Games Store.

From elsewhere in Windows Phone, ﬁnd and launch Windows Phone Store using the Store tile (or entry in All Apps) and then choose Games from the initial screen.

Understand the layout of the Games Store The Games Store is a multi-screen panoramic experience. It consists of multiple sections, spread over several screens. These include: Game promotion. Microsoft always highlights a new or notable game in the Games Store. You’ll ﬁnd this game in the initial screen and imagery from the game in the background of the entire experience.

Filters. Swipe over from there and you’ll ﬁnd a grid of tiles that represent curated and ﬁltered collections of speciﬁc kinds of games. Four of these ﬁlters—Top Free, New + Rising, Xbox, and Best Rated—are used to ﬁlter the genre views discussed below. But the other two—Collections and Picks for You—are unique to this view. Collections isn’t just about games—they’re collections of apps and games—while Picks for You is based on the personalized suggestions service in Windows Phone which recommends games based on your Facebook friends’ “likes”.

Genres. Here, you’ll ﬁnd a list of game genres, such as Action + Adventure, Card + Board, Classics, and many more.

When you dive into an individual genre, you’ll see that you can pivot the view between Xbox, Top Free, New + Rising, Top Paid, and Best Rated ﬁlters.

Spotlight. This multi-screen section displays tiles for other games that Microsoft is currently highlighting.

Search for a game Almost every screen in the Games Store includes a Search app bar button you can use to ﬁnd a speciﬁc game.

Search works as expected, but understand that you’re searching against the entire Windows Phone Store, not just the Games Store. By default, you will be shown apps and games results, but you can pivot over to view music and podcasts results as well. There is no way to show only games results.

Find Xbox LIVE games Many Windows Phone users are also Xbox LIVE fans, so it may be helpful to know how you can ﬁnd only those games that oﬀer achievements and other unique Xbox LIVE features. To see a list of all Xbox LIVE games for Windows Phone, navigate to the Games Store and then tap the Xbox tile.

In the resulting screen, you can pivot between various views, or ﬁlters, including New + Rising, Top Paid, Best Rated, and Top Free.

Elsewhere in the Games Store, remember that Xbox is a pivot, or view, of many lists. For example, when you’re viewing a genre, you can display the Xbox view to see only the Xbox LIVE games in that genre.

Explore a game To learn more about a game, tap its tile or name in any list. This will display the Game Details screen, which includes a lot of information about the game so you can decide whether you wish to download or buy it. You can also swipe over to read user reviews and view screenshots.

Depending on the title, you can try or buy a paid game here, or download a free game. These and other related topics are discussed in the section Install, buy or upgrade an app in Chapter 3: Apps. (Remember, games are just a type of app.) Note, however, that games downloaded to the phone will be found in the Games hub and not in the All Apps list. So when you do trigger a purchase or download, you’ll see the game being installed in the Games hub.

Play a game Your installed games are available via the default Collections view in alphabetical order, with Xbox LIVE games listed before other games. Simply tap the game you wish to play. Note: You will also see a few non-game Xbox apps in this list, if they are installed, including Xbox SmartGlass.

Send and receive game requests Many Xbox LIVE games support the ability to send and receive game requests. These requests can take various forms, including invites—requests from friends to start playing games together—and turn requests for games that are in progress. (Some games are played in real-time while others can be turnbased and played over a period of time.) You send a game invite from within a game, so the experience is going to diﬀer from game to game. But generally speaking, you will be able to choose a friend from a list to see if they’d like to play: Just tap the name to send the invite.

If your friend happens to be in the game at the moment, they will receive a pop-up notiﬁcation “toast” and can elect to begin the game immediately.

Otherwise, game requests will collect in the Notiﬁcations group in the Games hub. (Remember that this group won’t appear unless there are notiﬁcations.) Here, you will ﬁnd both game invites and turn requests.

To accept a game invite, tap the Game Invite tile. To take your turn in an in-progress game, tap the Your Turn tile.

Earn an achievement If you’re playing an Xbox LIVE game, you can earn achievements that improve your Gamerscore and your online reputation. While the interface will vary widely from game to game, each Xbox LIVE title will have an Achievements menu item that displays an interface through which you can see which achievements are available and what you need to do to obtain them.

When you do unlock an achievement, you’ll see a banner notiﬁcation listing the name of the achievement and the number of associated gamer points.

Later, when viewing your proﬁle, you can see that this game is now at the top of the list of games played, since it’s the most recent.

And when you tap on the game to display its list of achievements, you’ll see the newly unlocked achievement at the top of that list.

Pin a game to Start If you play a certain game frequently, it may be tedious to launch the Games hub and then ﬁnd and launch the game. You can pin favorite games to the Start screen instead. To do so, tap and hold on the game and choose Pin to Start from the pop-up menu that appears.

All games support multiple tile sizes and well-designed modern games will support all three sizes so you can customize your Start screen accordingly.

Uninstall a game To uninstall a game and remove it from your handset—including all of its data, like saved games and game positions—ﬁnd the game in Collections, tap and hold on it, and choose Uninstall from the pop-up menu that appears.

View and conﬁgure your online persona You can interact with your Xbox LIVE account, or online persona, in a variety of way through the Xbox section of the Games hub.

Have fun with your Avatar While your avatar will cycle through some cute animations without any prompting, if you leave him sitting there alone onscreen, he’ll start to get bored. Fortunately, you can mess with him: Just tap him. The ﬁrst few times you do this, he’ll react in positive ways, cheering and celebrating the interaction.

But over time, randomly, he may start to get mad at you. And you will occasionally see a few displays of anger.

Note: Looking to keep a small child occupied for a few minutes in line at a store or whatever? Show them how they can poke the avatar and make him respond. They’ll never want to put the phone down. Tip: Do this enough and you may see the rare and fabled broken screen eﬀect, where the avatar gets so made that he “smashes” your smart phone screen! Don’t worry, it’s not real.

View your proﬁle To view your own Xbox LIVE proﬁle, tap your Gamertag. This will display the Proﬁle screen. From here, you can customize your avatar, view game beacons on the web, view and edit your bio, and view your achievements, most of which are described below.

View and edit your Xbox LIVE bio To view your Xbox LIVE bio, tap the Bio link on the Proﬁle screen. This displays the Bio screen, which includes your name, motto, location, and bio text.

To edit the bio, tap the Edit app bar button. Each of the aforementioned items is now available in edit boxes you can select to change.

When you’re done editing, tap the Save app bar button. Note: Scroll down a bit on the Edit Bio screen and you’ll see three useful and related items: Change Gamertag, Microsoft account, and Privacy settings. Each of these is a link that opens Internet Explorer Mobile so you can complete these tasks online.

Customize your avatar To customize your avatar using Xbox Extras, tap the Avatar link on the Proﬁle screen. Note: If you don’t have Xbox Extras installed, you will be prompted to install it ﬁrst. Xbox Extras is a simple app that lets you change various aspects of your cartoonish avatar, including such exterior features as headwear, tops, accessories, bottoms, shoes, and more, as well as features like eyes, hairstyle, ears, nose, chin, mouth, face, body size, and color that you can change to make the little guy look more like you.

There’s also an avatar store where you can purchase all kinds of silliness. I’m not going to cover this functionality in any meaningful way and recommend that you mostly ignore this as well. Tip: Tap More (“…” in the app bar) and then Choose New Avatar to start over with a clean new avatar.

View your achievements To view your achievements, swipe over to Achievements from the Proﬁle screen. Here, you will see a list of the Xbox LIVE games you’ve played—across multiple platforms, including Xbox 360, Windows Phone, Windows (desktop) and Windows 8/RT—in reverse chronological order, with the most recently played games at the top.

To view achievements for an individual game, tap that game in the list. In this display, the achievements you’ve completed are displayed at the top, with the ones you have not at the bottom. You can also see how many gamer points you’ve achieved in the game out of the maximum possible, and how many achievement awards out of the maximum possible.

You can also tap an individual achievement, which can be useful when the entire description doesn’t ﬁt on the game screen.

Interact with your Xbox friends Xbox LIVE provides a number of ways in which you can communicate with your friends on the service. These methods aren’t as varied in Windows Phone as they are on the Xbox 360, but you can see which friends are online and what they’re doing, send messages to your friends, and read and respond to messages from your friends. You can also send and respond to friend requests.

See which friends are online You can see which friends are online by navigating to the second screen of the Xbox section of the Games hub and tapping the Friends tile. This displays the Friends list, which segregates your friends into two groups: Those that are online and those that are not. Here you can also see a quick summary of what they are doing or, in the case of oﬄine friends, what they were doing the last time they were connected to Xbox LIVE.

View a friend’s proﬁle To view a friend’s proﬁle, tap their name in the Friends list. The Proﬁle screen includes an animated avatar of your friend, as well as their Gamertag, Gamerscore, and some other information. It is, in fact, identical to the Proﬁle screen you use to view your own information, the diﬀerence being that you can’t of course edit a friend’s proﬁle.

Tap the Bio link to read your friend’s bio, which consists of their name, motto, location, and bio text. You can also swipe over to the Recent Games page to see the games that friend has played most recently, or navigate to Compare to take a look at which games you’ve both played and which achievements you’ve gotten in each.

You can also send a message or remove the friend, as described below.

Send a message To send a message to a friend using the Xbox LIVE messaging system, view the friend’s proﬁle and then tap the Send Message link. The Send Message screen appears.

From here, you can add additional friends to the message by tapping the small Add (“+”) button to the right, or just tap the message box to display the onscreen keyboard and begin typing. When you’re ready to send the message, tap the Send app bar button. Note: Remember, you need an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription to send messages. If you send a message to a friend who doesn’t have a Gold subscription, they will be able to read it on the phone (and elsewhere) but can’t reply to it.

Read, respond to, and delete a message If you’re familiar with how messages work on Xbox 360, you know that they’re immediate: As soon as the message arrives, you receive a pop-up notiﬁcation and you can tap the Guide button on your Xbox controller to read (and optionally respond to) that message right away. That is not how messages work on Windows Phone. On Windows Phone, message delivery is not immediate and is in fact often quite delayed. And there’s no pop-up notiﬁcation, though Windows Phone certainly supports this capability. Instead, you must manually visit the Notiﬁcations group in the Games hub to see whether there are any messages. If there are, you will see one or more Message tiles in Notiﬁcations. (If there aren’t, the Notiﬁcations group might not even be there. Remember, Notiﬁcations is only enabled when there are notiﬁcations.)

To read a message, tap the tile. The message will be displayed in a full-screen interface that provides both Respond and Delete app bar buttons. To respond to the message, tap Respond. The Response screen looks and works exactly like the New Message screen. To delete the message, tap Delete.

Remove a friend To remove a friend, display their proﬁle and then tap Remove Friend.

Send and respond to friend requests When you receive a friend request, a notiﬁcation tile will appear in the Notiﬁcations panel of the Games hub.

Tap the tile to display the individual’s proﬁle and learn more about them.

From this interface, you can accept or decline the request, of course, but also view their biography, see which games they’ve played recently, and see how their game library matches up with yours. You can also send them a message if you’re confused why they contacted you. All of these things can help you make the right decision. Note: If you do decline the request, you’ll be treated to a humorous display in which the individual’s avatar temporarily reacts with mock sadness. Don’t worry, he recovers quickly and there’s no permanent damage. To send a friend request, navigate to the Xbox panel in the Games hub and tap the Friends tile (it’s on the second screen over, past your avatar). Then, in the Friends display, tap the Add app bar button.

Then, in the Find a Friend screen, enter the Gamertag of the friend you’d like to add. (Yes, you need a Gamertag: Their real name or Microsoft account address will not work.)

After a bit of searching, the Games hub will display the proﬁle of the user you’re looking for, assuming that they exist. You can send a friend request from this Proﬁle interface.

Customize the Games hub The Games hub oﬀers only a few customizable options. You can access the Settings interface from inside the app—More (“…”), Settings, or from outside, via Settings, Applications, Games.

The following options are available:

Connect with Xbox. When this option is enabled, as it is by default, your game scores, achievements, and other information is shared through the Xbox LIVE services and added to your gamer proﬁle. Save game requests. When enabled—which it is by default—new Xbox LIVE multiplayer game requests will be downloaded to your phone automatically as they arrive. Show game notiﬁcations. When this option is enabled, as it is by default, you will be alerted when any Xbox notiﬁcations arrive on the phone. My advice here is simple: If you’re playing games on Windows Phone, you should leave each of these settings conﬁgured to their default, Enabled.

16. Security + Networking As a highly-connected mobile device, Windows Phone of course provides a cornucopia of options for connecting to the Internet and to other devices, and related security features that protect the phone and the valuable data it contains. This chapter focuses on these features, including some of the common sense things you can do to secure the phone and manage your metered, or limited, data plan.

Security As with any other smart phone or connected device, when you carry around a Windows Phone handset, you’re in eﬀect carrying around your entire life: Your credit card numbers, your phone numbers, information about your friends and family, personal photos, and more. It makes sense then you would want to protect that information and ensure that your personal data is safe, even if the phone is or lost stolen. In this section, I’ll examine some of the key Windows Phone 8 security features that can help you protect those things that matter to you most. Note: In addition to the security features described here, Windows Phone 8 supports the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) mobile device policy framework. This capability allows corporations to require phone users to implement certain security features before they can access company resources—like email or schedules—on the device.

Lock screen PIN Windows Phone lets you connect to an incredible range of online services and present your personal information, as well as that of your friends and family, via a set of wonderful interactive experiences. But out of the box, Windows Phone does nothing to ensure that you prevent others from accessing this information should your phone be lost or stolen. Fortunately, the ﬁx is easy. Just enable a lock screen PIN (personal identiﬁcation number). Please take this advice seriously. If you learn just one thing from this book, it should be this: Enable a lock screen PIN. A lock screen PIN works like any other PIN—like the one you have on a debit card, for example—by forcing you to enter a four- (or more) digit number before you can do anything with the phone. (Well, almost anything, as you’ll discover in a moment.) That means you will experience a slight inconvenience many of the times you use the phone (a timeout period can prevent you from having to enter a PIN every single time you use the phone). But it also means that other people won’t be able to access the information on your phone without your knowledge. To enable a lock screen PIN, navigate to Settings, System, Lock Screen. Scroll down to the bottom to ﬁnd the Password option.

Enable the Password option. In the Create a Password screen that appears, type a code you can remember in both the New Password and Conﬁrm Password ﬁelds. It must be four digits or more in length.

Tap Done when complete, and you’ll return to Lock Screen settings, which will now contain two new options related to the PIN.

These new options include: Change password. Tap this button to change the PIN. Require a password after. This option determines how often you will need to enter your PIN. By default it’s set to each time, which I think is a bit aggressive. (The security conscious may disagree, however.) Other available choices include 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 30 minutes. I recommend keeping it at 5 minutes or lower. Once the PIN is conﬁgured, you will see a PIN entry screen when you turn on the phone’s display and swipe up on the lock screen.

As noted earlier, enabling the lock screen PIN will prevent most activities on the phone while it is locked. But there are still a few things you can do while the phone is locked and protected by a PIN. Some of these include: View the lock screen. If you press the phone’s hardware power button, you can see the time, date, and various notiﬁcations on the lock screen. Make an emergency call. The PIN entry form includes an Emergency Call button that will dial the emergency phone number in your locale—911 in the United States—when needed. Take a picture. Long press the hardware Camera button on your Windows Phone handset to open the Camera app take photos and videos. What you can’t do is view (or edit or delete) existing photos on the device. You’ll notice a Lock button in the upper left corner: You can tap this button to unlock your phone—by entering your PIN—to access the additional functionality. (The Camera app is discussed in the section Take photos and videos in Chapter 14, Photos.)

Change the volume. You can use the hardware volume buttons to change the volume of any audio that’s playing while the phone is locked.

Wallet Windows Phone supports a complete electronic wallet experience, though as with any new technology it’s worth noting that this experience, imaginatively called Wallet, is something that will get more compelling over time. The goal is obvious enough: Microsoft is seeking to replace today’s physical wallets, which contain payment methods—cash, credit and debit cards—as well as loyalty and membership cards, and coupons. And sure enough, Wallet does most of that today, though there are a few obvious holes. First, there’s no universally accepted e-cash standard, though services like PayPal certainly come pretty close. And second, Wallet’s most forward-leaning feature, NFC Tap to Pay, is available in only a single country, and via a single wireless carrier, at the time of this writing. More on that in a bit.

Tour of the Wallet user experience The Windows Phone Wallet experience is a panoramic hub with just views, or screens. If you were able to view the entire experience at once, and hadn’t yet conﬁgured it with any cards or deals, it may resemble the following.

The Wallet hub oﬀers the followings screens: All. Here, you will ﬁnd your credit, debit, and other payment methods, as well as loyalty and membership cards. Deals. Here, you will ﬁnd your electronic coupons and other deals.

Protect Wallet and on-phone purchases with a PIN Before moving on, take a moment to protect Wallet with a PIN (personal identiﬁcation number) to ensure that your private information stays private. While you can and should protect your phone with a lock screen PIN as noted earlier in the chapter, I recommend also protecting Wallet—and thus all of your payment methods and other associated accounts—with a separate (and distinct) PIN. This safety feature will require you to enter this PIN—a four digit numeric code—each time you try to access Wallet, such as when you try to buy a game or other content in Windows Phone Store.

To protect Wallet with a PIN, navigate to the All view, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Settings + PIN from the app bar menu.

Be sure to enable the Wallet PIN for all on-phone purchases of apps, games, and music, including any inapp purchases. That way, if you hand your phone out to a child, you don’t need to worry about them racking up credit card bills while you’re not looking.

View your payment methods and membership and loyalty cards In the All view, you will see a list of your credit and debit cards and other payments methods, as well as any loyalty and membership cards you’ve connected to Wallet.

These items come from one of two places: Payment methods are stored with your Microsoft account, so if you’ve already established forms of payments, they will appear here automatically. Loyalty and membership cards are added to Wallet when you install and conﬁgure the company’s app (which is described below). To sort the list of items in the All view diﬀerently, tap the Sorted by Name link. In the Sort By screen, you can choose between the views Name, Category, or Last Used.

Add a new payment method To add a new payment method to Wallet, navigate to the All view and tap the Add app bar button.

In the Add to Wallet screen that appears, choose a payment method type—currently Credit or Debit, Microsoft Gift Card, PayPal, or Other—and then complete the steps required. If you choose Credit or Debit, for example, the New Card screen will prompt you to enter various information about the card, including the account number, expiration date, the name on the card, and so on.

When you’re done, the new payment method will be added to the All view. Note: The Microsoft Gift Card option is used to redeem a Microsoft gift card. So if you receive such a card as a gift, you can attach it to your Microsoft account with Wallet and then make app, game, and music purchases from your phone using the balance provided by the card.

View or edit a payment method To view or edit the information associated with a payment method, just tap the item in the All list. While each type of payment method provides diﬀerent types of information via this About screen, each will include a description of the card’s capabilities—including whether it can be used for app (or music) purchases—and, when applicable, a link to the associated app. (PayPal has such an app, for example, as do various credit card companies and ﬁnancial institutions.)

To edit the information for a payment method, tap the Edit app bar button. To delete a payment method, tap More (“…”) in the app bar and then choose Delete from the menu that appears. Note: You can also unlink Wallet from an app that is associated with a payment method by choosing Unlink From App from the app bar menu. Finally, you can also pin a payment method to your Start screen, though this capability seems pointless to me.

Purchase an app, game, or music The payment methods registered with Wallet determine your choices when it comes to purchasing an app, game or music from your Windows Phone handset. (Additionally, some wireless carriers also allow you to add the price of these purchases to your monthly mobile bill.) So these purchases occur through the Windows Phone Store. You can learn more about buying an app or game in the section Install, buy or upgrade an app in Chapter 3: Store. And you can ﬁnd out more about buying music in the section Purchase or download music from Xbox Music Store in Chapter 13: Music, Videos + Podcasts.

Add a new membership or loyalty card There are two ways to add membership and loyalty cards to Wallet: Via the Add app bar button or through apps tied to those cards. The latter is preferable. To add a membership and loyalty card to Wallet directly, navigate to the All view and tap the Add app bar button. In the Add To Wallet screen, choose Other. Then, in the Add Card screen that appears, choose the card—from a surprisingly weak list—that you’d like to add.

As indicated by the link at the top of this list, you can also add a membership and loyalty card manually. To do so, tap this link and then ﬁll out the necessary information in the New Card screen.

This second approach won’t provide any sort of automatic interaction between your card and whatever service you’re trying to access. But if you’re protecting your phone and Wallet with PINs, it does provide a secure way to store card information that isn’t automatically provided in Windows Phone. It’s a good option for airline and hotel membership numbers, for example. Depending on which merchants you frequent, however, there is a better way. Many membership and loyalty cards have associated Windows Phone apps, and these apps can optionally integrate with Wallet, allowing you to add a virtual version of the card to Wallet. One example is the AMC Theatres app, which ties into the AMC Stubs card, a membership card for the US-based movie theatre chain. You can purchase tickets to a movie online from your PC or with the app, and then present a virtual AMC Stubs card in the Wallet app when you arrive at the theater instead of paper tickets. AMC Stubs and other membership and loyalty cards appear in the All view alongside your payment methods. To present your virtual card to the usher at the movie theater, simply open Wallet and select AMC Stubs. The usher will scan the bar code as he would a paper-based ticket.

View your deals The Deals view in Wallet provides you with a place to store your virtual coupons and other saved deals.

Deals are sorted by expiration by default. To sort the list by merchant, tap the sorted by expiration link and choose Merchant in the Sort By screen.

Add a new deal There are a few diﬀerent ways to add a new deal. The easiest is to let Wallet automatically ﬁnd deals near you. To do so, navigate to Deals and tap the Add app bar button. Then, in the Add Deal screen, tap Find Deals. Wallet will then display a list of local deals.

To view a deal, simply tap its entry in the list. To add the deal to Wallet, tap Save for Later in the deal’s quick card. Note: You can optionally choose to share a deal with others too, but you must do this before you save it to your Wallet. You can also ﬁnd deals elsewhere in Windows Phone, in various apps. For example, when viewing the quick card for a local restaurant or other business, you may see a Deals entry in the About pane.

To view the deal, and add it to your Wallet, just tap the deal.

View and use a saved deal To view a saved deal, tap the deal in question in the Deals view. The deal card for that deal will appear.

The deal card explains the deal—in this case, a $5 gift certiﬁcate for just $2—and provides other related information, such as its start date and expiration date. Deal redemption varies from deal-to-deal. In some cases, the deal card will provide a QR code that needs to be scanned by an employee of the restaurant, store, or other location. Sometimes you need to visit a web site to purchase the deal. To set a reminder for a deal that will expire soon, view the deal and then choose Add Reminder from the app bar menu. You can also pin the deal to your Start screen using the Pin app bar button. When you do use a deal non-digitally, you can mark the deal as used by opening the deal and choose Mark As Used from the app bar menu. You can also delete the deal if preferred.

Make a purchase with NFC Tap to Pay Because Wallet’s Tap to Pay capability is currently available only in France and only via the Orange wireless carrier, it’s not possible for me to accurate document this feature at this time. It requires a number of components to be in place, however, including Near Field Communication (NFC) hardware in the handset, a secure SIM module—a special kind of SIM with secure element circuitry—from your wireless operator, and an NFC-equipped Point Of Sale (POS) device at the place of purchase.

Kid’s Corner Windows Phone includes a useful new parental controls-type feature called Kid’s Corner that lets you set up a safe, alternative area on your phone that’s just for your children. With Kid’s Corner, you can hand your Windows Phone handset to a child and not worry that they’re going access, edit or delete your private or work-related information or cause other problems.

Set up Kid’s Corner To set up Kid’s Corner, you must ﬁrst navigate to Settings, System, Kid’s Corner. The ﬁrst time you visit this interface, you’ll step through a wizard that conﬁgures Kid’s Corner for use.

Tap Next. In the next screen, Kid’s Corner Content, you can choose which content—games, music, videos, and apps—that your children can access on your phone.

Tap one of the content choices, like Games. You will see a list of the content, where you can select which games your children can access.

Make your selections and then tap the Done button. Then, repeat for each content type. Note: Unfortunately, some of the choices are a bit limited. With music, for example, you can choose which albums to allow, but not individual songs, genres, artists, playlists or Smart DJs. And if you are using an Xbox Music Pass, you can only choose music that is stored on the device, not music from your cloud collection. Note: Some apps are not available in Kid’s Corner, including Internet Explorer, Phone, and Messaging. However, your children may be able to access Internet Explorer if an app or game contains a hyperlink. In such cases, they will not be able to enter new web addresses, or URLs, into the browser’s address bar and indiscriminately browse the web. Note: You can only enable one Kid’s Corner on your phone. So if you have multiple kids, they’ll need to share. When you’re done making your selections, tap Next. The wizard will complete and explain how you can access Kid’s Corner going forward. You can visit Kid’s Corner Settings at any time in the future to change the content selections you’ve made, pin a Kid’s Corner tile to the Start screen, or to disable this environment.

Use Kid’s Corner To use Kid’s Corner, turn on your phone. Then, instead of swiping up on the lock screen to enter your PIN and use the phone normally, swipe left on the lock screen. This will display the Kid’s Corner lock screen, which is not (and cannot be) protected by a PIN.

Swipe up to enter Kid’s Corner. You will see the simple Kid’s Corner Start screen, which includes a tile for each item you previously enabled, plus a special tile called Customize.

This Start screen works much like the normal Windows Phone Start screen: Simply tap any tile to launch that app, game, album, or video. Most hardware buttons work normally, except for Camera and Search, which are disabled by default. The All Apps list is not available either. Note: One potential major issue with Kid’s Corner is that each app in Windows Phone is self-contained, so any in-app data is shared with your kids. So, for example, high score lists, leaderboards, and other ingame items will be shared.

Customize Kid’s Corner Your children can customize Kid’s Corner with the Customize tile.

The simple Customize environment oﬀers just a few basic features to customize.

These include: Name. You can use a child’s name on the Kid’s Corner lock screen. Picture. You can change the lock screen image to a picture of your choosing, including a nice set of supplied background images. Note that the child will be able to browse all of the photos found on the phone. Background. You can choose between dark (black, the default) and light (white) background colors. Accent color. You can choose from 20 accent colors.

Backup Windows Phone includes a useful Backup feature that automatically saves some phone settings, text messages, and photos and videos that were taken with the device’s camera to your SkyDrive cloud storage. The trick? It needs to be enabled ﬁrst. Note: Backup requires that you sign in to your Windows Phone handset with a Microsoft account. Which of course you do.

Enable and conﬁgure Backup If you did not enable Backup during initial phone set up as described in the section Complete the initial set up wizard in Chapter 1, you can do so later. To enable Backup, navigate to Settings, System, Backup.

To enable the automatic backup of your Internet Explorer Favorites, a list of installed apps, and many system settings, tap App List + Settings.

In the App List + Settings screen, enable the Backup option. You can then tap Back Up Now to manually create a backup. Once Windows Phone has create one or more backups, you can return to this screen and tap Advanced to delete all of your currently saved settings backups. To enable text messages backup, tap Text Messages. This loads the Messaging Settings screen.

In Messaging Settings, change the option Text Message Backup to On. Messaging is discussed further in 7. Messaging. To enable the backup of photos and videos that are taken your phone’s camera, tap Photos.

In this screen, you can choose between Don’t upload (the default), Good quality, and Best quality for photos and videos separately. My recommendation is to set both to Best quality. This option will ensure that full-quality versions of your personal photos and videos are backed up to SkyDrive, though it does require a Wi-Fi connection. Further discussion of this and other capabilities related to the camera can be found in the section Take photos and videos in Chapter 14: Photos.

Restore a backup When you reset an existing phone or set up a new phone, you can optionally choose to restore a previous backup. When you do, the system and app settings, text messages, and photos and videos you backed up are restore to the device. Also, the list of apps you’ve installed is available from the Windows Phone web site so you can reinstall them remotely to the device. Note: Unfortunately, there is no other way to restore a backup. You must reset the device ﬁrst. Note: A number of items, however, are not restored. Any data associated with your apps—like progress in a game—is not restored. The Start screen will return to its default layout. And you will need to manually reconnect to your Wi-Fi network, including typing any password if required. To restore a backup, you must reset your phone. Navigate to Settings, System, About and tap the Reset Your Phone button at the bottom of the screen. You will be prompted twice to ensure that you understand what you’re doing.

A phone reset can take several minutes. During this time, the OS image is erased and replaced with the factory-fresh version that was supplied when you ﬁrst purchased the device. Then, after a reboot, you will be prompted to step through the initial Windows Phone Setup. This looks and works exactly like the initial set up process described in the section Complete the initial set up wizard in Chapter 1. Step through this wizard normally, referring to Chapter 1 if required. Eventually, you will be presented with the Restore Your Phone screen.

Select the appropriate backup and then tap Next. The next screen describes how the restore process works.

Tap Next. Now, the backup is restored to the device. During this time, you won’t be able to use the device.

When the restore completes, tap Next. Windows Phone Setup will then continue normally and after a few more steps you’ll be presented with the Start screen. Note: To restore your previously-installed apps, browse to the Windows Phone web site on your PC’s web browser. Sign in, and then choose Purchase History from the pull-down menu. (You can also navigate directly to Purchase History.) Click the Reinstall link next to any apps you wish to install remotely to your phone.

Find My Phone Windows Phone users can and should take advantage of a free service called Find My Phone that will help you ﬁnd a lost or stolen handset. Anyone with Windows Phone can use the service, but it works better if you conﬁgure it on the device ﬁrst.

Conﬁgure Find My Phone on your handset To conﬁgure Find My Phone, navigate to Settings, System, Find My Phone.

If it’s not checked, check the second option, which will cause your handset to periodically save its position to SkyDrive, making it easier to ﬁnd later should it be lost or stolen.

Access Find My Phone on the web If your phone is lost or stolen, you can use the Find My Phone service to ﬁnd it. You do so from the web, using the browser in your PC or tablet. To ﬁnd your phone, navigate to the Windows Phone web site and sign in with your Microsoft account. Then, select Find My Phone from the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the site.

(Alternatively, you can browse directly to https://www.windowsphone.com/ﬁnd.)

From this web site, you can perform a number of tasks, described below, to ﬁnd your phone.

Find your phone on a map If you think the phone was lost somewhere outside of your home, or stolen, you can click the Find My Phone button to see whether the service can ﬁnd your phone on a map. Find My Phone will locate the phone and then reﬁne the location, and present you with a map leading you right to the device. This can be surprisingly accurate: In my neighborhood, for example, the service was able to identify my actual house as the location of the phone. There’s even a nice bird’s eye view.

(Not my real house or neighborhood.)

Ring the phone remotely If you think the phone is nearby—such as in your home—you can click the Ring link on the Find My Phone web site to cause the handset’s ringer to chime an alarm. Sometimes that’s all need to ﬁnd a phone that may be hidden under the couch or in another unexpected location.

Lock your phone remotely and send a message to the lock screen Obviously, you’ve enabled the lock screen PIN feature described earlier in this chapter because you want the data on the device to be safe from unknown people. But you can also send a message to a person that may have found your phone but has no way to contact you to return it. To do, click the Lock link on the Find My Phone web site. Then, ﬁll out the Lock your phone form that appears and click the Lock button to send it to the phone (and lock the phone just in case you didn’t enable the lock screen PIN).

Find My Phone will attempt to lock the phone remotely and send the message. On the phone, the Good Samaritan that found your phone will see the message appear over the lock screen.

When you get your phone back, just swipe up and enter your PIN normally. The phone will then work as before and display your usual lock screen background.

Erase your phone remotely If your other eﬀorts to ﬁnd the phone were unsuccessful, you can remotely erase the phone to ensure that anyone who does later ﬁnd it cannot recover any valuable personal information from the device. To do so, click the Erase link on the Find My Phone web site.

Phone Update While the pace and availability of Windows Phone software updates remains somewhat controversial, it’s at least fair to say that the system works much like its desktop PC cousin at a technical level. And it is occasionally serviced with functional updates as well as bug ﬁxes. Additionally, because of the unique nature of the smart phone market, you will also sometimes see ﬁrmware and software updates delivered from the hardware maker. Installing these updates is one way to ensure that your handset is safe, since many updates improve the security or reliability of the system. First, make sure your phone is conﬁgured to automatically check for updates. To do so, navigate to Settings, System, Phone Update.

You can also use this interface to manually check for software updates: Just tap the Check For Updates button. More often than not, you’ll be told that the phone is up to date. If you do have one or more updates to install, the update(s) will begin downloading.

After the download is complete, it’s ready to be installed. From here, you can either postpone the update or install it immediately.

After the update has completed installing, you will most likely need to restart the phone.

Networking Windows Phone supports a wide range of wireless networking capabilities and related features. From a connection standpoint, it provides both cellular network (for phone calls and text messaging) and cellular data, both of which come with their own carrier-speciﬁc restrictions and costs, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And there are other networking capabilities in Windows Phone as well, including the ability to monitor your cellular data usage and, if your carrier and mobile plan supports it, share your Internet connection with PCs and other devices.

Cellular data As a smart phone platform, Windows Phone supports cellular data capabilities in addition to standard phone features like phone calling and text messaging. This functionality allows your handset to connect to the Internet and various cloud-based services, using technologies that vary somewhat depending on your wireless carrier and your locale.

Understand which type of cellular data connection you have The Windows Phone status bar will display an icon representing the type of cellular data connection you currently have. While these icons can vary somewhat from carrier to carrier, some of the most common, listed in order of preference, include: G. GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), a second-generation (2G) cellular data connection type. E. EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for Global Evolution), considered a 2G or 2.5G connection type. 3G. A common 3G cellular data connection type. H. HSPA/HSDPA/HSUPA (High Speed Packet Access/High Speed Downlink Packet Access/High Speed Uplink Packet Access), commonly deployed improvements to 3G networks, which are sometimes mislabeled as 4G. 4G. A common fourth-generation (4G) cellular data connection type. LTE. Long Term Evolution, a 4G cellular data connection type that is common in the United States. (Remember that you may need to tap near the top of the screen to see the status bar and that the status bar isn’t available in all apps.) Windows Phone will always connect to your wireless carrier’s fastest network. So if LTE is available, you will receive that ﬁrst, then 4G, and so on.

Conﬁgure cellular data For the most part, you won’t need to conﬁgure your phone’s cellular data connectivity: The SIM (secure interface module) provided by your wireless carrier stores everything your phone needs to connect to the Internet and to the carrier’s voice networks. That said, you can visit the Cellular Settings screen (navigate to Settings, System, Cellular) if you do need to conﬁgure any options.

The most important options here are: Data connection. This defaults to On, and should be left On unless you are traveling internationally and haven’t purchased an international data plan from your carrier. Data roaming options. This option determines whether your phone automatically “roams”—that is, uses a diﬀerent cellular data network when your own wireless carrier has no coverage where you are at the moment. You can choose between Roam and Don’t Roam, and which you use will be determined by your data plan and your wireless carrier’s policies. If you pay a charge for data roaming—which is usually the case—you will want this set to Don’t Roam. You will not normally need to access the network selection and APN (access point name) related options at the bottom of this screen as they are conﬁgured automatically when your phone (or, more typically, your phone’s SIM) is ﬁrst conﬁgured by the wireless carrier. However, in some cases—perhaps you have purchased an international SIM for use while traveling overseas—you’ll be provided with speciﬁc APN conﬁguration settings for data and MMS (multimedia messaging) purposes at the time of purchase.

Wi-Fi Windows Phone fully supports the standard Wi-Fi wireless networks that most people have at home and can ﬁnd readily in local coﬀee shops, airports, hotels and other public spaces. And it actually treats Wi-Fi

as the preferred connection type over cellular data, oﬄoading the data connection to Wi-Fi whenever possible in order to save your cellular data usage. Wi-Fi is also generally faster and more reliable than cellular data, and certain Windows Phone downloads—including larger apps, games and podcasts, as well as software updates, require a Wi-Fi connection. Even if you’re just using Windows Phone around the house, you should be connected to a Wi-Fi connection when possible.

Enable Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is typically enabled by default but if it’s disabled for some reason, you can enable it by navigating to Settings, System, Wi-Fi.

Slide the Wi-Fi Networking feature to On to enable Wi-Fi.

Connect to a Wi-Fi network To connect to a Wi-Fi network, visit Wi-Fi Settings. You will see a list of available Wi-Fi networks, listed in order with the strongest (and thus generally fastest) connections listed at the top of the list.

Tap the network you’d like to connect to. If the network is secure, you’ll be prompted to enter a password.

Do so and tap Done to connect. The entry for the Wi-Fi network you selected will note that it is connected.

You will also notice a Wi-Fi icon in the status bar, indicating that you are connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Note: Many public Wi-Fi networks, such as those in coﬀee shops, hotels, and airports, will require you to enter a password, pay for the connection, and perhaps perform other steps as well. If so, Internet Explorer will launch so you can complete the required steps in the web browser. Note: If you have enabled Backup (described earlier in this chapter), Windows Phone will save your connected Wi-Fi networks settings to your Microsoft account and remember these networks. So if you reset your phone or get a new phone, it will automatically connect to any previously conﬁgured Wi-Fi networks when possible.

Handle Wi-Fi toast notiﬁcations If you are out in the world and not connected to a Wi-Fi network, Windows Phone can alert you when you are in range of one, using a standard “toast” notiﬁcation.

To connect to a Wi-Fi network, tap the notiﬁcation. The Wi-Fi Settings screen will appear normally and you can choose a network. Note: This feature requires that an advanced Wi-Fi setting be enabled. Refer to the section Conﬁgure advanced Wi-Fi settings for more information.

Connect to a hidden Wi-Fi network To connect to a hidden Wi-Fi network—that is, a network that is not broadcasting its name publicly— scroll to the bottom of the list of available networks in Wi-Fi Settings and tap Advanced. Then, in the Advanced screen—we’ll discuss the other settings here in just a bit—tap the Add app bar button.

Then, follow the steps to enter the hidden network’s broadcast name (SSID) and other information.

Previously conﬁgured but hidden Wi-Fi connections will appear at the bottom of the Advanced screen.

Conﬁgure advanced Wi-Fi settings Windows Phone is conﬁgured to use Wi-Fi networking optimally while preserving both battery life and your cellular data connection. That said, you may wish to view or conﬁgure various settings related to Wi-Fi. To do so, open Wi-Fi Settings and then tap the Advanced button at the bottom of the list of available networks.

The following settings are available from the Advanced screen: Notify me when new networks are found. This settings determines whether Windows Phone will automatically prompt you when it discovers available Wi-Fi networks when you are not connected to WiFi. Frankly, this feature can be a bit annoying, but I recommend leaving it enabled. Automatically connect to Wi-Fi hotspots. If this setting is enabled, Windows Phone will automatically connect to Wi-Fi when possible, saving your allotted cellular data and enabling you to download large ﬁles. You should always enable this setting. Send information about Wi-Fi connections to help discover nearby Wi-Fi. The Data Sense feature described elsewhere in this chapter can help you discover nearby Wi-Fi connections because of anonymous data collection from Windows Phone (and Windows 8/RT) users just like you. If Karma is important to you I recommend setting this to Enabled. Keep Wi-Fi on when the screen times out. By default, Windows Phone is conﬁgured to put its Wi-Fi connection to sleep whenever the screen goes dark, preserving battery life. Typically, you will want to leave this setting disabled.

Bluetooth Windows Phone supports the Bluetooth standard as a method of wirelessly connecting the phone to other Bluetooth-equipped devices such as hands-free headsets, speakers, PCs, and even automobiles, among other things.

Understand which Bluetooth features work with Windows Phone As an evolving speciﬁcation, Bluetooth oﬀers various capabilities, and has gone through various permutations through the years. Windows Phone supports Bluetooth 3.1—not the latest version—and only the following subset of available Bluetooth proﬁles: Advanced Audio Distribution Proﬁle (A2DP) 1.2. This provides high quality mono and stereo audio playback over Bluetooth. Audio/Video Remote Control Proﬁle (AVRCP) 1.4. This allows a Bluetooth device to be used as a remote control for media with features like Play, Pause, Stop, and so on, media source status (playing, paused, and so on), track meta data information (artist, track name, etc.), Now Playing list support, and search. Hands Free Proﬁle (HFP) 1.5. This is typically used for hands-free interfaces in automobiles. Phone Book Access Proﬁle (PBAP) 1.1. This allows a Bluetooth-compatible device to exchange address book (contacts) data with another BT-compatible device. It is typically used with automotive systems so that contact names can appear on the in-dash display. Object Push Proﬁle (OPP) 1.1. This lets the phone send things such as pictures, contact cards, or appointment details via Bluetooth. Out of Band (OOB) & Near Field Communications (NFC). These features let Windows Phone more easily establish a Bluetooth connection with another device using NFC. (The other device must also support both Bluetooth and NFC.) Of course, it’s hard to look at this list and not notice some missing Bluetooth features. For example, Windows Phone doesn’t support basic features like printing or keyboard connectivity, nor some more modern features like compatibility with health peripherals such as activity tracker wristbands, watches, and other devices.

Pair a Bluetooth device To connect, or “pair,” a Bluetooth device with your phone, navigate to Settings, System, Bluetooth, and then ensure that Bluetooth is enabled. If it is not, enable it. The Bluetooth Settings screen will now display a list of the compatible Bluetooth devices it ﬁnds.

If you don’t see the device you wish to connect, you may need to perform some step on the other device so that it transmits a Bluetooth connection request. (For example, on the JBL Bluetooth speaker I used for this example, I needed to press and hold on a speciﬁc button to get this to work.) When the device appears in the list, tap it. Windows Phone will initiate the connection. In some cases, you will be prompted to enter a certain code to create the connection—this is common in automotive systems, for example—but in others, the connection is more seamless.

When Bluetooth is enabled, a gray Bluetooth icon appears in the Windows Phone status bar. This icon turns white (if you’re using the default dark theme) when you connect to a device using Bluetooth.

Once you have made this connection between the phone and another device, you can use both together. In the case of the JBL Bluetooth speaker, any audio playback from the handset will now occur through that speaker instead of through the device’s internal speaker. (Assuming the speaker is on and within range of the phone.) Note: To learn how to connect a Bluetooth headset with Windows Phone, refer to the section Use a Bluetooth headset in Chapter 6: Phone. To unpair a device, tap and hold on the device in Bluetooth Settings and tap Delete in the pop-up menu that appears.

Pair a Bluetooth device with NFC If you’re lucky enough to have an NFC-compatible Windows Phone handset as well as an NFC-compatible speaker or other device, you can connect these two devices together via Bluetooth even more easily using NFC: Simply tap the two devices together. This requires a bit of alignment—the NFC radio in your phone will typically be found on the device’s top or center back, while the NFC radio on a speaker is typically found on the top—but you’ll hear a happy conﬁrmation sound as they connect. If you display the Bluetooth Settings screen while doing so, you will also see the speaker (or other device) appear in the list, establish a connection, and then complete the pairing.

Data Sense Windows Phone 8 includes a Data Sense app that helps you track your cellular data usage. This is particularly important because most people do not have unlimited data connections, but instead have what’s called a metered account, where you are allotted a certain amount of data each month and are charged extra if you exceed that usage. Note: Data Sense isn’t currently available via all wireless carriers. If you don’t see Data Sense on your phone, most wireless carriers do oﬀer an alternative. For example, AT&T Wireless oﬀers a myAT&T app that provides similar functionality. You can launch Data Sense from the All Apps list, of course, but chances are you’ll want to pin it to your Start screen because its tile provides live updates about your data usage. This is explained below.

Conﬁgure Data Sense on ﬁrst use The ﬁrst time you run Data Sense, you’re prompted to set it up for the particulars of your data plan so that it can provide accurate real time information about your usage.

Tap Yes. In the next screen, you’re prompted to enter your data limit type, which can be one time, monthly or unlimited. For most people, this will be monthly.

Tap Done after you’ve made a choice. Then, new options appear.

If you’ve chosen a Monthly limit type these options include: Monthly reset date. This is the day of the month at which your wireless plan switches over to the next billing month. Monthly data limit and Units. These two ﬁelds will include a number (Monthly data limit) that, combined with Units, determines your monthly data limit. For a 1 GB monthly limit, for example, you could enter 1 for Monthly data limit and GB for Units.

Understand Data Sense Once you’ve conﬁgured Data Sense for the ﬁrst time, you can use the app. It’s simple enough, with just two views you can pivot between. The default view, Overview, provides a peek at your data usage for the current billing cycle.

The Usage view explains your total data usage—over both cellular data and Wi-Fi—and displays a list of the apps you’ve used along with their accompanying data usage. This can help you ﬁnd any apps that are particularly heavy data users.

Find nearby Wi-Fi connections Hidden in the Data Sense UI is a very useful feature: You can ﬁnd nearby Wi-Fi connections using Bing Maps. This is particularly helpful when you’re trying to minimize your cellular data usage, either because you have a low monthly limit or are reaching the limit and would like to conserve the bandwidth. To utilize this feature, navigate to More (“…” in the app bar), and then Map Nearby Wi-Fi. Bing Maps will appear—yes, even on Nokia handsets—and display your position on the map. Around you, you will see black ﬂags, each of which represents a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot.

You can tap a ﬂag to view basic information about the hotspot on the ﬂag itself.

Or, tap it again to see even more information.

If you’re in range of the hotspot, you can use Wi-Fi Settings (Settings, System, Wi-Fi) to connect and give your cellular data connection a rest.

Conﬁgure Data Sense While Data Sense prompts you to conﬁgure your data limit the ﬁrst time you launch the app, you can visit Data Sense Settings later to make changes. But this interface oﬀers another useful option: You can restrict the use of background data when you’re near your data limit. It’s enabled by default, but it’s worth checking to make sure. To do so, tap the Settings app bar button.

Use the live tile to track data usage While the Data Sense app is useful, oftentimes you won’t need to open it, as its live tile displays how much cellular data is still available in the current billing period. The tile animates between this information and a stock graphic, so you might have to wait a moment.

Internet sharing Windows Phone lets you securely share your cellular data network’s Internet connection over Wi-Fi, creating a personal (and portable) wireless hotspot. You can then connect up to ﬁve other devices—PCs, tablets, other phones, whatever—to the Internet using this Wi-Fi connection. Note: This feature requires wireless carrier support and a data plan that includes Internet sharing— sometimes called “tethering” capabilities. (These plans are typically more expensive than other data

plans.) Devices that use your data connection this way will of course eat into whatever cellular data limits you have, so be careful about monitoring this usage. The Data Sense feature, mentioned elsewhere in the chapter, can help keep tabs on this usage as can apps provided by your wireless carrier. Note: When sharing your Internet connection, the handset will experience quicker than usual battery drain. My recommendation is to keep your handset plugged in when sharing the connection, when possible. If you’re sharing your Internet connection with a portable computer, for example, you could connect it to that device with a USB cable. To help preserve battery life, Windows Phone will automatically disable Internet sharing if no devices are connected within a few minutes.

Toggle Internet sharing To enable Internet sharing, navigate to Settings, System, Internet sharing.

Then, toggle Internet sharing to On. If this is the ﬁrst time you’ve used Internet sharing, you will need to conﬁgure this feature next.

Conﬁgure Internet sharing To conﬁgure Internet sharing, ensure that Internet sharing is On. You’ll see the connection’s broadcast name (sometimes called an SSID, for service set identiﬁer) and password, as well as the number of connected devices, called guests, listed. If you haven’t yet conﬁgured this feature, the broadcast name and password will be default values provided by Windows Phone.

Then, tap the Setup button to display the Internet Sharing Setup screen.

Here, you enter a unique broadcast name and password for your shared Internet connection. The password is required: Windows Phone will not let you create an insecure, open Internet connection to prevent others from using up your allotted cellular data. Note: Windows Phone uses standard WPA2-Personal security for its shared Internet connection. Once you’ve modiﬁed the broadcast name and password to your liking, tap Done to ﬁnish. When you return to the Internet Sharing screen, it will reﬂect the changes you made.

And while your cellular data connection is shared, you’ll see an Internet Sharing icon in the Windows Phone status bar.

Access a shared connection from another device You can connect to your phone’s shared Internet connection as you would with any other Wi-Fi connection. For example, in Windows 8 or RT, your Windows Phone handset’s shared Internet connection will appear alongside other Wi-Fi connections. When you connect to this connection, it will prompt you to enter the associated password. (Windows 8/RT is also fairly intelligent about understanding that the connection is “metered,” meaning it is not an unlimited connection but rather one that has associated data limits. That is, of course, a subject for another book.)

Airplane mode Like many other smart phone platforms, Windows Phone supports a special feature called Airplane mode that, when toggled on, turns oﬀ all of the wireless radios in your handset, including the cellular connection, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and, when available, Tap + Send (Near Field Communication, or NFC, sharing). This mode is most often used on airplanes, because airlines often require you to disable the wireless connectivity features in mobile devices. To enable Airplane mode, navigate to Settings, System, Airplane Mode.

Once you’re in Airplane mode, you can individually re-enable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or Tap + Send via their separate Settings interfaces (as noted above). Only your cellular connection cannot be manually reenabled while in Airplane mode. To disable Airplane mode, navigate to the Airplane Mode settings and change the feature to Oﬀ. It may take several seconds for your cellular connection, in particular, to reconnect.

17. PC Integration Through a combination of more pervasive and aﬀordable broadband connectivity—both cellular and WiFi-based—and ever-more-sophisticated devices, which have taken on much of the power but little of the complexity of PCs, it now makes more sense to store your data—documents, photos, videos, music, and so on—in the cloud, so that it’s available from anywhere at any time. Windows Phone thoroughly embraces this new way of doing things, called cloud computing. It is designed to connect to online accounts as well as online and social networking services of all kinds, and these connections “light up” your handset in fun and useful ways, with live tiles and integrated experiences that are unique to this platform. Some will argue that this change is happening too soon, or that storing data on a PC still makes sense for them for some reason. And certainly Windows Phone does oﬀer some PC integration features, as discussed in this chapter, which allow you to copy, or synchronize, some kinds of data back and forth between your PC and the phone. But make no mistake: Windows Phone is very ﬁrmly in the cloud computing camp, and designed to work largely without any PC interaction at all. Note: If you are still partying with your PC like its 1999 and using old-school desktop applications like Microsoft Outlook to centrally store your important personal information, Windows Phone is not for you. This new system assumes that all of your email, calendar, contacts, task, and social networking accounts and data are stored in the cloud, not on a PC. You can of course connect Windows Phone to your PC in various ways. This includes physical connections—via USB, typically, a process we sometimes call tethering or syncing—and wireless connections, via Wi-Fi, NFC, or Bluetooth. This chapter is concerned largely with the physical connection type, which enables you to sync or copy things back and forth between your phone and PC, and the tools and techniques you’ll use to make that happen.

Understand your options for PC/phone copy and sync Windows Phone’s PC sync functionality is in keeping with the platform’s cloud-centric and “PC-free” way of doing things. That is, unlike PC sync solutions on other platforms, Microsoft doesn’t assume that most of your data is stored and managed on your PC and then synced to the phone. Instead, its sync solutions are designed for infrequent use and speciﬁc scenarios. And yes, that does say sync solutions with an s. Microsoft confusingly provides a variety of ways to copy and/or sync information between your PC and your phone. Further confusing matters, each of these solutions provides some unique functionality that the others lack, so it pays to be familiar with each method if possible. Still more confusing: While each in some way provides a way to copy photos from your phone to your PC, I strongly recommending using yet another solution for that activity. These solutions include: Windows Phone mobile app. If you are using Windows 8 or Windows RT, you can use a new “Metrostyle” mobile app to copy ﬁles back and forth between your PC and your phone. This app supports photos, music (including playlists), videos, ringtones and documents. It does not support iTunes-based playlists or podcasts. You can download the Windows Phone mobile app from the Windows Store.

Windows Phone desktop application. If you are using Windows 7 or Windows 8, you can use this desktop application to sync ﬁles from the PC to the phone, and to copy ﬁles from phone to the PC. This application supports photos, music (including playlists), videos, ringtones and podcasts. Unique to this application is support for iTunes, including iTunes-based playlists and podcasts. It does not support documents. You can download the Windows Phone desktop application from the Windows Phone web site. File Explorer. If you are using any supported version of Windows on a PC (Windows XP or newer, including Windows Vista, 7 and 8), you can use File Explorer (called Windows Explorer in some Windows versions) to browse the ﬁle system on your phone just like any other attached drive and then drag and drop ﬁles between your PC and the phone. Using this method, you can copy documents, music, photos, ringtones and videos between the PC and phone. Windows Photo Gallery (or similar). While each of the above solutions will let you copy photos (and videos) taken with your phone’s camera to your PC, none of them are particularly elegant. I recommend using a dedicated photo application such as Windows Photo Gallery, which is free, or a similar solution (Photoshop, Google Picasa or whatever). You can download Windows Photo Gallery from the Windows web site. I recommend downloading and installing each of the solutions above (depending on your Windows versions; for example, a Windows 8 user should download all three: Windows Phone mobile app, Windows Phone desktop application and Windows Photo Gallery). File Explorer (or Windows Explorer) of course comes free with every version of Windows. Each of these solutions will be discussed in this chapter.

Choose what happens when your phone is connected to the PC Before examining the various solutions noted above, let’s look what happens when you connect your phone to your PC. The ﬁrst time you do so, Windows downloads and installs one of the sync applications. But which you get is determined by which version of Windows you use with your PC: Windows 8 and RT users get the Metro-style mobile app and Windows 7 users get the desktop application, for example. Note: Users of older Windows versions—Windows XP and Vista—will need to manually copy data between the phone and your PC using Windows Explorer. On subsequent connections, you’ll be presented with the standard Windows AutoPlay functionality, which lets you choose what happens when you connect the phone going forward. The look and feel of this interface varies between Windows 7 and 8, but works very similarly. Here’s the Windows 8 version.

If you click this notiﬁcation, the AutoPlay interface appears, letting you choose between a set of choices that will vary according to which software applications are installed on the PC.

But some choices will always appear: Move things between your phone and PC. Choose this to automatically launch the Windows Phone mobile app (or the Windows Phone desktop app) when the phone is connected. Open device to view ﬁles. This will open a File Explorer (or, on Windows 7, a Windows Explorer) window so that you can use your standard ﬁle management skills to drag and drop ﬁles between your phone and the device manually. Take no action. Choose this to do nothing when your Windows Phone handset is connected. If you want to choose a diﬀerent action later on, you can access the AutoPlay control panel with Start Search. Scroll down until you see your phone in the list of device types and then choose the action you prefer from the drop-down list.

Use the Windows Phone mobile app The Windows Phone mobile app for Windows 8 and Windows RT is a full-screen, “modern” experience, and a simple way to interact with your phone. It’s your only option on Windows RT, which isn’t compatible with non-bundled Windows desktop applications. The ﬁrst time you run the app, it will prompt you to rename your phone and decide whether you want to automatically import photos from the phone to the PC each time a connection is made.

You can leave this option checked, but you should seriously consider using the superior photo acquisition capabilities of your favorite Windows photo application to import photos from the phone as well. That’s because the Windows Phone mobile app just dumps your photos into a single folder and doesn’t nicely rename them, as most dedicated photo applications will. Note: See the section Import photos from the phone later in the chapter to learn a better approach to photo importing. As for the app itself, you’ll ﬁnd it to be fairly straightforward. The main app view provides tiles representing the photos, music, videos and documents (assuming you have any of each) on the device, as well as an Add to Phone tile for copying content from the phone to your PC. There’s also a group

called In the Store you can safely ignore: It’s just a weak front-end to some of the apps in Windows Phone Store.

Copy ﬁles from the PC to your phone To add photos, music, playlists, video, ringtones or documents from the PC to the phone, tap the Add to Phone button in the main view of the Windows Phone mobile app.

Then, choose the appropriate item from the pop-up menu that appears.

These all work similarly: a ﬁle picker experience appears, allowing you to navigate around the ﬁle system of your PC, your network, and any compatible apps in order to ﬁnd the ﬁles you wish to copy. Let’s look at an example in which we copy music to the phone: First, tap Add to Phone and then Add Music.

Select one or more folders (which selects all contained ﬁles) or ﬁles that you wish to copy to the phone. As you select items, they’re added to a virtual basket at the bottom of the screen. This lets you add items from diﬀerent locations, stocking the basket as you go.

When you’re ready to copy the items, click the Add button. File copy progress is marked in the top right corner of the app. You click this text to see a more detailed view.

Items are automatically added to the right location on the phone. So photos, for example, will be copied to the Pictures folder and will be accessible from the Photos hub (and other compatible apps) won the phone. Music will of course be copied to the Music folder on your phone and be accessible from the Music + Videos hub (and other compatible apps).

Copy ﬁles from the phone to the PC Using the various tiles in the On Your Phone group, you can view the photos, music, videos and documents (but not ringtones or podcasts) on your device and then copy or move them to the PC, or delete them, using a fairly standard Metro-style interface. Consider the music choice. When you click this tile, you’re presented with a simple interface to the music on your phone and can switch between artists, albums, songs and playlists views.

From here, you can perform various actions:

Zoom in for quicker navigation. You can use the app’s semantic zoom functionality (via the small minus sign that appears in the lower right corner of the screen) to quickly move through a long list of content.

Find more options. If you right-click a blank area of the app, an app bar will appear providing you with additional options.

Select one or more items. You can right-click one or more items to select them, revealing an app bar that gives you further choices related to the selected items.

Copy the selected item(s) to the PC. Use the Save to PC app bar button to copy the selected item(s) to the PC. This task is automated so that music ﬁles, for example, are copied to the Music library on your PC. Delete the selected item(s) from the phone. Use the Delete button to delete the selected item(s) from the Windows Phone 8 handset. Switch between internal storage and SD card. If the phone has a micro-SD card installed, a Storage button displays a pop-up menu when clicked so you can switch the view between the phone’s internal storage and, if available, SD card.

Learn more about the storage usage on your phone To see how the storage on your phone is used, locate the usage gauge in the main app view, at the bottom of the On Your Phone section.

Tap Details to see a more detailed view.

If your phone has an installed micro-SD card, this view will include that storage as well.

Use the Windows Phone desktop application The Windows Phone desktop application works with both Windows 7 and Windows 8, helping you sync or copy music, photos, videos, podcasts, and ringtones from the PC to your phone. It works with content found in your standard Windows libraries or, if you choose, with Apple’s popular iTunes application. The ﬁrst time you run the application and connect a Windows Phone 8 handset to your PC, you’ll be prompted to name your phone and decide whether you want to automatically import photos from the phone to the PC each time a connection is made. You are also asked whether you wish to sync music, videos and podcasts from iTunes or Windows libraries.

The iTunes option is useful for anyone who has been using Apple’s popular digital media jukebox, of course. But if you have or are using Windows Media Player, Zune, or the Xbox Music app for Windows 8/RT, you should choose Windows Libraries. Note: Remember, while it’s ﬁne to use this application’s photo and video importing capability to backup that content from your phone to the PC, you should still consider using the superior photo acquisition capabilities of your favorite Windows photo application to import photos from the phone as well. Doing so is described later in this chapter.

Sync ﬁles from the PC to your phone Whether you use iTunes or Windows libraries, you can use this app to sync PC-based music, photos, videos, podcasts and ringtones to your phone. The interface for doing so is straightforward: Simply select the content type you wish to manage and then select the individual items you wish to sync. Again, let’s use music as an example.

In this view, you can see the relevant content that is found in your music library, including Playlists, Genres, and Artists columns which make it easy to select the content you wish to sync. You can disable syncing for each content type (except ringtones), or sync all of items found for each content type (except for ringtones). To sync all of your PC-based music to your phone, select Sync all music and then click the Sync button. Otherwise, use the Playlists, Genres and Artists columns to select the exact music to sync. Then, click the Sync button. Then, repeat this process for each content type. Some content types have unique options. Because of the way podcasts work, for example, you can choose to sync all episodes, one to ﬁve of the most recent episodes, one to ﬁve of the most recent unplayed episodes, or all unplayed episodes (among other choices). Ringtones can only be synced manually, ﬁle-by-ﬁle, and the application will select which (if any) of your PC’s audio ﬁles qualify.

Note: I ﬁnd this application’s handling of video to be poor, as it doesn’t diﬀerentiate between diﬀerent folders of videos, which may make it hard to ﬁnd certain content (for example, episodes of a TV show that are stored in a single folder). For this reason, you may want to use File Explorer to copy videos from your PC to the phone.

Copy ﬁles from the phone to your PC The Windows Phone desktop application can also be used to copy music, photos, videos, podcasts or ringtones from the phone to the PC.

To begin this process, select Phone on the right side of the window.

Here, you’ll see simpler lists of the content found on your phone, segregated again by content type. To copy music from your phone to the PC, select the items in the list and then click Save to PC.

Note: Xbox Music Pass-based music found on your phone is not displayed in this view and cannot be copied to your PC. Files copied in this way are copied to the relevant location on your PC. For example, music ﬁles are copied to the Music library. And photos are copied to the Photos library.

Learn about your phone’s storage usage The Windows Phone desktop application displays a capacity graph at the bottom of its window, showing how much storage is in your phone, how much is used, and what content types are using that storage.

If your phone has a micro-SD expansion, tap the Phone link and then choose SD card from the menu that appears to display the storage for that expansion card.

Rename your phone To rename your phone with the Windows Phone 8 desktop application, click Settings and then enter a new name in the Phone name text ﬁeld.

Click OK when complete.

Copy ﬁles using File Explorer When you connect a Windows Phone 8 handset to your PC via a USB cable, it appears in File Explorer just like any other USB-connected storage. This lets you import photos from the phone using any Windows-based photo application, as discussed in the next section. And you can access your device’s ﬁle system with File Explorer, and drag and drop ﬁles between the phone and your PC. To see this, navigate to the This PC view in File Explorer. (This is called Computer in earlier Windows versions.) As you can see, the Windows Phone handset is represented by an icon just like any other drive.

Note: You may need to enter the lock screen PIN on your phone before you can browse the ﬁle system with File Explorer on your PC. From here, you can browse the ﬁle system of the phone just as you would any other attached hard drive or storage device. All Windows Phone 8 devices will have a Phone disk, but those with a micro-SD card will also have a separate SD card disk.

The Phone disk will always have the following folders (though if you conﬁgured your phone to use the micro-SD card for content, these folders might be empty and the relevant folders on the card will be ﬁlled with content instead): Documents. This will contain downloaded Oﬃce documents, text ﬁles, and PDF ﬁles. Music. This will include purchased, downloaded, or synced music ﬁles that you will access through the Music + Videos app. This music is arranged in folders by artist.

Pictures. This folder will include the albums (which appear as folders) that appear in the Photos hub. By default, this includes Camera Roll. But you will also see Saved Pictures, and Screenshots folders if you’ve downloaded any photos to the device or taken any screenshots, respectively. And you can of course create and maintain other photo albums on the device as well. Photo albums contain photos, of course, but also short videos taken with the phone’s camera. Ringtones. Windows Phone stores ringtones in this folder. Videos. This folder will include synced video ﬁles that you will access through the Music + Videos app. This music is arranged in folders by artist. While most people will probably prefer to use the Windows Phone desktop application or Windows Phone mobile app to sync or copy content between the PC and the phone, you can use your well-oiled drag and drop skills to move content back and forth between the PC and the phone instead. For example, to copy a video ﬁle to the phone, simply drag the ﬁle into the Videos folder on the phone (or the SD card). Windows may prompt you to convert video ﬁles before copying them, but in my experience this is never necessary.

Once the ﬁle copy is complete, you can disconnect the phone from the PC and access the content in the relevant app in Windows Phone. In the video ﬁle example shown here, that means Music + Videos: The video shows up in Videos and plays as expected.

Note: Rifftrax—comprised of former members of Mystery Science Theater 3000—is hilarious and the video on demand and shorts content they provide is inexpensive and DRM-free. I recommend it highly.

Import photos from the phone Your Windows Phone 8 handset works just like any digital camera when attached to the PC via a USB cable. This means that you can use your choice of photo software to import your phone-based pictures, automatically organizing and naming them. Note: You may need to enter the lock screen PIN on your phone before you can import phone-based photos to your PC. Any photo software that oﬀers photo importing capabilities works. In this example, I’ll use Windows Photo Gallery, which is part of Windows Essentials, a free suite of useful applications for Windows 7 and

8. (If you’re familiar with another application with photo importing capabilities, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, Google Picasa, or similar, that will work ﬁne as well.) Once your phone is connected to the PC, launch Windows Photo Gallery and choose Import from the Home tab on the application’s ribbon. The Import Photos and Cameras window will appear, and you will see your phone listed as a compatible device.

Select your phone and then click Import. After locating the content on your camera, the wizard will tell you how many photos and videos were found. From here, you can review, organize, and group items to import—which I strongly recommend— or just import all items now. (If you choose the latter option, you will achieve a Zune-like dump of your photos, with no custom ﬁle names.)

If this is the ﬁrst time you’ve used this capability, please be sure to click More options before continuing. In the resulting window, you’re provided with many options related to the import process. While everyone has their own photo organization methodology, I recommend at least changing the ﬁle name to Name (this will append the name of the event to the front of each photo). You should also consider the option “Delete ﬁles from the device after importing” carefully and decide whether you want to autorotate the photos during import. (It’s usually pretty reliable.)

In the next phase of the wizard, you should name each event—what Photo Gallery calls groups—so that photos are sorted in a logical way. For example, you might want photos from a birthday party to have names like “Mark’s 4th birthday 001.jpg,” “Mark’s 4th birthday 002.jpg,” and so on; so that event—or group—would be named “Mark’s 4th birthday.”

When you’re done grouping and naming, click Import to copy (or move) the photos to the PC.

Releases 1.0 – August 2, 2013. Initial publication. 1.01 - August 6, 2013. Fixed various typos and other small errors found by readers. 1.02 – August 12, 2013. Added section on using favorite photos to customize the Photos tile and hub background displays. 1.03 – August 21, 2013. Added information related to new features in the GDR2 update for Windows Phone 8. 1.04 – October 1, 2013. MOBI and EPUB release. 1.05 – November 16, 2013. Added information related to Windows Phone handsets with 1080p screens.

Contents are copyright © 2013 Paul Thurrott. All Rights Reserved