Windows Phone 8.1 blazes on the Lumia 1520, has five quick-action buttons

Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8.1 to the world. We gave you numerous videos featuring the OS in action, including Cortana, the Notification center and more. However, that was on a Lumia 630 prototype, one that we weren’t supposed to have in the first place – the risks we take for you, folks!

But how does Windows Phone 8.1 roll on the 2.2 GHz quad-core Lumia 1520? We ventured to find out.

The build of 8.1 that was on this Lumia 1520 was considerably newer and slightly more polished than our previous video. One thing that popped out immediately was that the quick-action buttons under the Action center featured five instead of four configurable buttons. That’s not a huge change, but we certainly like the idea of one-more button that we can customize, especially since we're sure we'll use that feature a lot. The five button configuration appears to be tied the resolution, so only expect this on 1080P Windows Phones.

The OS itself was super fast and fluid on the Lumia 1520. The graphics appeared to be tight, the new Start background looked glorious and quite frankly, we can’t wait to load this on our personal phone.

But enough chatter, you want to see the video and 8.1 doing its thing, so click above and let us know below what you think! Head to our Windows Phone 8.1 landing page to view all our coverage thus far, or our Build 2014 page!

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.