Lumia 920 hands-on video reveals new Windows Phone 8 improvements

By Rich Edmonds
last updated

Lumia 920 reveals Windows Phone 8 features

Windows Phone Central forum member Blackwood504 noticed some interesting potential improvements / features in a Lumia 920 hands-on video that could well be in Windows Phone 8, so he decided to take screenshots and publish his interpretations of what's being shown in our forums. French website Test-Mobile.fr got their hands on a yellow Lumia 920 and decided to take it for a spin.

We're able to see functionality and features in their video that aren't present in the latest builds of Windows Phone 7.5. So what do we believe has been revealed in the hands-on action?

Check out the above video for a full walkthrough of the device (in French) as well as the unveiling of features that are covered below.

On contact with the Nokia wireless charging stand, a notification was displayed on-screen that asked the user whether or not the Windows Phone should accept content from the dock. It would appear as though the stand sports NFC built-in and apps can be tied to supported accessories / hardware. It's reported on Nokia's website (opens in new tab) that the charging stand will open up a specified app that boosts the volume.

The next screen is showing the multitasking in Windows Phone 8, which sports an increase to what appears to be eight different apps held in the manager for quick and convenient access. This was originally set for the Tango update. As well as the increase in amount of apps supported, an "Accessories" app was spotted while the swiping animation was in effect. 

  1. "Tap to open" - to configure connected hardware?
  2. "Open application by tapping the NFC tag on your phone against the stand."
  3. It would appear as though we could have a new area in the settings for "Accessories" where NFC-enabled hardware can be configured.

We're next visiting the Bing search page, which shows two notable differences compared to Windows Phone 7.5. 

  1. A mysterious icon appears when search is loaded, but disappears shortly after. We're not aware of the icon's significance, nor what it actually represents.
  2. The microphone icon has been moved from the app bar to the search box.

Bing Search has been refreshed with a "media" pane now present in the results. This could well be Microsoft grouping images with possibly video and other media. 

The text selectors have been revamped, which look much more appealing to the eye. Two hollow circles replace filled triangles and the selector itself appears to have been on an effective diet. This improvement will hopefully make it slightly easier to select text on congested web pages for those who struggle to control the selectors.

Windows Phone 8 will seemingly enable users to select multiple photos and videos at once for mass management. Options could include delete, move, copy and share functionality.

Finally, we've got new tiles within the Games hub - one for achievements and another for Avatar atire. This could illustrate Microsoft implementing features found in the Extras app into the hub itself, or these two tiles could be mere shortcuts.

So, are these some of the improvements / features we'll see in Windows Phone 8? It's a strong possibility. Another question would be: which of the above features will be included in Windows Phone 7.8 (if any)?

Source: YouTube, wpcentral forums; massive thanks to Blackwood504 for publishing the photos with attached ideas!

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

91 Comments
  • any hope for ringtone profiles?
  • Also, what happened to visual voicemail? It is gone. :'(
  • If you mean the custom ringtone, actually we can do that now.
  • There is a work around for that. I have been using the app "YouRang" to set up customized ring tones. The app searches youtube for content, and almost all songs are on youtube. Find the one you want by searching for it. Then using the apps selector functions "cut" the song from when you want the ringtone to start and finish.
    Save it.
    And voila you would have your customized ringtone.... It does take a few tries but you will get the result you are looking for.
    Have been using it on the Lumia 900.
  • Isn't that Bing icon a GPS symbol? I'm probably wrong, but figured I'd toss it out there.
  • That is what I figured. It probably went away because it found the location and didn't need the GPS anymore.
  • That's the GPS icon indeed, but what really sucks is that when switching between aps (Multi-tasking) there is still no icon to close the app which imo is a shame putting us to do 2 more actions to close an app (hit the thumnail and then the backbutton, which will send you to the last visited app).
  • You know, beyond ever wanting to close an app, I'd prefer a pin option so that I can pick an app or two to actually keep open.  
     
  • Yes pinning an app to stay in the multitask is a much needed option, much better than closing. I don't understand everyone's need to close an app, it'll eventually toll off the list anyways. Having to launch the same app that you WANT to stay available is annoying.
  • Exactly!  It sort of puzzles me that more people don't mention this.  I'd love the ability to prevent an app from being closed in the task switcher.
  • THANK YOU!
     
    I keep noticing this too, where is the dang 'close' option when multi-task windows is open?  I'm getting tired of having to press the 'back' button several times to close everything.  A simple circle with an X attached to the top right or left of each app in the multi-task window would have been perfect.
     
    I really enjoy Windows Phone OS, but it's still lacking some pretty useful features that have been around for YEARS in other phones, such as the option for ringtone/profiles.  My old Nokia phone of over 6 years ago could even be setup to change the ringtone and volume based on the time of day (so it would automatically switch to silent when at work, etc), change the type of vibrate pattern (long-short-long, short-short-short, etc, etc).  
    I'm still excited for WP8, but would like to see some of what I'd consider basic features added.
  • Simply because a "close" option just isn't neccessary? The app will get off the list anyways and an app saved in the background hardly has an impact on performance so what is there to gain from "closing" an app saved in the background? 
    Instead, like suggested above, an option to 'lock' an app so it doesn't get removed from the list is more viable. Now that would be terrific, closing an app is sort of like killing apps on the iPhone - what's the point?
  • You are missing the point...when you have an addiction to a weird sort of fettish pr0n, it gets very annoying having to close out all your "Fluffies on Parade" apps before you hand the phone to your wife/kids.
  • Quite right !!! I have a list of basic functions missing from wp7.5 which I pray they've implemented on wp8 if not am not going to waste my money upgrading....
  • You never know. They might just have an app closing option like Windows 8 (i.e. slide down to close the app) :)
  • I don't have a cell phone let alone a win phone but could they be switching to win8's way of closing an ap.  Syping from the top to bottom.
    Opps should have read down a bit more!
  • This. Even webOs had the flick off the screen to close thingy.
  • Ah, sweet...one of my big wants is in: the multi-select on the photo album to do actions like delete and upload is exactly what I wanted.
  • +1
  • plus a laser keyboard and holographic display! 
  • Lol, let's leave that to Apple and Fox news.
  • The first time I saw that news cast I thought it was a troll.  Nokia 920 is gonna be awesome.
  • We need to be able to directly close the apps in the multitasking view!
    With a flick up/downwards or with a "close button" in the corner of each app's thumbnail.
    Otherwise we have to enter the app and press the back button thousands of times!
    =(
  • Why do you need to close so many apps? They are not taking up any resources.
  • Simply because some of us don't need that many apps opened at the same time, + I don't want to swipe for hours to get to another app when I can close the unused ones and have only those I need opened.
  • It's not so much about displaying "open apps" as it is just showing you a history of the last 5 apps (or now 8?) that you've used. That said, there is one legitamite case where it would be useful, and that's with apps that use background agents. Otherwise, completely fine the way it is now.
  • There are a lot of people who would love to have a 'close app' button on the multi-task switch screen.  It's really annoying having to hit 'back' a bunch of times to get everything closed.  
    Ever tried closing your internet browser?  If you've viewed a bunch of pages you have to hit 'back' through each page to finally get out of the app.  
     
  • what you could do is go to triple dots menu in IE, press tab, and tap close for all web thumbnail, then.. hit back button. Sh!t that 4 steps minimum
  • If you hit tabs the close the tab you were last on, then hit back button it will take you back to the main menu without having to troll through all your previous web pages. I find this the best way to close IE. :-)
  • You do know that this isn't Windows 7 on a PC where all those programs are using up resources and slowing down your PC, right? As soon as you press the Start button, you are technically out of the app, it's just that the OS saves the app in background so you can resume quickly. It isn't impacting your resources or slowing you down so what good will killing the app do? Except give you a 'cleaner' list of app history of course.
    I can see why this would be neccessary on Symbian or Android because by nature, those OSes are designed to have apps running in real time - much like an actual desktop OS but on Windows Phone or iOS a close option is nothing but a gimmick and offers no noticable improvements and actually slows you down since you cannot resume as quickly as you would with the app saved in the background.
  • Your right that it doesn't do anything to improve performance. But, I found myself doing so on iOS all the time, especially if an app freezes/crashes. We have been programmed to close out of non-current apps from using Desktop OS's for so many years and its hard to break the habit of wanting to do so.
    However, there is currently a way to do so without hitting the back button a million times. Just go into settings and swipe over to applications, then background tasks. Then just click on an app and then click 'turn off'. Just make sure you check the box to turn background ing back on for the next time you open it. 
    We just need to break the "habbit" of feeling the need to do so or they should just add it for the heck of it. I do like the idea of pinning a needed app though.
  • It's not about the resources. What happens to me often is that I open so many apps that my first one closes and I lose my data. For example if I'm running my stopwatch app and then do a bunch of other things like web browsing and email and texting and calculator and maps suddenly my stopwatch closes. 
    If we had an option to close apps then I would close most of them after use and leave the important ones open and this would prevent them from being forced off. The only way to prevent it at the moment is to keep going back to your important apps after using each less important app to bring them back to the front line.
    This system is pretty pathetic if you ask me. It's pretty embarrassing that an OS with the Windows brand would have worse multitasking than all of its competitors. This is the main reason I want to switch to BB10 instead of WP8.
  • Here's the one reason I'd like a close app button or swipe: Say I text someone, then I switch to IE. I get a response text so I tap the toast notification, which relaunches the Messaging hub. I switch back to IE after answering and get another response text & I tap the notifcation again. When I go into the task switcher for a 3rd time, there are 3 instances of the Messaging hub opened up. It happens to me frequently and would easily be remedied with some way to close the other two. Maybe WP8 fixes this annoyance on it's own...
  • I can see what you are getting at but I would attribute it to the OS not handling multi-tasking properly instead of a need for a close button because a close button would require you to baby the OS. Every time you open the messaging hub, you will have to close the last instance of it - that's stupid. Instead, I would rather have it "couple" the instances in a stack of cards (kind of like Web OS). 
    Heh, wishful thinking.
  • IE browser or some hubs i can get that, but how to get out from game with annoying sound? You will get shocked dead to resume app with annoying sound
  • Why?  They are not running in the background.  The "multi-task switcher" is simply there for you to access any of the previous apps you have launched, so you wouldn't need to relaunch them.  I can only think of one reason: you want to close a previous "app" to free up another "slot" in the Multi-task switcher.  I believe that scenario to be rare.
  • In WP7.5 they are "tombstoned", so yes, they're not wasting resources, but in WP8 the apps will be able to continue running in background.
    Even the iPhone has a faster way to close opened apps, and it would be easy to implement this in WP8.
    I hope the guys at MS will figure something out :)
  • WinRT apps don't run in the background on Windows 8, its unlikely they will do so on a platform based on the same kernel.
  • Not every App will be able to run in the background on WP8. Only messaging and navigations apps. And if I recall correctly the'll have to be certified for it.
  • well, you could close the app by a quick double back tap in the multitasking mode. It works for me. It should take you back to the last opened app after that.
  • Hey thanks for the great tip, I was never aware of the "quick" double tap it works great for selective clearing of the list!!
  • I agree that we definitely need something like this. I often wish I could close apps through the multitask screen instead of backing out of them. This would especially be handy any time an app becomes unresponsive!
  • Looks like we aren't getting text wrap. That sucks. Not all pages are mobile friendly and I hate the mobile versions of some sites anyway. Oh well, I guess I kinda figured they wouldn't care much to incorporate this feature.
  • It's not a replacement, but at least with the higher res screens you'll be able to read more text in one line than with WVGA.
  • And that is a total show stopper for most business users. It makes the all important corporate web based information, files and PDFs unreadable without the totally unacceptable need to scroll both horizontally and vertically.
  • All this excitement about wp8 made me forget 7.8 even existed
  • What about selecting multiple text messages to delete. Id like to be able to delete all texts at once instead of going 1 by 1
  • Do you mean all text messages in the Messageing Hub, or just those within a specific conversation?  Did you know you can tap-and-hold ont he conversation and select Delete?
  • Yea I meant all messages in the hub. Selecting which conversations you want deleted or a select all conversations and delete them
  •  
    I can tell you right now the reason that is not a feature is to prevent people from accidentally deleting all of their SMS.  The amount of people that would actually want to delete EVERYTHING is significantly less than the amount that would do it accidentally.
  • Why is Nokia pushing the yellow so hard?
  • Maybe they just like it. Somebody has to.
  • Since this isn't a Nokia video I don't see how its their fault a yellow phone is used in the video. And even so, just buy the color you want, problem solved.
  • also its similar with the cyan they probably want that to be the color associated with the 920
  • Hopefully they make a Nokia Blue Lumia 920. I'm surprised that didn't strike Nokia as an idea. I'd prefer that over Cyan
  • ???? So... you don't come to this site much do you?
    http://www.wpcentral.com/cyan-lumia-920--att-nokia-surprise-folks
  • Blue =/= Cyan
    He's asking for a Blue Lumia920. Cyan is a feminine color. I too would love a deep blue... as strong in tone as the red lumia 920
    Meh, guess I'll wait for the Lumia 950. or perhaps... the Surface phone. I for some reason see Microsoft offering a blue color...
  • Lovn the option to multi- deletes.. Very much needed
  • WP8 question -- will toasts no longer appear above the lock screen? 
     
    I don't like the idea that I if my phone is unattended someone could read an incoming text message without having to unlock the phone.  
     
    IMHO Toasts should not appear above the lockscreen wallpaper.  If they do appear, then they should not appear if the user has a PIN on their phone.
  • that happens in ios and android as well dont know what to tell you.
  • iOS has an the option to not display any details about the message -- when I had my iPhone (Pre-iOS 5).  So you would get a notification, but it wouldn't show the text, who it was from, etc...
  • And IOS is the worse since almost the full content of the message will show on the lock screen. A lot of my friends get in trouble that way (even though the put themselves in the situation to get in trouble).
  • I suggest going to the windows phone uservoice site and suggesting it there, where Microsoft employees actually look at it
  • +1million
    The simple OPTION would be nice wouldn't it!  There's no toast OR screen light-up for email.  Just the sound.  I wish they would give us this option for texts.  It's a privacy thing.  ESPECIALLY if there is a PIN required.  It just makes sense.
  • Exactly! So you can cheat on your wife properly!
  • So there really seems to be no notification center in WP8... So much for listening to the customers...
  • Apple patented the idea that someone might have the idea that someone might want a notification center. Microsoft is still cutting through the red tape.
  • apple would never go for the idea of tape, theyre too cool for that. and for the response below: a notification center would essentially be a... and keep with me here... central place for all of your notifications (email, text messages, voice mail, missed calls). Many people have suggested a simple "swipe to the right" (so this area would be to the left of the homescreen, unlike apps which are to the right).
  • Yeah that could be incorporated, if designed well.. It nerd not be a whole page, but a kind of a side bar which could be swiped back when it's not needed.
  • Honest question here: What's a notification center?
  • also known as the me tile in wp the dropdown center in ios and android :D
  • Notification center is essentially a place to view the log of everything any part of the OS, including its apps, have shown you as notifications, for you to review them in case you miss them.
    While some argue that the Start screen is in effect Windows Phone's notification center, it doesn't allow you to view notifications that unpinned apps (apps with no tiles on the Start screen) have displayed. As a design principle, there shouldn't be an important message that would disappear without any convenient, easy to access method; an unpinned app might not get a visit by the user in a week, while it might have something important to tell you. This principle has not been observed so far in Windows Phone.
  • no way, i dont want all apps update bother me
  • I don't so much care about a notification center. I just wish the toast notifications at the top would stay on the screen until tapped or swiped away, rather than disappearing on their own after a few seconds. That would be good enough for me.
  • wp is built-in notification front and center, it's called live tiles
  • Hope these small things come to 7.8 as well....
  • so cool to here someone who is actually french say, "voilà." haha
  • hey not to sound rude but theres a reason english is a universal language :\
  • so that people don't bother to learn another language?
    *fais un petit effort! ;)
  • There are also tons and tons and tons of other videos on youtube saying the same things In English, so stop complaining. The 70 million people in France deserve to be informed too
  • Yep
  • Im really happy about marking pictures being incorporated in WP8. Hope it comes to 7.8 too.
  • I love how the black screen takes almost all of the front of the phone in the 920. The coloured margin around it is much thinner than in the 800, making the phone look less bulky and more slick. And the cyan version looks badass.
  • call filter....
    its the only feature that worth the IOS6 because its simply awsome 
  • Call Filters has been present in Android way before iOS!
    and both are still not worth it (in comparison to WP)
  • The charging stand having NFC and compatiblity with the Nokia Accessories app have been known since the Lumia 920 was unveiled. Very surprised that this has slipped under WPCentral's radar. We've been talking about it for weeks now. The feature was demonstrated to the public/media at the Lumia 920 event and is even featured in the official charging stand 30 second video/ad from Nokia.
  • After seeing more and more of the 920 hands on vids, i'm starting to like the gloss finish. Matte may appeal to "professional" seekers (i love the matte on my lumia 800 btw)  but the gloss highlights matches well with the screen highlights which gives the whole device a 1 solid piece feel.  (by highlights i mean the reflections). Lumia 800 (cyan) is matte already so a glossy 920 (yellow) would be perfect! 
  • One more thing, in people hub we can see "Rooms" which is not exist in WP7.5 .
  • yes this has been gone over multiple times on this site
  • I've seen a fuller version of this video. In fact at 5:03 the speaker SLIDES A HORIZONTAL ROW OF ICONS to the right (notice the missing space at the top of homescreen 5:04 onwards). I think the same shot has been faded out of the video :(
  • Love the look of the Lumia 920 and the no AT&T logo in the video!  Just have to wait 6 months I guess!  I just cannot bring myself to do a 2 year contract!