Nokia Lumia 520 Tips and Tricks

Windows Phone 8
Phone: Nokia Lumia 520
Factory OS: Windows Phone 8

Have you updated your Operating System?
Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Windows Phone 8.1
Or view tips for all Windows Phone versions

If you are listening to the radio and like a song, but don’t know the name or artist, your phone can help you. This is similar to the Shazam music service.

Simply open the Bing App and press the Music button. The phone will then search for the song and provide you the song, artist, album cover and a link to purchase the track (or album) from the Zune marketplace.

While in the Music player, you can enable Replay mode. Just open a Song, then press on the Album. A Replay symbol should then appear.

Go to the People section and find a coloured Title (the colour will depend on your Theme). Press the tile and an alphabet should appear. Start typing the name of the contact you want to dial and it will appear

You can use your smartphone as an Xbox controller.

First, download and install the Xbox SmartGlass App (formerly known as My Xbox Live). Once this is installed go to Xbox hub and make sure your Xbox is turned on and connected to your WiFi router. Then make sure the phone is connected to the same WiFi network.

If that is all setup, then the App will sign you in and you can start controlling your Xbox with the phone.

To Copy text to the clipboard (to paste later), then simply press and hold on some text. Then drag the two end circles to select all the text you want. You can pinch and zoom if it makes this easier.

Once you have copied your text, you can then paste it using the Clipboard option (which should appear about the keyboard).

Go to Settings – Applications – Phone to display your number

In the Maps application, you can share any location with a friend. First you need to find your location. Open Maps, then find your location. Press and hold to drop a Pin on that location. You can drag the Pin to get a more precise location.

Then press the Pin and select Share. Then choose to share via SMS or Email.

When browsing on your phone you may notice images can be quite blurry or distorted. This is because your network provider is compressing the images before they are downloaded on to your device.

Unfortunately there is no way to override this, but if you have a WiFi connection nearby, then you can turn that on. This will mean that all image downloads come through the WiFi connection, rather than your carrier, and the images should appear normally.

While browsing websites, if you see a phone number or a physical address, you can double tap the number / address. For phone numbers, the phone will dial the number. For addresses, it will show the address on Bing Maps. This may not work for all carriers.

To remove a call from the call history, locate the number you want to remove from the call log.

Then press and Hold on the number and select Delete