Windows Phone 8.1 Tips and Tricks

To create a conference call on your phone, you need to first call someone.

Then when they are on the line, press the Down arrow on the screen and press Add to call and select another Contact.

Then when you’ve found the second person, press Merge calls

To disable caller ID, go to Settings – Applications – Phone.

Then change Show my Caller ID to either Everyone, No one or My contacts.

This is useful if you don’t want people to see your phone number when you call them.

To maximise the viewable area when viewing websites, then you can rotate the phone to landscape mode.

This has the effect of hiding the menu toolbar and address bar so that you can see more of the website.

Sometimes while trying to download a game from the Marketplace an error will occur and the download will stop.

To resume the download, open the Marketplace tile and choose Games. Find the game that is having the problem and select ‘Check install’. Then when you’re in the Marketplace downloads screen long-press on the error and choose ‘try again’

If you’re away from a charger and want to conserve your phone’s battery, then go to Settings – Battery Saver. A heart symbol should appear over your battery indicator.

This turns off various features such as push email, and some Apps will be prevented run in the background.

When it is turned on, you can also press Advanced at the top of the screen. From here you can choose when the feature gets automatically turned on, or whether it should be used permanently.

To share a website with a friend, then browse to the website you want to share.

Then Press and Hold on a hyperlink, then select Share. You can then choose how to share the site.

On previous versions of Windows Phone users weren’t able to change their lock screen or live tile background, however this is now possible.

To change this, go to the settings menu and select the Start+Theme option. Then choose a Start background.

In this screen you can also set another row of live titles, change the accent colour and also set the phone’s overall colour to dark or light.

Microsoft may still be in denial, but Bing is not the best search engine in the world and most Windows Phone users would prefer to use Google by default.

As you might expect from a Microsoft phone, you can’t disable Bing by default, but you can go to the App Store and download the Google Search App.

Once you have that, then simply Pin this to your Start screen so it’s easily accessible.

To pair your phone with Bluetooth speakers or a headset via Bluetooth, then start from the homescreen and scroll to the right.

Then choose Settings – Bluetooth. Then slide the Bluetooth to On. The phone will then scan for nearby Bluetooth devices. It may ask for a password for the device. Try entering 0000 or 1234.

Please note that this may not work for all devices.

To turn off Geo-tagging for photos, go to Settings – Applications – Pictures & Camera.

Then change ‘include location (GPS) information in pictures you take’