Windows Phone 8.1 Tips and Tricks

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.

To fast forward or rewind a song while playing, you need to look for two circle buttons with arrows in them.

These are used to play the previous / next tracks.

If you Press and Hold them however, you can fast forward or rewind the track.

To access Voice control, Press and Hold the Windows key. You can say things like ‘Call John’, ‘Use Calendar’, ‘Find nearest restaurant’ and so on

While entering a website address you can Press and Hold the .com key on the keyboard. This will give you the option of other domain suffixes (e.g. .org, .co.uk, .com.au etc.)

To import your contacts from your SIM card, then insert the SIM and turn the phone on.

Then go to People. Hold near the top of the screen and select Import SIM contacts.

To put your phone in flight mode, or offline mode, go to Start – Applications list – Settings. Then press Flight mode.

A great feature of recent Windows Phone versions is what’s called Storage Sense which can help you manage your phone and SD card storage.

If your device does have expandable storage and you have an SD card, then Storage Sense helps you move photos, music and Apps from your phone storage to your SD card.

You can also use it to see which content or which Apps are consuming the most storage space. From here you can either delete or uninstall the offenders.

The phone has a Facebook application, but you can also integrate Facebook with the phone operating system. First you need to setup your account. Go to Settings – Email & accounts and set it up there

If you want to add or change languages on your phone, then go to Settings – Language+region.

Here you can choose languages and download / install if necessary. You can then jump between languages easily from this menu.

Your phone has a neat feature where if you’re running late for appointment, you can quickly notify the person you’re supposed to be meeting.

First, go to your Calendar App and you should see four options at the bottom. One of these should say Late and should have a symbol of a person running.

Press this and the person you’re meeting will be notified with some sorry text.