A newly leaked video shows off a snippet of the upcoming Windows 8.1 update and focuses on the notifications centre. The “Action Center” as it is labelled in the video. As with Android and iOS the Action Center is activated by pulling down from the top of the display and dragging it over whatever is already on the display.
It’s a feature that has been a long time coming for Windows Phone users who have complained about the lack of an aggregated view for missed notifications. In fact it was a specific bug bear in our Nokia Lumia 1020 review last year.
At the top of the Action Center are four user customisable toggles which can be used to turn on/off features like WiFi and Bluetooth or cycle through things like display brightness levels:
[symple_accordion title=”Full List of Toggles”][/symple_accordion]
[symple_accordion_section]
- Bluetooth
- Brightness
- Camera
- Flight Mode
- Internet Sharing
- Location
- Project My Screen
- Rotation Lock
- VPN
- WiFi
[/symple_accordion_section]
Just underneath the toggles is a ‘Clear All’ notification button as well as one to the right to access system settings. The video shows how notifications for Messaging, Phone and WiFi can be turned on/off as well as being able to customise the ring tone for each and whether a banner appears at the top of the phone for the notification. hopefully this level of granular control is available to all apps installed on the phone similar to Apple’s implementation in iOS. Individual apps can also have multiple notifications which all stack together under the app’s name like the Twitter notifications in the image.
Look out for official news on the timing of the Windows Phone 8.1 update at Microsoft’s Build conference this April.
[Image: unleashthephones.com and The Verge]
