WP 8.1 - USB and Cortana questions

[Bomberfrog]

Hi,
With McLaren canned and the L930 out here in the UK i reckon i will prob buy one very soon but have a couple of questions in hoping someone van answer.

1. A friend has a Samsung galaxy S5 and got one of these 8GB OTG Function MicroUSB to USB 2.0 Flash Drive Stick CONNECT and Copy to SMART PHONES Tablets (Ricco U100 Black):Amazon.co.uk:Computers & Accessories . Its pretty awesome and i wondered has anyone tried these devices on a WP8.1 device to see if it appears in the file manager...? Or do any devs know of its possible?

2. I know Cortana should be here very soon in the UK, but when Redmond hit the switch and let her loose in the UK, will it be a s/w update which can be slowed by carriers? Or is it something sitting dormant which will come to life when it goes live no update required? What's WP8.1 like in the uk without Cortana? Is it just the same as wp8?


Thanks for any info you can supply on this..

Cheers

 

[jojoe42]

Hi,
With McLaren canned and the L930 out here in the UK i reckon i will prob buy one very soon but have a couple of questions in hoping someone van answer.

1. A friend has a Samsung galaxy S5 and got one of these 8GB OTG Function MicroUSB to USB 2.0 Flash Drive Stick CONNECT and Copy to SMART PHONES Tablets (Ricco U100 Black):Amazon.co.uk:Computers & Accessories . Its pretty awesome and i wondered has anyone tried these devices on a WP8.1 device to see if it appears in the file manager...? Or do any devs know of its possible?

2. I know Cortana should be here very soon in the UK, but when Redmond hit the switch and let her loose in the UK, will it be a s/w update which can be slowed by carriers? Or is it something sitting dormant which will come to life when it goes live no update required? What's WP8.1 like in the uk without Cortana? Is it just the same as wp8?


Thanks for any info you can supply on this..

Cheers

Unfortunately there is no OTG support on Windows phone so adapters like that won't let you plug in flash drives and such into the phone. I think since your region is getting Cortana soon anyways it will be in the settings already, just hidden like the USB settings are currently in the dev preview. I imagine the phone would just require a reboot to show Cortana when she's released in the UK.

Without Cortana when you press search it takes you to the Bing search screen that is currently in WP8, otherwise there are some pretty big changes in WP8.1, like the third column of tiles, the action centre, transparent tiles, improved word flow keyboard, new Battery Sense and Storage Sense apps. It's a pretty big update that brings the OS up to par with the competition