What will the 8.1 update actually bring to users outside of the US?

[Mister K]

I apologise if this is covered elsewhere, but I couldn't see it.

For those of us outside of the US, what will 8.1 bring? I know Cortana is absent, but what about the following things I am specifically interested in?
Action centre (I'm assuming a YES for this)
Independent volume settings (again I assume YES)
Quiet hours? More specifically (and this was something that I miss badly from Android) quiet hours and sound profiles based on location. The presentation seemed to show just such functionality, but will it work without Cortana. I cannot see a reason why it wouldn't, but...

Finally, couldn't Microsoft include a beta of Cortana for everyone, just without the voice recognition for non US countries, but still with keyboard input. That way they would gather much more info about real-world users? Any thoughts?

Thanks
K

 

[HarkAtYou]

I read that Cortana will come to the UK after the US then China. But I cant find a timescale for this, does anyone know how much later the UK will be?

Does anyone know if the developer preview will include Cortana everywhere?

 

[poiman]

Everything except for Cortana.

 

[grininja]

Are we talking about all features of Cortana? I thougt that we (outside US) will miss only the voice actions.

 

[Jupast]

I read that Cortana will come to the UK after the US then China. But I cant find a timescale for this, does anyone know how much later the UK will be?

Does anyone know if the developer preview will include Cortana everywhere?

Second half of 2014 for China/UK...and 'into 2015' for everywhere else.

So some of us are in for a looooong wait.

 

[marratj]

I apologise if this is covered elsewhere, but I couldn't see it.

Quiet hours? More specifically (and this was something that I miss badly from Android) quiet hours and sound profiles based on location. The presentation seemed to show just such functionality, but will it work without Cortana. I cannot see a reason why it wouldn't, but...

I tried this in the emulator. When you set a different region than the U.S., Cortana is gone completely and with it unfortunately also Quiet Hours

 

[TheRotfler]

I tried this in the emulator. When you set a different region than the U.S., Cortana is gone completely and with it unfortunately also Quiet Hours

Quiet Hours, too?
I can't believe... No email client improvements, no Quiet Hours..
Two years waiting.. for this

 

[marratj]

Quiet Hours, too?
I can't believe... No email client improvements, no Quiet Hours..
Two years waiting.. for this

Well, I have no problem with setting everything to U.S. English on my phone (I'm in Germany) but still this is really bad that we have to resort to such measures for such basic features...