Cortana will be available through Lumia Denim update

Oct 10, 2014 13:07 GMT  ·  By

Although Canadians using Windows Phone handsets have been given access to Cortana via Developer Preview, not everyone installed this version of the OS in order to take advantage of the personal digital assistant.

The good news is Nokia Canada has just announced Cortana will be officially introduced in the country later this month, along with the Lumia 830.

It’s also worth mentioning that the version of Cortana accessible via Windows Phone Developer Preview was optimized for the United States, so it was of little use to Canadians for certain tasks.

The next smartphone to be released by Microsoft in Canada, Nokia Lumia 830 will come with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 onboard, which means it will also include a beta version of Cortana.

As Microsoft announced, this early build of Cortana “still has a lot to learn in your region, so not everything will work entirely smoothly at first.”

Since Nokia Lumia 830 comes with Denim update, the version of Cortana Canadians will be able to access will be optimized for their country.

Canadians who do not own the Nokia Lumia 830 will not have access to this Canadian-optimized version of Cortana until Microsoft starts rolling out the Lumia Denim update to other smartphones, MobileSyrup reports.

The affordable flagship smartphone comes with Lumia Denim pre-installed

Nokia Lumia 830 is a mid-range smartphone that’s being advertised by Microsoft as an affordable flagship handset. The device sports a large 5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720p) resolution.

Hardware-wise, the Lumia 830 is far from being impressive, as the device is equipped with a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, an Adreno 305 graphics processing unit and 1GB of RAM.

Microsoft’s mid-range handset comes with 16GB of storage inside, but users can further expand storage up to 128GB via microSD card slot.

The phone’s main selling point is the 10-megapixel rear-facing camera that features Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording. The Lumia 830 also sports a 1-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls and selfies, which can also capture HD (720p) video.

Cortana is already available in the United States and the UK, and is slowly making its way to India, Australia, China and Canada. However, Microsoft plans to release its digital personal assistant to even more countries beginning next year.

We have yet to get more details on which countries will receive Cortana next year, but Microsoft is likely to offer more info closer to launch.