14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has been long rumored to be planning the release of a new version of Windows Phone 8 early next year, namely Windows Phone 8.1, and evidence suggests that the company is actively testing the platform.
Info coming from Twitter user Nawzil shows the FB Pages Manager application being installed on devices running under different Windows Phone 8.1 builds, though no further details on the OS itself are available.
This is not the first time we learn that Windows Phone 8.1 is being tested internally, though we won’t have an official confirmation on the new platform iteration until next year.
Apparently, both the free and the commercial variants of FP Pages Manager (which enables users to manage their Facebook profiles straight from the smartphone) have been tested on the upcoming platform release.
Windows Phone 8.1, codenamed Blue, is expected to arrive in early 2014 on a variety of new hardware from Microsoft’s partners.
According to some of the previous reports on the operating system, Microsoft will include a new Notifications Center in it, along with various other enhancements.
Furthermore, the upcoming platform flavor should bring along the Cortana voice assistant, which would work similarly with Apple’s Siri and Google’s Google Now.
As WPCentral notes, other enhancements expected to make it inside Windows Phone 8.1 include app-list sorting and actionable-notifications, among other features.
In terms of new hardware that might arrive alongside the new OS version, we can count only the recently rumored Nokia Lumia 1820, which has been said to make an official appearance at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.
Should this pan out, we might expect Windows Phone 8.1 to be launched around the same time, given that Microsoft usually releases various platform iterations on brand new smartphones.
Hopefully, it won’t be long before more details emerge on this, so keep an eye on this space to learn the news.