With that in mind, I’m here to lay out ten more awesome items that you may not know about regarding your Lumia phone. Some items below are shortcuts and others are pro-tips that will help you stand out amongst your Lumia-carrying friends.
1. Easily input .net, or .org into a URL window
In Internet Explorer, there’s a handy .com button in the lower right to easily enter .com when typing in a link to go to. For example, you can type Nokia and then hit the .com button to avoid the extra keystrokes. If you’re trying to access a .net or .org address, just do a long press on the .com button and the alternative choices will pop up.
2. Use your voice
If you want to use your voice to conduct commands on your Lumia, click and hold the Windows button. A prompt will come up and allow you to speak your command. I do this a lot while I’m in the car via Bluetooth. My most used one is “Call Home” when I want call my family at the house.
3. Hear a cool song? Identify it with built-in search
I love Shazam, but I haven’t had to load the app because Bing search has song identification built right in. To access it, click the search button on your phone and hit the icon that looks like a musical note. The app will search for the song and will allow you to even access the title of the track later by selecting music history.
4. Are you a stranger in a foreign land? Never need a translation dictionary
Use Translate to conduct translation services straight from your mobile. Translate can do its work via spoken word or even by taking a photo of a block of text to have it translated on screen for you. This would be very handy when traveling abroad!
5. Filter your people
By default, Windows Phone pulls in all the people from all the accounts you’ve set up and adds them to your People Hub. That’s fine in many cases, but what if, for example, you’re following a whole bunch of people on Twitter that you’d never phone or email? In that case they’re just in the way. Go to Settings->Apps->People and chose ‘filter my contact lists’ to exclude accounts that are mostly casual contacts.
6. Get back to your app with ease
If you want to switch between apps quickly and easily, press and hold the back button. A selector will appear and allow you to switch between your open applications. This can be a huge time-saver for multi-taskers like me.
7. Focus your image
Sometimes when you’re shooting a photo or video, you want to focus on a specific aspect – such as an individual or mountain in a landscape photo. To do this on your Lumia, while in the camera application, put your finger on the subject you wish to focus on, the aut0-focus will key in on them and snap the photo.
8. Control your music volume with ease
If you’re listening to tunes on your Lumia phone, and you want to crank up (or down) the volume on your music, you can easily use the volume up/down buttons, even if your phone is locked and the screen is black. Give it a shot…and rock on.
9. Tag your friends in photos and upload to Facebook, the easy way
On any photo you take with your phone, if you want to tag friends and then upload to Facebook, use these easy steps. In the photo, click Share to Facebook, then add a tag using the button on the button to “Add Tags”, the upload..and you’re done!
10. Find hot spots around you
We’ve all been in the situation either while on holiday or just bored, where you want to know what places are around you and which are worth your time. There’s a cool feature to check out in Nokia Maps – after loading the app and in the main Map view, click on the Places button which is in the bottom center of the screen. Instantly, you can see popular places around you.
You can go a step further and click the down arrow and see the explore tiles for even more options.
