10 Things You Should Know about Call App / People HUB in Windows Phone 8.1

Both Call App and the People Hub has received fair amount of improvements both from user experience and how everything is now organized. We take a deep dive into these apps to find out what’s new and what changed.

1) On Touch to call : While this was possible using the call icon, it much straight forward now. Tap on the contact name and make a call.

2) Call Duration :

1. A call summary is displayed right after the call which is more sense full.
2. All the calls, outgoing and incoming, for a particular number are now grouped together. You get a count in the history section.
3. Long press on any contact or number and select details. This gives you chronological  details of calls made, time and duration.

3) Social Profile

Since the tap on contact makes a call now, a new icon right next to every contact, can be used to find details of the contact. This opens up profile of the user and if its connected to Facebook or any other app, pulls all the details. This is exactly the old interface except that Social details come via Apps and not just Facebook. You can see History, Profile, Social Updates and so on.

It is also possible to disconnect a contact on your phone from its social profile per app basis. This makes sure you can reduce the amount of details that show up. So if a person is more active on Twitter than Facebook, this step will make more sense.

4) Speed Dial:

A feature which was available in even the oldest mobile know. Now it is possible to add a contact or a number to Speed dial, the second tab next to History. This is handy when you call set of people most often.

5) Video Calls:

If your data is cheaper than your call rates or you know the person whom you are going to call is on WiFi, it is possible to switch from a regular call to video call by tapping on Skype Icon which shows up on the call progress. This will get enabled only after the call is received by the end user and both have Skype installed.

There are two reasons why this is happening only after a call is connected. One it makes sure to give you time to figure out of the person is ready for call else you can continue on the regular call. Second, the system has to know if you both have Skype in place to get the call done.

Don’t use Skype ? Glad that Microsoft did not restricted it to Skype. This feature works with any app that has Video calling feature. So if you want to use Viber instead of Skype, you can do that in Phone Settings. As of now Viber is yet to enable this feature and list itself under this category.

6) Contact Picture: Previously, it only displayed for an incoming call. Now this works for outgoing as well.

7) When Adding a New Contact:

• You can switch account just before saving. So if you want to save in your Gmail Account instead of Hotmail, it is possible.
• When setting up a new contact, fields like Last Name, Company are hidden. The only field which you see right now is Name, followed by a Plus Sign. Tap on this for those fields.

8)  Organized People Hub:

• Instead of displaying “What’s New”, People hub shows the contact list first, fulfilling the core idea that people would like to search for a contact when using the app instead of looking at the updates.
• It is possible to filter out contacts which do not have a phone number.
• Recent section which displayed your activity with a person on social network doesn’t exist any more.

• Add a new Account or an App has taken the priority and lists on the top.
• A direction option to import from SIM is available here.

• While Twitter integration remains same, Facebook posting for a contact now shows up as “Post to Timeline”. This will launch the Facebook App. As more third party app integrate, you will see similar features.

9) Me Tile:

This will slowly become useless. I remember Microsoft advertised this feature a lot for “Fastest Posting to Facebook and Twitter” in many of its campaign. Even though you can post on Facebook and Twitter, it is not possible to do it simultaneously. Microsoft is moving to App First approach which makes it easier for both the app makers and Microsoft to develop faster.

10) Dual SIM Features:

• Two different tile for each SIM which can be linked together.
• The app remembers which SIM is used more often and can set that as default SIM to call that contact.

That wraps up almost all the features of Windows Phone Call App and the People HUB. If you find anything new, share in comments.