Moving to Windows Phone 8.1

The word on the street is that phones that are running the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview will get an upgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 later next week. But I'm an impatient sort and I don't always believe the word on the street anyway. Except perhaps when it says "Give Way". 

So I downloaded the Nokia Software Recovery tool and indulged in a little time travel, taking my Lovely Lumia 1520 back to an age when Windows Phone 8 roamed the earth. This process was actually rather painless. It was a lot quicker than I thought it would be and apart from one scary moment when I thought it was asking for a pin code (it isn't) the whole thing went swimmingly. A tip: it downloads a file that is around 1.5G, so it is best to do this when you are connected to a nice fast network.

At this point I had a brand new, shiny, Windows 8 phone. I told it all about me, but because I'd taken a backup (System>backup>apps+settings>back up now) just before I ran the recovery tool I was able to get all my apps restored OK along with my text messages and whatnot. 

I got all excited when I went to the update menu and saw that there was one waiting for me, but it was just the Hors d'oeuvre for the main course, which downloaded next. But eventually I got to the happy ending you can see on the right. 

If you are a Lumia owner you can find out if the update is available for your device by going here. 

The "proper" 8.1 has a few neat advances on the Developer Preview. For starters there are little arrows that show you when your network connections are active. 

Then there is the thing that mutters to you if you use a weaker power supply to charge the phone. 

I've just about got my start screen back to how I like it (another tip, take a bunch of screenshots so that you can remember exactly what it looks like) and next week I'll sign up to get onto the next Developer Preview.  The story continues.....