Microsoft promised that it will bring its voice assistant Cortana to several more regions including China and UK as beta, and India, Australia, and Canada as alpha with the release of Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1.
The company made Windows Phone 8.1 available to the developers yesterday, and as promised, Cortana is now available in the aforementioned regions. However, users are required to make some changes in the settings to be able to get the voice assistant on their handset. Here are the changes you need to make:
- Change the language settings (Settings > Language) to any of the different English version — English India / Australia / Canada — in accordance with the place you’re based in.
- You are no longer required to be living at US to have Cortana on your phone. Change the region settings (Settings > Region) to India, Australia, or Canada
- Similarly, you are required to make some amendments to the Speech settings (Settings > Speech) as well.
- For Australia: English (United Kingdom); For Canada set it to English (United States); and for India: English (United Kingdom)
You will definitely be asked to restart the handset a couple of times.
Do note that India, Canada and Australia are getting the alpha version of Cortana, which might not be as functional and certainly not full-fledged. Try it out on your handset, and let us know how you like it. Do mention the features that the Alpha version of Cortana is missing.
