News
News Categories

Windows Phone 8 Getting Bing Updates

By Ng Chong Seng - on 7 Aug 2013, 10:51am

Windows Phone 8 Getting Bing Updates

 After the update, there are only going to be four search result categories: Web, Images, and Videos. (Image source: Microsoft.)

Over at the Bing blog, Microsoft has announced that Bing on Windows Phone 8 is getting a new look and some new features. First and foremost, the existing four categories of Bing search results - Web, Local, Media, and Shopping - will be streamlined to just Web, Images, and Videos. This move is aimed to “reduce confusion and help people find what they’re looking for more easily”. It was also revealed that results are only downloaded for the default Web category. Results for the Images and Videos views are downloaded only when you swipe over to them.

The first result screen, Web, is also going to show more information, including images, videos, and local results - so that less swiping is needed on the user’s part. There’s also deep linking; as the example shows, when you search for ‘Delta Airlines’, on top of showing delta.com as the first result, there are also links to Flight Status, SkyMiles, Track Flight, and Flight Schedules.

Microsoft is also bringing 10 new Instant Answers available on the PC to the phone. They include popular types of queries like traffic, flight status, exchange rates, word definitions, and translations. Answers for such queries will appear at the top of the search results, so there’s no need to open another app. At the end of the day, Windows Phone will support 30 Instant Answers. Bing’s Snapshot web feature is also coming to Windows Phone 8.

According to the blog post, these Bing updates are coming to Windows Phone 8 in the U.S. in the coming weeks. But they’re meant to be global updates; in other words, rollout to other markets will come, but at a later time frame.

Source: Bing Blogs.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.