The official Denim promo

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Introduced by Kristina Björknäs, clad appropriately enough in denim, Microsoft has pushed out a promo video for the update, based on Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, that's rolling out to all Nokia Lumias at the moment. It's an interesting watch, even though we don't really learn anything particularly new. And yes, we're still checking all the AAWP phones for Denim, but nothing high end had received it as of this morning. The pace does seem to be quickening as we approach the Microsoft event on January 21st - hopefully far more of us will have the update in place by then.

Here's the video, introduced by Kristina:

There's also a summary of what's new, especially for the more capable devices in the family - we too have covered all this before:

You can see Lumia Denim in action in the video above, and we’ve already covered the Lumia Denim update before but let’s go over the highlights one more time:

  • Cortana: Your virtual personal assistant’s improvements include natural-language scenarios, snooze times for reminders, and the ability to chat with her in your car via car-kit integration. Originally available in the U.S., Cortana will now also be available in China and the UK in “beta” and in “alpha” in Australia, Canada India, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.
  • “Hey Cortana” Voice Activation (enabled by SensorCore): Simply say “Hey Cortana” while the Lumia phone is in an idle state and Cortana will be activated. No need to press the microphone button. This feature will be available for Lumia 930, Lumia Icon and Lumia 1520.
  • Live Folders: On your Start screen, organize your most-needed apps into folders (such as “News” and “Games”) so you can access them with one tap.
  • Glance screen: The newly updated Glance Screen will also be able to show fitness and other health-related activity from MSN’s Health and Fitness app.
  • Improved IE: Connect and browse even faster with improved downloading speeds on mobile websites.
  • Consumer VPN: This feature provides enhanced safety and security for your smartphone when connected to public, unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

The owners of the Lumia Icon, Lumia 1520, Lumia 930 and Lumia 830 will also get an updated Lumia Camera, delivering images of the highest quality at the fastest speed with only milliseconds between shots. Lumia Camera also comes with great innovations such as Moment Capture and Rich Capture. More on those here with some example shots.

Lumia Denim update has started rolling out to a limited number of devices in selected markets and will continue arriving in waves by device. A wider rollout of Lumia Denim to all Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone 8.1 is expected to begin this month following partner testing and approvals.

To be honest, Lumia Camera 5 is the really interesting bit for most readers here, I suspect, since almost everything else has been in the various Windows Phone Preview for Developers releases, which many of you have been working with.

Watch this space.

Source / Credit: Conversations