One of the smarter and more unique aspects of Cortana isn’t so much how it understands the user and parses information, but rather how Microsoft had designed it. Microsoft had designed the voice assistant feature in such a way that the company could make changes to it and improve on Cortana without having to issue an OS update, meaning that they could constantly upgrade it behind the scenes without anyone realizing.
This is great because we all know how finicky voice assistants can get in terms of understanding what we tell it, the kind of information it is able to generate, the speed at which the information is generated, and so on. Well it seems that Microsoft has been making changes to Cortana, according to Windows Phone 8.1 users who have noticed said changes.
For starters it seems that Cortana has been given new animated expressions in the Cortana tile on your home screen. The tile will also show new icons, like the normal “breathing” animation, weather, traffic to work, with the weather icon changing depending on the conditions. There are also reportedly new interests and notifications in Cortana’s notebook, a new quiz option which will let the software learn more about you, and a feedback link at the bottom of Cortana’s today view.
It seems that perhaps these changes were only being tested, because according to reports, not all Windows Phone users had them, and those that did eventually had said changes rolled back. Like we said, perhaps Microsoft is just trying to test the waters and that the full update will be pushed out at a later date.
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