Nokia Starts International Roll-Out of Windows Phone 8 Update – Portico!

The international roll-out of Portico – the first over-the-air ­­Windows Phone 8 update – began on Friday for Nokia Lumia 920 and 820. The update is more or less the same as the one that first started rolling out for HTC’s Windows Phone 8X and AT&T’s Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 back in December 2012.

The Portico update brings in a lot of welcome improvements to the OS. Nokia has improved the camera performance by fixing the blur in daylight images. The much awaited ‘always-on’ WiFi change and minor Internet Explorer tweaks and enhancements such as the option to change settings to prevent pictures from downloading automatically, being able to delete selected sites from browsing history and leaving the rest intact are part of the update. Messaging improvements like drafts functionality, select all and reject with an SMS too are included.

            

People will receive a notification on their phone when the update is available for them to download.
The update will be rolled-out in a ‘phased manner’ over the next few weeks and is expected to be complete by mid-March.
In my opinion, these fixes with the Portico update are not critical, but are welcome considering Windows Phone 8 was just released last month. While it’s good that international users will get this helpful upgrade, one can’t help but find it strange that AT&T’s versions of the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820 received this update before their unlocked, international counterparts.
With Windows Phone 7.x, users found that many updates were delayed interminably, often for months, by recalcitrant wireless carriers. And when they were available, the updates had to be installed via the PC, with the phone tethered over Wi-Fi.
With Windows Phone 8, apparently, that’s changing. AT&T, among the worst of the wireless carrier offenders with previous generation handsets, is among the first delivering this first Windows Phone 8 update. And it’s happening over the air, directly to the device, and completely PC-free.
In order to manually push the update to the smartphone, simply head over to Settings / Phone update. If it’s not available, you might want to try again later.
Found some great changes with the update that we missed out on? Let us know in the comments!
Sources: GSMArena, TheVerge, Windows Phone Central.