Windows Phone 8.1 Review: Cortana Leads a Feature-Packed Update

Windows Phone has come a long wayMicrosoft's phone platform has enjoyed a lot of critical success over the past few years, but the praise was mostly for things like design, cool tricks like live tiles, and the fact that it's not made by Apple or Google.

Even when Windows Phone received kudos, it was usually in an "attaboy" kind of way — a backhanded compliment that subtly hinted the truth: that for all its pizzazz, the operating system was, in some ways, months or even years behind its chief competitors, iOS and Android.

No longer. With Windows Phone 8.1 — which gets distributed to developers today, with the first handsets coming in a couple of weeks — the software on Windows handsets has caught up with its rivals. In a few use cases, Microsoft even offers a better experience. Read more...