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One of the many things that I love about Cortana on my Windows Phone is the ability to set up quiet hours.  Quiet Hours are a designated time – planned or at the moment – where my phone will not disturb me with notifications, phone calls or the like unless someone in a group I designate (my Inner Circle) messages or calls twice in short succession.  In my move from iPhone to Windows Phone, this is one of the great features of iOS that I missed when I started back.  Windows Phone without Cortana doesn’t have quiet hours and it, if I’m honest, was one of the main reasons I updated my Lumia 1320 to Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1.  Yeah, I’m sad, I know.

Cortana Quiet Hours are great for times when you are meeting or, in my case, traveling where my phone is in the same room as me.  Setting these up are easy to do and you can do it from multiple places on your Windows Phone.  For this How To I am assuming that you have Windows Phone 8.1 with Cortana in the United States or Update 1 outside of the United States (which is the only way you can get Cortana).  Right now you have to have Cortana in order for Quiet Hours to work.

Microsoft has released an update to the OneDrive for Windows Phone app, bringing on device access to your recycle bin in the cloud based storage service.  To this point, in order to access your Recycle Bin, you had to visit the OneDrive website.  This is no longer the case for Windows Phone users.

The updated OneDrive for Windows Phone is version 4.3 for those keeping score and aside from the added Recycle Bin support, Microsoft states that there are other “bug fixes” in the release.  What those fixes are exactly is unknown but likely are around keeping the app stable.

OneDrive for Windows Phone – Free

For those in the Windows Phone Preview for Developer program, a new update to Windows Phone 8.1. Update 1 is now available for download.  The build number for this release is 8.10.14157.200 and is available to everyone in the program.  Remember that you can join the Preview for Developer program for free by downloading the app and registering your device.  More details at the end of this post.

As has been expected for several weeks now, HTC made a big push back into Windows Phone today with the announcement of the HTC One M8 Windows.  The new phone, available on Verizon in the United States and to other carriers later this year, is identical to the Android-based M8 and brings all the 5″ display goodness of that device to our favourite Little OS That Could.

Spec wise the HTC One W8 is identical to the M8.  It is the same hardware and there has even been speculation that if you were able to bootstrap the phone you could load either Android or Windows Phone onto the device.  The W8 features the same 5″ high resolution display as the M8, BOOM sound and even brings the Dot Case clock to the phone, something that is unique to the M8 until now.