Green light for Nokia Lumia Amber

MANILA, Philippines -  Nokia Lumia smartphones running on Windows Phone 8 are about to get a whole lot smarter. The new Nokia Lumia Amber software update is starting to roll out and will deliver a wide range of new and improved features and apps, like Nokia Glance Screen with the standby clock and even better imaging experience for Nokia Lumia owners.

Lumia Amber builds on the latest update for Windows Phone 8 from Microsoft. In itself, this provides a number of significant additions: a new FM radio player and improvements to Xbox music and the Internet Explorer browser.

Improved image processing

The update brings significantly improved algorithms that offer better noise reduction, color reproduction, exposure control and autofocus to every phone across the Lumia range. On the Lumia 920, controls to adjust the ISO settings of the camera from 800 to 3200 allow for even better low light performance.

Nokia Smart Camera

Debuted on the Nokia Lumia 925, this new camera app is ideal for taking pictures involving people and movement. Starting today, you will get the app from the Store after downloading Lumia Amber to your phone.

The app brings a slew of different options — use Best Shot to find the sharpest image from a series of 10; combine several shots of people in movement into one with Action Shot; heighten the appearance of speed by blurring the background with Motion Focus; create ideal group shots by choosing the best faces from a series with Change Faces, or remove unwanted objects from your pictures.

Note that Smart Camera’s performance scales according to the capabilities of your device. On the Nokia Lumia 720, 620 and 520, the burst mode used for some effects takes seven pictures rather than 10, and these are a lower resolution than on devices with more RAM (one-megapixel rather than five). Still great for social sharing on the Web.

On top of the Lumia Amber update, the newly announced Nokia Pro Camera will be available for Lumia 920, Lumia 925, and Lumia 928. Once you have taken great videos with your updated Lumia, you can edit them fast with the Nokia Video Trimmer app and upload those to YouTube with Nokia Video Uploader. Both apps will be available in the Store starting today.

But it’s not all about pictures. Lumia Amber software update also contains a few more, keenly awaited extras.

Nokia Glance Screen

This is perhaps one of the features that has been most requested on Nokia Lumia smartphones. Nokia Glance Screen brings a clock to your screen when the phone is inactive, along with indicators to show battery level when running on a low battery or the phone is charging, and whether your phone is set to “silent.”

You can activate the Nokia Glance screen in the display and touch section in Settings by swiping left to “glance.” Nokia Glance screen will be available for all WP8 Lumia devices, except the Nokia Lumia 520 and Lumia 625, which have a smaller display memory.

Flip to silence and double-tap to unlock

Two favorite features from older Nokia phones that users have asked for. Flipping the phone over is a great and easy way to mute the incoming call. Double tapping the screen is something many people prefer to using the unlock key. Both of them are optional in case you are worried about having accidents — in our experience, though, that never happens.

Storage check and faster map updates

You may have already picked this up through another update. Briefly, if you are running out of space on your phone and you want to free some up, you can find out the biggest culprits and deal with them (perhaps you never delete your photos, despite uploading them to SkyDrive, for example).

Finally, with the Lumia Amber update installed on your phone, you can update your HERE Maps even easier and faster as only those roads and other map features that have been updated will be downloaded — you don’t have to install whole countries anew.

The rollout starts now first for the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 in selected countries as well as Lumia 521, Lumia 810, and Lumia 928 in the US, and soon to follow on Lumia 520, Lumia 620 and Lumia 720.