How to change Country/Region and Regional Format on Windows Phone 8.1?

With update to Windows Phone 8.1 Preview for developers, Windows Phone has got some new and awesome features. If your Windows Phone is still running under Windows Phone 8, see our previous guide on How to update Windows Phone 8 to 8.1 Preview for Developers.

So, with Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has started a voice assisting app ‘Cortana’. Competing with Apple’s Siri and Google’s’ Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana is supposed to win them with some new features that were missed in those competing app. But, here’s a thing, Cortana in now in Beta version and only supported on US region. So, here you’ll have to change your phone country/Region to United States.

In this guide, I’ll tut about how to change Country/Region and Regional format. So, why is this necessary to change Country/Region and Regional Format on Windows Phone?

• First thing first, to use new voice assisting app Cortana.
• To use Windows Store to download country/region respective apps.
• To enable Date, Time and Currency according to the regional format.
• And many more..

Swipe your start screen to left and tap to Settings gear, and let’s begin.

1. Go under region

2. Change Country/Region to your or any other country, for this post I am using Nepal as country.
3. Change Regional format to any format you prefer, for this post I am changing to Nepali so that I can see some Nepali scripts on Windows Phone.
4. Windows Phone will need a restart to enable all that, so just click on restart now.

Now, with change in Country/ Region, Windows Phone in recognized to be used in that region or country. Which means you are using Windows Phone from that country or virtually in name of that country, that give you privilege to use Windows Store and other features that comes for that country and region. Like Cortana app is only enabled to assist only if US is selected as Country/Region. When Cortana is disabled Bing is enabled as search tool for Windows phone. So, if one of you want to try Beta version of Cortana, then you may have to change your Country/Region on Windows Phone Setting as mentioned above.

And with change in Regional format, only some changes are visible, like date format is switched to that region, time format is switched and currency format is changed.

Remember this changes does not change the keyboard layout on Windows Phone, I’ll be writing about how to change keyboard layout on my next post, don’t forget to follow our blog.

Windows Phone used for this tutorial was Nokia Lumia 820 for Developers, a gift from Microsoft for the author. See Unboxing Nokia Lumia 820 Phone for Developers.