Delighted with my new Nokia Lumia 1020 cellphone – and its amazing camera! – but I’m new to Windows Mobile. Can you step me through connecting to a wireless (wifi) network?
It would be reasonable to assume that all mobile operating systems are similar since they’re all managing the same basic set of tasks, turns out that there are some surprising differences between iOS (iPhones), Windows Phone (Nokia and a few other cell phones) and Android (just about everything else). All of them have “settings” but some make it easy for you to ignore the standard path to connect to a wireless network by popping up windows that prompt you to proceed. Not so much Windows Phone, however. 🙂
Because of the high level of customizability (that’s a word, right?) in Windows Phone, there’s a good chance that your Lumia mobile phone screen is going to look different to what I show in this tutorial, including even having different color start tiles. But bear with me, you’ll see how it works.
To start, you’ll need to swipe up or down on the home screen to find the “settings” icon. It’s a gear wheel, as you can see here:
Can you see it just above the ESPN Hub tile?
Find that icon on your phone and tap it.
You can swipe left/right to see what else is available in Settings, but for this task, find and tap on “Wi-Fi”.
You can see it near the bottom on the screen capture.
If it’s turned off, you’ll need to enable Wi-Fi on your Lumia at this point.
if it’s on, as mine is, then just wait a second or two for the phone to scan the airwaves and identify what networks are available.
After a few seconds…
I’m going to connect to “Amante North”, the wireless network for one of my favorite coffee shops.
Notice underneath it says “secure”. That means that there’s a required password to connect, so it’s no surprise when you tap on the desired network it prompts for an access password:
If you aren’t sure of your typing ability, check “Show password”, otherwise just tap in the network password.
At Amante, the password is… oh… wait… nevermind. Go there, buy yourself a good cup of coffee, and you’ll be told the password. 🙂
“connected” means success!
That’s how you do it. Not too bad, and it’s a typical sequence for any of a large number of different settings and modifications you can make to your Windows Phone. Enjoy!
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