The Windows Phone 8.1 announcement has become official but there’s still some time before the update rolls onto our devices. If you are keen to learn more about one of the update’s powerful features – the notification and action center and watch it in action read on.

The Notification Center in Windows Phone 8.1 is the hotspot where you’ll find text messages, email messages, social media updates and others congregating. The Live tiles are great, but they don’t list out all the latest updates in a convenient one-glance-to-know-it-all fashion. The Notification Center, which you can access by a simple swipe down action, does exactly that.

Apart from the live updates, you can access the common settings on your Windows Phone such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Internet sharing using the four action center buttons located in the Notification center. Again, everything is placed in such a handy spot, you’ll only have to ask yourself why this wasn’t available sooner.

Here’s a cool video that the team at WPCentral put out that shows off the Notification and Action Center in action.