Symbian^3 devices now come with Nokia Belle out of the box

In an official twitter feed Nokia confirmed reports that Symbian Anna powered Smartphones will now come with the Nokia Belle update pre installed. Devices which are currently shipped come with Nokia Belle in most of the regions including Turkey and India.

Earlier last year there were many unconfirmed reports that Nokia was currently shipping the N8 with Nokia Belle out of the box in some regions. Anna powered smart phones N8,C7,E7,E6,C6-01,X7 and 500 will be getting this update.However, according to the tweets of the official Nokia feed availability of the updated handsets is subject to region and stock.

There has been no official word regarding rolling out the update for existing Anna running handsets,though it is expected early next month. The functionality and simplicity of Nokia Belle won accolades immediately after being released. This move from Nokia is aimed at boosting the smartphone sales running Symbian Operating systems. Although there is no official proof, but few of the Anna powered devices will contain the revolutionary NFC technology.

In an earlier article Belle's are here.. we reviewed the features of Nokia Belle. And the success stories of Belle powered devices such as 700,701 and 603 prove the quality of a Symbian OS. The Symbian Smartphone division of Nokia is expected to produce a boost in sales. Nokia Belle is the latest version of Symbian OS yet.

    

Nokia buys Smarterphone

In a move to retain its market, Nokia has acquired  the Norwegian company Smarterphone AS,specializing in mobile operating systems. The deal was finalized last year for an undisclosed sum. The Oslo based company licenses a touchscreen Featurephone OS for budget range models. The company is known to offer the basic smartphone experience for feature phone customers.

The budget range customers have been the stronghold of Nokia for a long time. The series 40 platform has been ruling the market in the case of basic phones. Even being a decade old series 40 platform is still successful. The Finnish mobile manufacturer boasts of a wide range of platforms for mobile phones such as the Series 40,Series 60,Symbian Anna,Nokia Belle,WindowsPhone, Meego,and  Meamo. The SmarterPhone OS comes as a welcome addition to the arsenal of Nokia Operating systems. The main aim of Nokia in the acquisition is to retain  the larger base of Mid-range customers, said to be around 1 billion consumers.

The Smarterphone OS is programmed in Scheme for UI and C++ for core. The latest version is the Smarterphone OS 3.2. The Operating System comes with a handful of licences including Compal. Most notably OpenWave's V7 software. The system boast of appealing features such as the fan out radial menu and user friendly social networking. Unlike the Nokia Operating sytems the Smarterphone OS is a Closed source Software and is based on a real time kernel.

The OS is said to support most of the leading platforms including the ARM Broadcom and Qualcom. The architecture of the OS is based on model view controller desgin that ease the implementation of variations with minimal effort. 

This investment can benefit Nokia in the long run to establish a market for Budget range smartphones. The Smarterphone OS can help improve the existing Series 40 platform and take it to the next level. Nokia has already released the Asha sisters in the  60-90 Euro price range. The Asha series already has a positive response from the users. With the addition of a new operating system to the existing system, it is bound to offer a better smartphone experience within budget.

Symbian ends 2011 in style

Recently StatCounter, an online statistics tool published their analysis on the global smartphone users. The StatCounter tool is embedded on many websites which in turn tracks the browser and the operating System used. According to the statistics released, the Symbian Operating system tops the chart for the year 2011. The Symbian OS still dominates the market with over 31% of the smartphone market share. The iOS finishes second just above the android operating system.


The Symbian OS started 2011 just above the apple iOS at around 30%. The surge in the popularity of Symbian rose to around 34% during mid-June, where the iOS shows steady decline owing to constant competition and lawsuits. However, the Symbian OS saw a gradual decline halfway through 2011. The introduction of Symbian Anna brought back the stability to the Symbian Smartphones for which it is known. The hardware on the handsets and the stable operating systems saw Nokia win over many new fans. The last quarter saw the most growth in popularity of the Symbian. This was mainly due to the introduction of Symbian Belle(Currently Nokia Belle). The Nokia Belle boasted of an array of exciting new features. Naturally the new OS was made available to the existing devices which met the hardware requirement. Nokia Symbian ended the year 2011 with a strong 31% share still dominating the market.


2011 has been an excellent year for the Nokia fans with Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle both being launched. There was no doubt in the dominance of the Symbian OS, mainly due to its simple and lightweight design. Though the collaboration of Nokia and Microsoft has raised a few concerns regarding the fate of Symbian OS, we can confidently say after the statistics of 2011 Symbian is far from over. The year 2012 promises to be an exciting year for Symbian loyalists, with the Symbian Belle update being made available for Anna users.


Also 2012 marks the debut of two new operating systems the Symbian Carla and Symbian Donna. According to reports both the operating systems must be out by the second or third quarter of 2012. Let's hope they can claim many many accolades as their predecessors and help Symbian dominate the 2012 as well.       

Advantages of Nokia Symbian over other Operating Systems

Since the age of smartphones has begun,there's been a constant hassle over the best smartphone operating system. Let us consider the main criteria which denote an ideal Smartphone Operating System :

• Variety : There is a wide range of Nokia Smart Phones to chose from like Bar,Slide,Touch Screen models, QWERTY and Touch Screen with QWERTY models. All other Operating systems work on touch screen models or the QWERTY models(iOS,Android,Blackberry).

•  Navigation: Nokia Smart phones offer better navigation through A-GPS and the Ovi Maps application(pre-loaded with maps).  Voice guidance is another feature that doesn't come free in most phones.

• Battery life: No one can beat Nokia in terms of Battery life. Nokia offers the best battery life in case of smart phones. The main reason being the use of operating systems that sustain on lower usage of the processor.

•  Camera Quality: Camera quality of the Symbian phones is relatively better than other OS. Nokia is known for its picture quality in camera phones. The N8 when released gave Digital Camera's a run for their money.

• No Permanent Internet Connection: Nokia phones require the Internet only for short periods of time. Its not the case with other Operating systems. Their functionality is dependent on a permanent data connection and the traffic in terms of data of symbian phones is very minimal. 

• Multi-tasking: Multi tasking in Symbian is the simplest there exists in any smart phone.Every Symbian phone consists of a home key,which can be used to multi-task with ease. Other smartphones provide assisted multi-tasking by means of an external application or just suspend the other application and call it multitasking ( No offence iOS).

• PC and Ovi Synchronisation: Synchronization of data is much more simple in Symbian Smart phones. It can be done via an Ovi account. Also PC synchronization of various personal information is much less complex in Nokia Phones courtesy the Ovi Suite(Universal for all Nokia Phones).

• Audio and Video: The loudspeaker and the audio quality of Nokia Smartphones is the best in its class. The Symbian is known to support many video formats with subs without external software's to include other extensions 

• Apps: In the field of apps Nokia has a huge developer networks for Symbian phones. Its very simple to design apps for Nokia in any platform using the Qt framework. Also Nokia Apps are compatible within various platforms.

• Price : Nokia offers smartphones in various price ranges suited for customers in every price band. The customer has a variety of choices to chose from.

The Nokia N9... Simplicity at its best...

Simple life is the best life. I'm sure everyone will agree. Keeping this simplicity in mind Nokia releases its opus smart phone, the Meego running, Nokia N9. MeeGo OS is developed jointly by Nokia and Intel. On your first encounter you will notice that the front of the phone is completely bare. There isn't a freakin key!!! The phone is made only of two parts the curved glass and a non-painted, colored single poly carbonate body. The only hardware buttons in the phone are the volume rocker and lock key/power key on the right side of the phone. 

Nokia N9 measures 116.5X61.2X12.1mm and weighs 135g. Its an all screen unibody design with 2.5D curved glass that's fitted nicely from edge to edge. It has a 3.9 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen. It has a scratch proof Gorilla glass screen and an anti glare coating to be used in broad daylight. It comes in 16/64GB storage variation with no external memory card option. Nokia leaves no stones unturned as this marvel boasts of Dolby Sound Enhancement and Dolby headphones support for the music lovers. This technology has never been embedded in a smartphone before. In other words it has everything you need and nothing you don't.

The swipe technology is used to explore through the phone which seems so seamless. It’s based on three simple views. The apps view, the running apps view and the notifications. When in an open app you swipe your finger from any edge to the opposite it gets minimized. Swipe in the home screen and you can see the installed apps. Another swipe will show the open apps three in a row, allowing the user to see a slightly enlarged two in a row view when pinch zoomed.

On the photographic end N9 is loaded with an 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual LED and 4x digital zoom for both video and pictures. It is capable of recording 720p HD video at 30 fps with stereo sound. N9 also boasts of the fastest camera in smartphones with a super fast launch and capture of images. Nokia understands that the best moments in life are fleeting and thus provides this feature so you do not miss out on the finest moments in life.


Within three months of N9 premier Nokia released the first software update named PR 1.1 which contained a few bug fixes and new features namely:
* ability to control the music player via the lock screen
* ability to exchange/send links, contacts, documents using NFC
* support for horizontal mode - not present previously
* option to switch downward swipe motion to close application or minimize
* speed improvements to the WiFi module in 'n' network
* improvements to: QWERTY screen keyboard,notifications, browser, Bluetooth and many others


Nokia has announced the next update, named PR 1.2 which is planned to introduce 3500 improvements which include:
* folders on the home screen
* universal copy/paste
* faster codecs for video coded in H.264 standard
* USB On-The-Go which will allow various accessories to be attached such as keyboards, mice, and external memory even other phones and many other improvements.This is truly a milestone in gadget history.Life cannot be better than this. Just swipe your way off.

Nokia Belle update for smartphones to release early next year

In an official announcement last week Nokia revealed that Nokia Belle update for Nokia Smartphones will be released as early as February 2012. This update would be made available only for Anna compatible devices such as N8,C7,C6-01,E7 and X7. As mentioned in the previous article Belle's are here... currently  the operating system is running in Nokia 603,700,701.

This announcement brings about a huge cheer among the existing Anna users. If the current batch of Anna users receive the update, it will be their second update. It's quite unique because of the fact that those smartphone will have transitioned between three Smart Operating Systems.In fact a few units of N8,C7 and C6-01 are said to have the Nokia Belle pre-installed in them. Most probably Asia will be the first region to experience the Nokia Belle in Anna powered devices.

The Nokia Belle gained its reputation for being better than other OS operating under a lower a clock speed ensuring best battery life and enhanced performance.
Here's a video preview of Nokia Belle Update on N8

 

From the previews we get a glimpse of what the Nokia Belle is capable of. The incorporation of shortcut widgets and applications is a welcome move for Nokia Smartphones.The smooth functioning of Nokia Belle in N8 concludes that Symbian Belle can succeed in phones running under 1Ghz.

Belle's are here...

Nokia released its next installment in Symbian called Symbian Belle on 24 Aug, 2011. Looking hotter than Anna and very much power packed it is still a very sustainable phone (all Symbian phones are) unlike the power and resource hungry droids. The upgraded operating system will be available on new devices and the update will be released for existing devices in Feb 2012.

Here are some of the features of the Belle operating system:
Differently shaped Live widgets: Unlike Anna where you've to add a shortcut widget and it can hold 4 shortcuts, you can add any number of single shortcuts on the screen. You can even add favorite contacts to the home screen.

More homescreens: The number of home screens has been increased from three to six each having a separate wallpaper of its own. Now everything will seem much easier to access with six homescreens.

NFC integration: The newest and most hassle free way of data transfer and communication is deeply integrated into the Belle operating system. Sharing pics and videos, connecting with accessories is just a tap away.

The status bar: Belle sports a very informative status bar which can be dragged from the top of the screen. One might have noticed it already in the droids. The status bar contains the quick access to recent events, WiFi, Bluetooth, profile change.

The main menu is flat now, vertically scrollable. All the shortcuts placed in one place. No more folders. But if the user wants he can create a folder and add some shortcuts into it.

The lock screen can be given a designer touch by assigning it with a wallpaper for itself while displaying missed events notification.

Belle also includes new apps from Microsoft - Lync (IM for business, like Microsoft Communicator), Sharepoint, OneNote, Exchange ActiveSync and PowerPoint Broadcaster.

Four devices were planned to open up with Belle to the users 600, 603,700,701. But for some unknown reasons shipment of 600 was cancelled abruptly. it is believed that Nokia considered 600 will clash with the release of its Windows phone Lumia 800 and to avoid this 600 was cancelled.