The Terrific Symbian Belle

If you had been following Nokia , you should be aware that Nokia has released their latest version of smartphone OS , the Symbian Belle early Feb 2012.

Symbian is the world’s oldest mobile OS among the currently available ones and is the most resilient , that although loosing it’s major share to competitors, new version and changes are still being launched making it acceptable amongst the masses, however it may not be long lived as the OS is set to loose it’s development and support in 2016.

Nonetheless , Nokia is working hard in restoring Symbian ‘s dignity in it’s last few years by putting it in their most sought after phones like the Symbian Belle FP1 in their upcoming imaging flagship phone the Nokia 808 PureView.

If you have Nokia 700 , 701 or Nokia 603 , rejoice , your phone is Symbian Belle native, for those running Symbian ^3 or Symbian Anna , this time Nokia hasn’t forgotten you as Symbian Belle is also available for these popular handsets.
• The best camera phone in the world and my favorite the N8
• The Communicator reincarnated Nokia E7
• The stylish Nokia Oro • The Messaging Powerhouse Nokia E6 • The N-Gage reinvented – Nokia X7 • And the Regulars Nokia C6-01 , Nokia 500 and Nokia C7.

The feature set of Symbian Belle includes

• Up To 6 Home screens
• Dynamic Widgets
• Live Widgets
• Drop Down Notifications
• Smooth Multitasking
• PC Like Browsing
• NFC ( compatible phones)
• Better Keyboard Interface
• Better integration of Social Networks
• A whole new range of Nokia and Microsoft Applications like Nokia Drive and Microsoft Office

How to get Symbian Belle

You don’t have to run to Nokia Care Centers across Pakistan you an update your Symbian Belle compatible phone easily at home all you need is Nokia Suite and a Micro USB Sync Cable.

For the update , you need to have atleast 25% battery charge and a SIM Card in your phone.

Install Nokia Suite on your PC and connect your phone to it and click on Software Upgrade Icon.

For your phone you will be shown that a new version of software is available , click on it and you will be taken to the Symbian Belle update screen. ( Sorry can’t post screen shots as I’ve already updated mine to Belle )

For those worried about the data , be assured that Nokia Suite makes a backup before installing Symbian Belle on your phone.

The download size of Symbian Belle is 258 MB and could take quiet some time to download ( a visit to Nokia Care now looks enticing )

After the download , Nokia Suite will itself install Symbian Belle on your phone and after a restart your phone will have the latest version installed.

Although Nokia Suite will restore all your contacts and messages , your applications may not face the same treatment and many has to be reinstalled from Nokia Store.

How to make the most of Symbian Belle

Freshly installed Symbian Belle offers a great user experience , you don’t have to go to Nokia Store ( come preinstalled ) to get your Social applications , the pre installed Nokia Social app can instant connect you to Facebook and Twitter so you can let the world know that you are on Belle . The Social app also supports immediate sharing of images on Twitter .

By default the following applications comes preinstalled with Symbian Belle

• Contacts
• Messaging ( For SMS and MMS )
• Web
• Gallery
• Calendar
• Mail ( can support upto 10 email accounts )
• Nokia Store
• Videos ( for watching only)
• Music Player
• Search ( Web and Phone can be used as widget)
• Maps ( Latest version 2.0 needs to be downloaded and installed)
• Zip
• YouTube
• Weather
• Quickoffice
• OVI Music
• Msg Reader ( Text to Speech)
• Communicator
• Adobe Reader
• Social
• My Nokia
• OVI Sync
• Calculator
• Camera
• Clock
• Files ( File Browser)
• FM Radio
• Play via Radio ( FM streaming)
• Dictionery
• Notes
• Recorder ( Dicta Phone)
• SW Update ( For latest app and Firmware updates)

With it’s 6 home screens , Symbian Belle is a multi tasker’s dream , as I’ve done with my phone , the main screen is for the information and shortcuts which I use the most, one screen is reserved for Office Applications and related stuff like Bloomberg , one is for Social , one is for Media and other is for Maps while the last one is for Calendar and events. If you don’t want to have that many home screens , you can always reduce them to the minimum of one by choosing the Delete the home screen option presented by pressing the right soft key. Another key feature of Home screen is that now widgets are now dynamic i.e. they can be of different sizes and can be placed any where even two widgets can be placed in a single row which was not possible before .

For App Junkies like me , Nokia has finally given the option to list all Apps by alphabetical order so I an find all my Apps in a jiffy . In their ongoing partnership with Microsoft Nokia also offers Microsoft Office Suite via software upgrade ( available for E7 now and leaked for N8) which we will cover later in detail.

The new keyboard layout is much easier to use and with full alphabetical keyboard in both landscape and portrait mode, typing has been made very simple on touch only phones.
The Drop Down notifications bar had been borrowed from Android phone and offers the functionality of turning off and on Mobile Data , Wi-Fi , Bluetooth and change profile to Silent , while underneath it also shows number of messages and emails and information regarding mobile network and Wi-Fi connection. In our opinion Nokia could have made much better use of this space with emails and messages being shown or push notifications like in Android and iOS5 phones.
Nokia Belle comes with new and improved Nokia Apps like the new Nokia Store which now has a new look , Nokia Maps now include Nokia Drive , Check-In , Around Me , Guides and Map Loader . In earlier version all map apps were combined in a single app now all these have been separated with their own icons.
Nokia has forgone Folders and have decided to keep all icons on one screen like the N9 but keeping up with its Symbian roots, custom folders can be made.

Overall Symbian Belle was a much needed update for Nokia N8 and other phones and it has greatly enhanced their functionality and improved the UI to be able to compete with other smartphones in the market.
The journey does not stop here , soon Symbian Belle Fp1 is to be released followed by Symbian Carla and may be last of the release Symbian Donna .
My N8 has already gotten a version jump via a leaked firmware about which you can read