Nokia pulls the wraps off beautiful Symbian Belle

Right after the massive roll out of Symbian Anna, the second major update to the slowly burning platform of Symbian, Belle, standing for beautiful in French, got announced today with three new handsets. It builds on the improvements that came with Anna, but it also brings new features including widgets, improved customization options and built-in NFC support. The update is expected to arrive on earlier Symbian^3 devices including the Nokia N8, E7, C7, C6-01, X7, E6 and 500 in the coming months, but the company gave no exact release date.

A visual overhaul of the widgets is probably the first thing you’d notice in Belle. Now, you can resize widgets, which come in five different sizes. Nokia has also introduced toggles buttons for quickly changing settings. The space on your home screen has also increased from only three panes in Anna to six in Belle. Android users will instantly recognize that pull-down status bar at the top, which Espoo seems to have borrowed from Google’s platform.

Apart from the visual update, in Belle we can see the first fruits of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership as the platform now includes apps like Lync, an IM client for businesses, Sharepoint, OneNote, Exchange ActiveSync and PowerPoint Broadcaster.

Multitasking has also been improved, now showing you live images of open apps. The lock screen has been redesigned to give you more information now including missed calls and messages.

NFC has also been deeply integrated allowing you one-tap pairing with compatible accessories and easy sharing of files again via just a single tap between devices. While that doesn’t change the core of Symbian’s dated maze of menus, it does show Nokia’s commitment to its platform. What’s your opinion about Symbian’s new clothes, are they belle enough to get you to once again consider the platform?

source: Nokia Conversations