Before we delve into what the new the new features and improvements this OS version will bring let us just run through a list of smartphones which should get the update – apparently the Nokia N8, E6, E7, X7, C7, C6-01 and Oro will all get the update, however no specific dates have been given. Future devices such as the Nokia 700, 701 and 600 are set for a Q3 2011 release and should run Belle out of the box.

In our Nokia X7 review we were slightly annoyed by the lackluster home screen customization options, well Belle will give you up to 6 home screens which can be customized with dynamic and live widgets. Previously we were frustrated by the fact that widgets were all set to a specific size, however Belle will allow widgets to take up more space on your homescreen as they can be five different sizes, which is great for certain things like music and photo widgets. The image below gives you a rough idea of how your UI may look once you have the update.

Something else which is Android-esque is the new pull down menu which shows notifications, here you will also be able to quickly turn Bluetooth, WiFi and Mobile data on or off, you can also set your device to silent – we think this is great news. You can see this new pull-down menu below.

The most exciting thing which Belle bring is NFC sharing and pairing, once installed you will be able to share content such as contacts, videos and images over NFC by tapping them together. In the future games will feature NFC capabilities to unlock certain bonuses, the possibilities of NFC are seemingly never-ending

We like the sound of the changes which Belle brings and despite not being mentioned we think that general performance will be better thanks to bug fixes and optimization, will this make it an Android beater? Probably not, but at least things are getting better – we can’t wait to try out NFC!

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An article by Stuart Dredge over at Cnet UK is reporting that a press conference in China had Nokia’s smartphone boss Jo Harlow talking about the Symbian OS. My Nokia Blog has images for the update which shows the new UI has a smaller battery, signal, operator info, and time at the top of the home screen. More information can be obtained by pulling down the top status bar as well.

There is also talk of new flexible widgets, it is not known what these do, but from the images they are different sizes and shapes. No information was given for when the update will go live, but Harlow promised “new devices” and improved hardware performance.

Nokia has run a recent poll asking its users what they think of the deal with Microsoft, and according to a report by David Neal over at The Inquirer, they wasn’t that impressed. The poll asked its users what new features they would like to see, and if they were looking forward to see Windows Phone 7 on Nokia handsets.

There was no options left blank and a range of suggestions were offered including Xbox games and Other. Unfortunately for Nokia it was the other option which got the most votes 22.6%, with a unique user interface pulled in 22%. The “Other” responses had a third of people not wanting the Microsoft deal at all, and to keep use of the Symbian and MeeGo operating systems.

It would seem that so far the idea of having Nokia handsets running Windows Phone 7 has not really inspired customers, but when the operating system does finally find its way onto a Nokia handset people may change their minds.

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According to a recent engadget.com article by Vlad Savov, Nokia’s Finnish store has just put the E7 handset up for pre-order, with a price tag of €599. They’ve also revealed that the all-business device is expected to arrive sometime in February of this year.

The expected arrival time coincides with previous reports, which suggested that the E7 would be arriving early 2011. As noted over on the Finnish website here, the E7 smartphone features a 4-inch touchscreen, business and messaging apps, a full QWERTY keyboard and an 8MP camera with HD video recording.

You can view a hands-on video – courtesy of the guys over at Engadget – through a previous article here. As Jamie Pert noted, the brief video shows us that the E7 will feature pinch-to-zoom functionality and 3 different customizable home screens.

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Phil B over at NOKNOK has got a list of ten applications which can make the Symbian ^3 experience even better. Users can change the themes on their handset, the N8 has quite a few already installed but many more can be downloaded. To improve web browsing N8 users can download Opera Mobile; this provides a much faster and stable browser.

Swype is a great way to improve entering text into the device; it lets you slide your finger across letters without lifting. You can also hold down a key for secondary functions, doing away the need for sub menus. Menus can be organized to suit individual user needs; apps can be put on the main page.

Nokia Messaging is great for a user getting their emails on the move, setting the service up is easy to do and email notifications are then sent to the N8 home screen. What Mobile is reporting of another application Shazam, this allows users to get YouTube videos, get tour and chart information for tagged artists. Users also have the option to buy music from the Ovi Music store.

New N8 models will have this app pr-installed with a 30-day trial when downloaded for the first time. When the 30 day trial is finished users can use the free service but with a maximum of 5 tags per month, or pay a fee of £2.99.

What do you think of the Nokia N8?

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Having now read a few reviews it seems as if the C7′s build quality and design is great, the size is perfect and the image embedded below shows it fitting comfortably into the hand.

TrustedReviews’ Edward Chester recently reviewed the Nokia C7, in terms of design he was particularly impressed with its glass touchscreen display and metal backplate, one criticism could be that the C7 has too many buttons for a touchscreen smartphone, however Nokia obviously feel that physical buttons are necessary for some tasks. You can see Edward’s full review here.

OnlyGizmo.com’s Anupama Sushil also reviewed the Nokia C7 and pointed out its great design and build quality, he feels that the overall look and feel is much better than the Nokia N8, you can see his full review here. Anupama seems extremely happy with the uncluttered look of the front of the smartphone, also he is happy with how Nokia’s physical buttons blend in with the C7′s design.

Finally tbreak are also complementary of the Nokia C7′s design and build quality, especially given its price, obviously the specs are not as great as the recently released Nokia N8, however in terms of looks the C7 make the N8 look like a bit of a brick. With a home button that glows for notifications you could say that Nokia are once again becoming innovative, however tbreak also suggest that there are lots of physical buttons which could be replaced with virtual buttons, this in tbreak’s opinion would improve the Nokia C7, you can see the full review here.

Obviously there are many aspects which need to come together to make a smartphone successful, however it is nice to have some good things to say about a mid-high-end Nokia handset’s design, let’s just hope they continue to improve things throughout 2011.

Do you own the Nokia C7? If so, feel free to list some pros and cons in the comments section below.

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Let’s start with the pros, for a basic device it is not a bad-looking device and in terms of build quality it is solid and high quality, the £159 SIM-free price tag is very appealing, also SlashGear were impressed by the keypad, 5 megapixel camera (in terms of stills), email functionality and widget support. As you would expect from a Nokia handset the call handling is great and battery life is more than sufficient.

As for cons the touchscreen display is not great as it uses a resistive panel and does not offer multi-touch gesture support, also the S40 OS is dated and really holds the handset back in terms of functionality and web browsing capabilities, also scrolling is jumpy and video capture is poor.

To be honest with you it looks as if Nokia have done all they can do with S40, why couldn’t they use a cut-down version of Symbian^3? Surely that would have given the handset a better software backbone to build on.

If you want a cheap and cheerful handset you may want to check out this smartphone due to its pretty solid performance and functionality, however if you want more features perhaps check out the £169 HTC Wildfire or the £149 Sony Ericsson X10 Mini.

Remember you can see SlashGear’s fully detailed review here, if you check out the official Nokia website you can find out everything you need to know about the X3-02.

More About: nokia, Nokia X3-02, Symbian^3

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According to this article both Symbian^3 and Google Android handsets are outselling Windows Phone 7 devices by a huge amount, apparently their figures show that Android smartphones outsell WP7 smartphones by a ratio of 15:1 and Symbian^3 outsells WP7 by a ratio of 3:1.

To be honest with you these figures aren’t all that shocking, let’s face it Nokia smartphones have been popular with UK consumers for years and Android-based smartphones have seen a huge surge in 2010, I would like to hold my judgement until WP7 has at least been out for 3-6months.

Full details regarding these statistic are available upon request, I have requested these figures, therefore will update this post later today, hopefully this will show us what time frame these figures were taken from, I would assume that they were taken since the launch of WP7, however this is currently unconfirmed.

Update: These sales figures were taken from November 11th – November 24th.

What do you think the future holds for Windows Phone 7?

Source: Electonista

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Lets start with the good, SlashGear were impressed with its 3.2-inch ClearBlack display, this is said to be bright and deliver crisp colors, in fact the C6-01′s display is said to be better than the C7′s. There is also a large range of connectivity options, it boasts quadband GSM/EDGE, pentaband HSPA/WCDMA, Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi b/g/n.

The handset’s performance is good and during the review it never slowed down or felt sluggish, also if you install Opera Mobile the web browsing experience can be great.

The camera is one of the C6-01′s best features, it has an 8 megapixel sensor and no auto-focus, therefore expectations weren’t great, however the software allows you to quickly take pretty crisp shots, also the 720p video capture is better than average (we have embedded a video at the end of this post).

As you would expect from a Nokia smartphone the calling performance is great and the battery life is solid, you can get roughly 2 days usage from one charge.

Now let’s talk about some of the handset’s imperfections, firstly the design is not great and is not very desirable, apparently it feels large and fat in your hand and the weight seems unbalanced.

The Symbian^3 OS is also disappointing, the native web browser is a bit slow and clunky and there is no portrait QWERTY keyboard, even when you use the landscape QWERTY keyboard it is hard to use compared iOS and Android’s virtual QWERTY keyboard offerings.

There are only a couple of other bad things worth mentioning, these include the 340MB of internal storage, it does come with 2GB card, however it would be nice to have more storage built-in, also the camera is not great at taking close-up stills and there is no easy way to share your videos, YouTube upload integration would have been nice.

If you check out SlashGear you can see the full review, it has to be said that this Nokia smartphone is by no means a failure, however the software lets it down, if an improved version of Symbian is released 75% of the problems could probably be smooth out.

Will you be buying the Nokia C6-01?

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Carriers will not be offering the C7 until November 21st, when the C7 does become available some carriers will offer it for roughly £389 SIM-free or free as part of a two year contract (costing roughly £25 per month).

You can buy the C7 direct from Nokia’s site, however they say that you should allow for up to 10 days for delivery, therefore you might as well wait for it to turn up at the mobile phone shops.

At the moment it looks as if only T-Mobile UK and Vodafone UK will be offering the Nokia C7, T-Mobile give you 600 anytime minutes, 500 texts and 1GB of mobile internet per month for £25, whereas Vodafone give you 300 anytime minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of mobile internet a month for the same price.

Source: SlashGear

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If you have never used Swype and you want to try it out on you Symbian^3 handset check out this link, it has to be said that not everyone likes Swype, however some people think that it is the quickest and easiest way to input text on a touchscreen device.

Swype cleverly allows you to type by simply gliding your finger of the letters in a word, algorithms cleverly predict the words that you write, you can see a demo video of Swype embedded at the end of this post.

Swype has been backed by quite a lot of handset manufacturers, perhaps most notably it comes pre-installed on the Motorola Droid X, Droid 2, Samsung Galaxy S and apparently the Samsung Galaxy Tab, this shows just how popular Swype is becoming.

We would love to hear from you if you have installed Swype on your N8 or C7, let us know if all goes well in the comments section below, perhaps write your comment using Swype.

Source: IntoMobile

More About: Nokia C7, Nokia N8, Swype, Symbian^3

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