Symbian Brand is Dead, Now It's Just Belle

Posted 12/22/2011 at 7:53am | by Paul Lilly

2

Comments

Print

Nokia's getting a head start on its New Year's resolutions and item No. 1 is complete: Ditch the Symbian name. Symbian Belle is now just Belle, or Nokia Belle if you prefer, and a new version of the mobile operating system will soon begin rolling out to existing smartphones and will ship with a selection of smartphones already on the market, Nokia announced in a blog post.

Despite dropping the Symbian name and committing to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 as its main focus, Nokia isn't ditching its own OS entirely. Nokia Belle will introduce twice as many home screens as Symbian Nokia Anna, going from three screens to six. It will also offer more screen real estate for apps and widgets.

"The home screen widgets have been improved and made more functional than before," Nokia said. "Plus some of them, such as the email widget, give now much more information making reading emails much easier at a glance."

Nokia Belle will start shipping in February to owners of Nokia E7, E6, X7, C6-01, C7, and Oro phones. New Nokia N8, C7, and C6-01 handsets shipping from the factory already have Belle preinstalled and arrive first in China and then other parts of the world, Nokia said.