Nokia’s official corporate blog has just announced that they’re no longer calling the latest version of the Symbian operating system “Symbian Belle”. It’s now been changed to “Nokia Belle”. If that isn’t a sign that Symbian is about to get thrown under the bus, then we don’t know what is. Also in Nokia’s announcement of the death of a once prominent brand is a timeline for when current Symbian Anna devices will get upgraded to Nokia Belle. Expect to see the Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia X7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7, and Nokia Oro get new software in February, just in time for Mobile World Congress. Now for those of you unfamiliar with Belle, it’s Nokia’s best version of Symbian to date. Sure, it looks like a ripoff of Android, but that’s what makes it so usable. Nokia shamelessly stole the best design elements from Google’s mobile operating system and incorporated it into their formerly in-house, now externally contracted, operating system.
As for future versions of Symbian, back in November we heard that Symbian Carla and Symbian Donna were next in line. Carla is something we may see as early as Q2 2012 in what’s rumored to be the successor to the Nokia N8. Meanwhile Donna is all about dual core, but to tell you the truth we don’t really see Nokia building a dual core Symbian handset. They’ll want to distance themselves from any smartphone OS other than Windows Phone as soon as possible. That name, “Symbian”, comes with so many preconceptions that it’s pulling down the Nokia brand. Just like Ovi used to until it was killed back in May.
If you’re a Symbian fan, now’s the time to bust out the coffin and bury your device in the back yard. Go grab something running Android or iOS or Windows Phone and welcome to life with a modern smartphone.