Back in September 2010 Nokia announced a Symbian^3 smartphone called the C7. It can best be thought of as a Nokia N8, but without the fancy high end camera, and in a body that’s much more fashionable. Half a year later (April 2011) it hit American shores courtesy of T-Mobile for just $80 with a two year contract; they rebranded it as the Nokia Astound (see video below). When Nokia started pushing out Symbian Anna, an update to Symbian^3, many people rightly assumed that the Astound would also get the update. It did, but whereas most of Nokia’s devices got Anna in August, owners of the Astound had to wait until November. Better late than never, right? Well now it’s 2012 and Symbian Nokia Belle is the talk of the town. Earlier this week Nokia started pushing the update out to nearly everyone with a smartphone running Symbian Anna, and again, people started asking when would the Nokia Astound get the Belle? We have some bad news. According to Nokia’s Twitter account the Nokia Astound will not be getting Belle.
Thanks for your patience @bittersw8regene. Unfortunately the Nokia Astound on T-Mobile will not be updated to Nokia Belle.
— Nokia US (@NokiaUS) February 8, 2012
It would be easy to slam Nokia right now over this, but we know better. It’s not their fault, it’s T-Mobile’s. When Symbian Anna came out it was nothing more than an over the air update that weighed in at around 10 MB. Belle on the other hand requires that you connect your phone to your PC and download a 250 MB software update. We can imagine the thinking within T-Mobile’s office went something like this: “Do you have any idea how much money it’s going to cost to not only tell people about Belle, but also the support costs in case people screw the update up?”
It’s a shame really, and we hope T-Mobile changes their mind.
[Via: Unleash The Phones]