IntoMobile » Symbian

Outrageous: T-Mobile USA will not upgrade the Nokia Astound (rebranded C7) to Symbian Belle

Stefan Constantinescu — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:04:50 +0000

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]

Nokia 803 to land in May, said to pack the largest camera sensor the mobile world has ever seen

Stefan Constantinescu — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:15:59 +0000

Rumor has it that Nokia is going to announce just one more Symbian device before finally kicking the platform to the curb. That device is said to be the long awaited successor to the Nokia N8, which launched in October 2010 with a 12 megapixel camera and Xenon flash. During the 15 months that thing has been on the market, nothing has come close to touching it in terms of image quality. Samsung’s Galaxy S II, Apple’s iPhone 4S, they both have fantastic cameras, but they don’t hold a candle to the N8. Now back in December we saw an image (below) of a device called the Nokia 803 hit the internets thanks to the folks at Pocketnow. They said that it would have a 3.5 inch screen, NFC, HDMI out, and not much else. Today we have a little more information about the 803 courtesy of Boy Genius Report. They corroborate much of what’s already been said, except for one minor detail. The screen is now no longer 3.5 inches in size, instead it’s 4 inches. Supposedly the 803 will also take microSIM cards instead of regular sized SIMs. The most important new piece of information however is an availability date: May 2012.

Assuming that Nokia announces the 803 at Mobile World Congress later this month, that would mean a three month gap between official unveiling to being able to buy it from your local electronics store. That’s not so bad considering the Nokia N8 was announced in April 2010 and then shipped half a year later. We still don’t have any idea about the type of camera the 803 will have, other than the fact that it’ll have “the largest camera sensor” ever seen on a mobile phone.

Image capture aside, the 803 will be running Symbian Belle, so it’ll be easy to use, but not exactly fun compared to the likes of Android or iOS. Still, if you’re the kind of person who values image quality above all else, then the 803 looks to be the device to hold out for this year.

Nokia starts rolling out Symbian Belle, Mac users left out in the cold

Stefan Constantinescu — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:21:37 +0000

Yesterday evening Nokia announced that users of Symbian Anna devices can now update to the newest version of the operating system, ~~Symbian~~ Nokia Belle (see video below). Seeing as how I got my girlfriend a pink Nokia N8 for her birthday last autumn, I told her to rush over to my place with her smartphone and a microUSB cable so we could begin the update process. It’s not that I didn’t trust her to do it herself, I just wanted to see first hand what Nokia Belle looks like on a Nokia N8. And even if she did want to do the update herself, she can’t because she has a MacBook. That’s right, you need a Windows PC to perform this update. Not a big deal since Windows has the dominate share of the computer market, but still, it’s an inconvenience for a quite a few number of people.

Anyway, we sit down in front of my netbook and load up All About Symbian to follow their step by step guide to update to Belle. They say the first thing you should do is download Nokia PC Suite. Ignore that. You can if you want to, the program will ask you to reboot your computer, but when all is said and done and you click update an error pops up saying that an executable is missing. See, Nokia has two desktop software applications. One is Nokia PC Suite, the other is Nokia Suite. Similar names, but two radically different apps. Nokia Suite took a little bit longer to download, it also asked me to reboot the computer, and then when everything was configured properly and we hit update … nothing. The app crashed. Mind you that my netbook is nothing more than a Windows 7 machine with Spotify and Google Chrome installed. No viruses, no bloat, it’s cleaner than fresh snow.

So I reboot the computer, again, click update, and Nokia Suite finally starts working. It downloaded a file that was close to 300 MB in size, backed up my girlfriend’s phone, flashed the software, and then it finally worked.

Total time to get all this done? 94 minutes!

What does she think of the new software update? It’s hard to say since we had to run to a movie and then hang out with a few friends later that evening, but her initial impressions after an hour with the device was: “Why didn’t they make it like this from the beginning?”

And that’s the real question, why didn’t Nokia make Symbian in 2008 or 2009 look and feel as good as it does in 2012? Would they be in the same situation that they’re in now if they picked up the pace?

Update: Those of you who follow the All About Symbian guide will now not have to deal with the same hassle that I went through:

@WhatTheBit @stevelitchfield @rafeblandford Thanks, now, now updated.

— All About Symbian (@AAS) February 8, 2012

Nokia 801: Are they seriously going to release a Symbian device that looks like the Lumia 800?

Stefan Constantinescu — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:54:40 +0000

It’s bad enough that the Nokia Lumia 800 looks exactly like the Nokia N9, now rumors suggest that Nokia is going to release a Symbian running device called the Nokia 801. Said smartphone is a picture perfect image of the N9 and Lumia 800, except that it has a 4 inch screen that does 640 x 360 pixels, 12 megapixel camera, and will be the first Symbian device that can record 1080p video. Under the hood there’s a 1.4 GHz processor paired up with 512 MB of RAM, though we have no idea if it’s going to be the same 1.4 GHz processor in the Lumia 800 that’s made by Qualcomm or an overclocked version of the 1 GHz processor inside the Nokia 701. Now some might argue that Nokia should use one of their more recent popular designs to sell more smartphones, but we think that Nokia should be put in an insane asylum if they’re seriously considering bringing the 801 to market. Not only would it create confusion among consumers, but it would dilute the flagship status of the Lumia 800. We know HTC and Samsung have no qualms about releasing Windows Phones and Android smartphones that look exactly alike, but this is Nokia we’re talking about. They have plenty of talented hardware designers, so why not make something new and different?

This Nokia 801 leak doesn’t jive with the rumors we’ve been hearing. Yesterday we reported that Nokia would release just one more Symbian smartphone before throwing the platform into the trash. Said smartphone would be the successor to the Nokia N8, the company’s flagship cameraphone. In mid December 2011 an image (above) from a product manual of an unreleased Symbian smartphone called the Nokia 803 hit the internets. It looks absolutely nothing like the Nokia 801. In fact, it looks more like the N8 than anything else, which makes a ton of sense.

Anyway, we’ll find out if the 801 is real or not at MWC later this month.

Update: Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog also covered this story, and he points out that the Nokia Lumia 710 running Windows Phone is basically an exact copy of the Nokia 603 running Symbian Belle. That’s a good point, but still, we’d rather not see Nokia put Symbian on a device that’s already been used to run two other operating systems.

Rumor: Nokia’s next Symbian device will also be their last

Stefan Constantinescu — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:20:47 +0000

This coming Saturday will mark the one year anniversary of the historic day when Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, got up on a stage in London and announced to the world that both Symbian and Maemo were going to be thrown under the bus, and that the future would be all about Windows Phone. One thing Stephen mentioned during that announcement was that Nokia still has plans to sell 150 million Symbian smartphones. That’s recently changed though. Late last month when Nokia reported their Q4 2011 financial results they said that:

“As a result of the changing market conditions, combined with our increased focus on Lumia, we now believe that we will sell fewer Symbian devices than we previously anticipated.”

Now Nokia didn’t quantify what “fewer Symbian devices” actually means. It could be 1 million fewer, it could be 50 million fewer. Here’s where Andrew Orlowski from The Register comes in. He’s been covering the tech industry for more than a decade, and his sources are generally bulletproof. They’re telling him that Nokia’s cancelled all their upcoming Symbian devices except for one, the successor to the Nokia N8. When someone asked Eldar Murtazin if Andrew’s story was accurate, he said yes.

@cod3rror true and again true

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) February 5, 2012

Does any of this really sound surprising though? When you think about, Nokia wants to sell Windows Phones, and anything else is just a distraction. Later this month we expect to hear details about Tango, the next version of Microsoft’s mobile OS that runs on device with lower end hardware specifications and supposedly has support for 120 different languages. Sounds like an awesome replacement for Symbian, doesn’t it?

As for this final device in question, something tells us that similar to the Nokia N9, a lot of love will be put into it. It may very well be the last really awesome pure Nokia smartphone. If you’ve been kicking yourself in the ass for not buying the N9, then this camera flagship is right up your ally.

Skype for Nokia Belle phones is out

Dusan Belic — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:26:55 +0000

Skype has updated its app for Symbian Belle devices (version 2.1.23) like the Nokia 700, 701, 603 and many others that will get the new OS via a firmware update. The popular VoIP application now comes with Belle-like look and feel, while the overall performance has been significantly improved.

You know that Skype is a must-have app on your smartphone, right? So if you have a compatible device, get it now. Sure there are other VoIP solutions out there, some of which are even cheaper to use. However, with most folks running Skype on their mobile phones, tablets and computer – you’ll need it to be able to talk to them for free (as in Skype-to-Skype calls).

Skype for Symbian is a free download and you can get it from the Nokia Store (linked below)…

Skype (FREE) [Nokia Store]

[Via: AllAboutSymbian]

Nokia to start pushing out Symbian Belle on February 8th?

Stefan Constantinescu — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:42:00 +0000

Someone in Nokia’s Vietnam offices is about to get in a whole lot of trouble. Apparently a website that wasn’t supposed to go live accidentally did, and said website announced that Symbian Belle was going to be available for Symbian Anna users starting on the 8th of February. Note that we’ve already known for a while now that Belle would come out in February, we just didn’t have an exact date. The update requires that you connect your device to a computer, which is a minor niggle, but there are worse things in life. For those unfamiliar with Belle, it’s the latest version of Symbian, and it does a fabulous job at ripping off the best parts of Android. The most obvious form of flattery is a direct copy of the pull down notification bar that’s been in Android since the first version of the operating system shipped back in 2008. To be fair though, everyone copies from everyone these days, and when we played with Belle last year we came away incredibly impressed at just how user friendly Symbian had become. Seriously, if Nokia launched Belle back in 2008 or 2009 then the company might not be in the mess that they’re currently facing.

If you’re in the market for a Symbian device and can’t be swayed to something running Android, then we recommend you pickup either the Nokia N8 or the E7. Both are considered to be the company’s flagship Symbian devices, with the N8 having the best camera in any smartphone out on the market today (including the iPhone 4S), and the E7 with an ultra crisp screen and more than usable hardware QWERTY keyboard.

Still, we if you really want to buy a smartphone then we suggest you wait until Mobile World Congress next month. There we’re going to see the latest and greatest, and something tells us that affordable smartphones will be a running theme throughout the show.

Nokia Car Mode now available in the Nokia Ovi Store

Dusan Belic — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:24:53 +0000

Nokia Car Mode has been released for Nokia (Symbian) Belle devices in the Ovi Store, providing users with easy access and simplified user interface to the most relevant apps for in-car use such as music player, contacts and navigation. As a result, drivers are less distracted and more focused on the road ahead.

There are two versions of the Nokia Car Mode available, depending on the user preferences and availability of MirrorLink enabled car infotainment system in the region.

The first version includes the MirrorLink and could require the user to update the phone software, while the second one doesn’t include MirrorLink support, giving the user a good chance to get familiar with the Nokia Car Mode before MirrorLink enabled car infotainment system is available or before making a purchase decision. Both versions are free to download and you can get them from the two links below… But before clicking on any link check out the video demoing Nokia Car Mode in action. Enjoy!

Nokia Car Mode with MirrorLink (FREE) [Nokia Ovi Store link]
Nokia Car Mode without MirrorLink (FREE) [Nokia Ovi Store link]

[Via: AllAboutSymbian]

Nokia N801T heading to China Mobile with Symbian Anna and NFC

Yoeau — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:08:40 +0000

Nokia announced a new Symbian Anna smartphone in China that’s ready for NFC-based contactless payments. In addition, the device marked as 801T rocks a 4-inch ClearBlack LCD touchscreen, China Mobile-friendly TD-SCDMA connectivity, 8-megapixel “full-focus” camera with 720p video recording support on the back, VGA front-facing camera, 8GB of built-in storage, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, 256MB of RAM, 3.5mm headset jack, and a microSD card slot with hot swap support. Moreover, there’s mobile TV capability which is enabled with an awkward lookin’ external antenna.

All in all, the Nokia N801T is a mid-range smartphone that will most likely cost about $200 or maybe less. Unfortunately, the Finnish company hasn’t mentioned neither the price nor the release date. As far as we know, it could be out any day now though I guess that’s the decision China Mobile will made rather than Nokia…

Finally, before I let you go, here’s another image of the phone with its external antenna.

[Via: Unwired View]

Nokia kills the Symbian brand, Symbian Belle now simply called “Nokia Belle”

Stefan Constantinescu — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:36:55 +0000

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.

Nokia says Symbian Belle coming to Symbian Anna devices in early 2012

Stefan Constantinescu — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:09:57 +0000

This summer Nokia announced the latest version of the Symbian operating system, Belle, along with the first three devices to support it; the 600, 700, and 701. The latter two are now out in a number of markets, and the 600 sadly got cancelled, but what’s important is that people who have played with Belle have said that it finally makes Symbian competitive to Android in terms of user interface. Whether or not it’s too late for that is another story all together. Now what we’ve been wanting to know is when are users of existing Symbian Anna devices going to get the Belle upgrade? When Nokia announced Belle they didn’t exactly give us a timeline except to say “in the coming months”. Now thanks to All About Symbian, who spoke to a Nokia representative, we have a more concrete answer:

Nokia Belle is the latest Symbian software release with all-new user interface, improved user experience, and dozens of improved and new features. We have already shipped Nokia 603, 700 and 701 with Belle software this year, and have received great feedback on the new user experience.

We will make Nokia Belle available to consumers globally by rolling out the Belle software for the existing Nokia range of smartphones such as N8, E7, X7, C6-01, C7, Oro, E6, and Nokia 500 in early 2012. With that, millions of consumers around the world will get a totally fresh experience on their Symbian smartphone.

Early could mean January, it could also mean March. This is as good as we’re going to get in terms of dates. That being said, we can only imagine how compelling a device like the Nokia N8 would become with a UI that’s actually easy to use. Here’s hoping that the Belle update for the N8 comes out before the actual successor to the N8, which we heard will run an even newer version of Symbian called Carla.