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.