Announced via the official blog, the Finnish mobile company will release Nokia Belle in February. The update includes a pull-down status/notification bar, deeper near field communication integration, free-form re-sizable homescreen widgets, and six homescreens instead of the previous three.
“The all new Nokia Belle (previously Symbian Belle) user interface will soon be available for download to some existing smartphones and begin shipping with a selection of smartphones that are already on the market.” – Those ‘existing smartphones’ included are: Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7, Nokia E6, Nokia E7, Nokia N8 and Nokia X7,” reads the post on the Nokia blog.
Symbian out, Belle
in
Nokia hasn’t detailed why it’s decided to ditch the Symbian name, but it’s expected that the rise and popularity of Apple’s iOS and Google Android operating systems have over-shadowed Nokia’s OS, and its reputation has somewhat diminished.
Nokia still sold 19.5 million Symbian-powered smartphones in the third quarter of 2011 and holds a 17 percent market share, but that has dropped significantly compared to the same time last year, where it held a 36.3 percent market share. Whether the Symbian name has now disappeared for good, or whether Nokia plans to continue with the OS long term, is unknown.
Nokia recently teamed up with Microsoft to deliver handsets sporting Windows Phone 7, which is set to become Nokia’s principal operating system. The first Mango-powered smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, are set to launch in Europe next year.
