Nokia’s last Symbian smartphone, the 803: 4-inch AMOLED, Symbian Belle and the largest camera sensor you’ve ever seen

Information has been appearing in dribs and drabs about Nokia’s last Symbian smartphone, the Nokia 803, but a trusted source of ours has come through with some details that vary a bit from earlier reports. For starters, the Nokia 803 will run Symbian Belle and serve it up on a 4-inch AMOLED display instead of the smaller 3.5-inch screen that had been reported. An HDMI-out port, microSIM support and NFC are all a go as well. We have also been told that the Nokia 803 will feature one of the largest camera sensors — if not the largest camera sensor — ever seen on a mobile phone. The Nokia 803 is currently expected to be released in the May timeframe.

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Nokia promises Symbian Belle early in 2012

Nokia Symbian Belle update will arrive for Symbian Anna devices in the first quarter of 2012.

The much anticipated Symbian Belle update for Nokia smartphones can be expected in early 2012.

The Nokia India spokesperson said that the update will be rolled out for existing Symbian Anna running smartphones - N8, E7, X7, C6-01, C7, Oro, and E6, in the first quarter of 2012.

Back in October, D Sivakumar, Nokia India vice president and managing director had informed that Symbian Belle can be expected by the end of this year — about now. Apparently, that is not going to happen.
Nokia users in the US and Europe might be the first lucky ones to get Symbian Belle. Following that, the update will arrive in India.
At this moment, Nokia Symbian Belle is already available on three new handsets — 701, 700 and 603, all of which are focused on Near Field Communication technology.
Nokia has promised that several significant features will be rolled out for Symbian devices with this update. We will have to wait till early 2012 to see what features the next major Symbian update has to offer.

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Nokia 701 : Review

Nokia phones with Windows Phone 7.5 have already been announced & Symbian, once the stalwart of the smartphone world, will be going away soon, but not without a fight. The latest Symbian Belle is what you'll find in the Nokia 701 & it offers several enhancements.

First, the overall design, look & feel of the phone is excellent - it feels small and reassuringly heavy. Thanks to the rounded design, it sits perfectly on the ear. Both plastic and metal has been used, but the plastic (polycarbonate) bits feel tougher than the metal itself.

The 701's claim to fame is an ultra-bright display, which Nokia claims is the brightest in the world. While sunlight legibility is good, these claims have to be taken with a pinch of salt, because several other displays seem brighter (and sharper) in a head-to-head comparison.

Coming to the OS, Nokia's approach seems to be "If you can't beat them, join them". There is loads of inspiration from Android: a drop-down notification area and multiple customisable homescreens. All icons have the same size and shape. This lends consistency, but can also make it a little harder to distinguish one from the other.

In our opinion, some more work is needed on the icons The phone includes a basic level voice control -activated by pressing the voice button on the right side of the phone. You can perform actions like changing the profile (by saying 'General' or 'Silent' or 'Meeting') or open applications (by saying 'Radio', or 'Calculator' or 'Camera').

This voice recognition is built in -the phone does not need to communicate with servers or use any data for this feature, but because of that it is also limited in what it understands and takes a couple of seconds to recognize what you said and perform the action.

Plus, in normal Nokia fashion, a whole lot of applications are built in: a dictionary, QuickOffice, photo & video Editor, Ovi Maps, Psiloc World Traveler (weather alerts, flight info, currencies), Shazam (music discovery), Vlingo (voice assistant with speech to text) and free push email. Thanks to the 1Ghz processor and 512MB RAM combo, navigation and general interface is very fast.

Call quality is rock solid and the phone easily lasts through the day with calls, data, messaging, email, web browsing, audio, video and a bit of gaming. The 8MP camera is decent too, though it should have been an autofocus unit. In conclusion, yes, Belle is a very polished version of Symbian and the 701 is a very well built and responsive device.

The whole package is somewhat compelling, but at least for us, it doesn't quite have the desirability or momentum to overtake Android - especially at that price. For about Rs 17,500, you can go for Sony Ericsson's Xperia Neo V - an Android device with roughly the same hardware, a larger and higher resolution screen & better camera.

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Symbian Rides Again: New Handsets and Better Software

If you didn’t know any better, you might think Nokia’s mobile Symbian platform is still chugging along down the tracks. The company made several Symbian-related announcements Tuesday, including the launch of two new handsets, an update to the Symbian operating system and an eight-fold increase in software downloads from the Ovi Store, which now hits 5 million downloads per day. Of course, Nokia previously announced its intent to use Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform going forward, so today’s developments are rendered moot. Or are they?

There’s no doubt that both the new smartphones, dubbed the E6 and X7, and the Symbian software update were already in the works for months prior to Nokia’s choice to partner with Microsoft back in February. Plenty of evidence around the web prior to today indicated as much. And it would make no sense for Nokia to immediately cease all Symbian efforts for a few reasons. First, the Microsoft agreement hasn’t been signed yet, although Nokia has admitted to deploying engineering resources on the platform in order to launch a Windows Phone 7 handset by the end of this year. And although Android surpassed Symbian sales in the fourth quarter of 2010, Nokia’s smartphone platform has outsold all others on an annual sales basis for several years.

That leads into the recent smartphone platform forecasts I questioned just last week. Gartner figures Symbian sales will all but dry up by 2015 and bases that opinion heavily on the Microsoft / Nokia partnership. But Windows Phone 7 doesn’t make sense in the low-end market due to Microsoft licensing fees. And as I noted, Nokia could still leverage Symbian by pushing the platform down to where it currently uses the Series 40 platform in an effort to combat cheap Android handsets:

Nokia could salvage its investment in Symbian, which already runs on relatively lesser hardware than current high-end handsets, and find new hope in Asia, Latin America, Africa and other emerging regions where the Nokia brand is strong. Symbian handsets in such areas wouldn’t be subject to any licensing fees that Nokia would have to pay Microsoft for Windows Phone 7 use, helping to reduce the costs of the phones.

The updates to Symbian look nice and appear to address two key concerns I had with the Symbian platform when I reviewed the Nokia N8 last year. The web browser is improved, which I said was important due to the rise smartphone users hitting the web on the go. And the abysmal text entry system for the platform now looks much better both by not taking up the entire screen and because it can be used in portrait mode. Yes, these are little things in the grand scheme, but they’re also central to the smartphone experience because they’re functions users hit many times each and every day.

Nokia has always designed excellent hardware, so I’m not surprised the two new handsets are appealing. The E6 is geared towards the business crowd and combines a hardware keyboard with a touchscreen. The design of Nokia’s new X7 reminds me of a race car or futuristic phone that few other handset makers could pull off. Combined with the Symbian updates, both should offer a better user experience, which has really always been Nokia’s Achilles’ heel: The hardware is great, and the operating system is capable, but the usability has been lacking.

Now that Nokia is pinning its future on Microsoft’s platform, Symbian is finally starting to look more competitive, and the updates will apply to current Symbian handsets.

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