Nokia Symbian Belle update will be rolled out gradually for the existing Nokia Symbian Anna update running devices by end of this year, the vice president and managing director of the company, D Shivakumar, told The Mobile Indian.
Nokia has recently announced three handsets running new Symbian Belle update — Nokia 700, Nokia 701 and Nokia 600. These handsets were launched by D Shivakumar Nokia India along with Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan.
The Symbian Belle update is successor to the Symbian Anna update. Announced just last month, Symbian Belle brings resize-able widgets, up to six home screens, improved lock screen, notifications drawer and most importantly — Near Field Communication. The three new Nokia devices 700, 701 and 600 will come pre-loaded with Symbian Belle.
Post conference, D Shivakumar informed The Mobile Indian that about 50 developers (Symbian Platform) have been working closely with the company to roll out NFC-based applications by the time Symbian Belle arrives for supporting devices in India.
The Mobile Indian also learned that in the first league of NFC enabled smartphones, Nokia will mostly focus on partnering and help develop the ecosystem to educate the masses about the different uses of NFC. The Symbian Belle handset successors with NFC built-in will stay focused on mobile payments and mobile transactions. Till then, we would just be able to enjoy the low-power and close range content sharing and coupons remittances across the country.
Symbian Belle brings the new notification bar that offers four toggle switch shortcuts to important services like Data Connection, Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS. When the notification bar on the top is pulled down, it serves as the notification tray and offers summarised information about the notifications.
One can add the resizable widgets on the six different home screens available. Built using the Qt framework, the resize-able widgets also support in-widget scrolling for emails, notes and other things.
Symbian Belle brings most interesting feature — Near Field Communication which was demonstrated using a unique approach by Nokia India. The new Just Tap application has been launched as part of digital promotion of the upcoming movie — Ra.One. With the Just Tap application, users can redeem the exclusive Ra.One content by simply enabling NFC and tapping it at the special posters located in Multiplexes and Nokia Priority Partners.
The poster contacts a special NFC chip developed by Philips Semiconductor and the front imagery will have a speech bubble stating — just tap here. This NFC chip has special content embedded on it. With one of its kind implementation of NFC for content sharing, Nokia aims to put the Symbian Belle based smartphone in several uses like coupon redeeming, content sharing and more.
By the end of this year, Symbian Belle will be rolled out for Symbian Anna running devices that include N8, E7, C7, C6-01, X7, E6 and 500. Out of these handsets, Nokia C7 already has an NFC chip but the functionality would be only enabled when it is updated to Anna.