Nokia Belle: Screens for every occasion

Back in February, Nokia started to deliver the new Symbian OS, Nokia Belle, as download for the existing Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia C7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia X7, Nokia Oro, and Nokia 500. Since then, millions of satisfied Symbian smartphone owners in more than 120 countries have downloaded Nokia Belle to take advantage of the many added features and improvements. Not updated yet? Here’s why you should.
One of the big improvements to Nokia Belle is that you can now have six different homescreens. This gives you much more space to personalise than before. We realised that our average day is split into six different parts, so we thought we’d make the most of these new homescreens and demonstrate how you can run each part of your day with a single homescreen.

Morning time, before work – screen one

In the mornings as we turn off the alarm on our Nokia smartphone, one of the first things we do is look at our calendar to see what lies ahead. Do we have any meetings? Well, probably yes. The calendar widget ensures we don’t forget them. Plus, now’s a good time to go through the emails we received during those slumber hours.

The journey into work – screen two

The morning commute is a dull, boring time of the day. With the music player widget loaded up it’s easy to flick between tracks – providing the headphones are plugged in, of course, as people don’t like listening to other people’s music according to last year’s mobile etiquette poll.

There’s also the FM radio widget, too, for when we get bored of our own music library.

At work – screen three

While at work we’re sitting at our computers for the most part, so using our phones for anything Internet related comes second to using our computers. However, using the single contact widget on our homescreen means we’re always just one touch away from our colleagues who may be out of the office.

And if we’re not calling each other, we’re in meetings. This is where the profile widget with meeting mode proves really useful. Hit it once and your phone won’t ring half way through that important meeting with those really important people.

After work, out and about – screen four

After a hard day at the office, it’s great to find somewhere to relax and chill out before heading home. Sometimes a pub is a good place to start and maybe on for dinner after that. Wherever we want to go, the places nearby widget lets us know what’s close-by.

If we find something of interest, selecting the location on the widget will open up more details – including reviews – and from here we can use Nokia Maps to navigate our way there.

That time at home before bed – screen five

After work, drinks and dinner, it’s time to head home. Once there we spend time with our family, watch some TV and find a few spare hours before bed. This is usually a good time to catch up with what’s happening on our social networks. The Social widget helps us connect to Facebook and Twitter to update our status or post a new tweet. There’s also the two separate Facebook and Twitter widgets that make it easier to see at a glance if anything needs our attention. You can get the Social widget as an independent delivery on top of Nokia Belle.

Once we’ve had a chat with our online communities, there’s still time for some game playing and app using before heading to bed.

Bed time – screen six

The bedtime screen is simple, just a clock is needed. Pressing on it lets us set our morning alarm and the clock provides us with the time if we need it. We’ve also placed the profile widget here, too. This means that we stop being woken by any unwanted phone calls or text messages during the night.

Having more screens is of course useful, but that’s not the only reason to install Nokia Belle.

There’s the new notifications bar that makes it easy to access your Bluetooth settings, WiFi connections and other activities. Making hunting through the settings option in the menu a thing of the past. The Internet browser has been improved to allow for high-quality browsing and viewing of web videos. Plus lots of other improvements that make your smartphone experience a smooth, fast one.

Nokia Belle is available for the Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia X7, Nokia C7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia Oro, and Nokia 500. If you’ve got a Nokia 500 you’ll get Angry Birds pre-loaded when you update to Nokia Belle, which means you won’t have to download it after. Overall, Nokia Belle has been tailored to Nokia 500 with four homescreens.

To see more details on Nokia Belle, check out the Nokia Belle website, or download the Nokia Belle Demo app from Nokia Store. To download Nokia Belle to your device you’ll need to use Nokia Suite as the file size is large. Here’s a step-by-step that shows you everything you need to know.

Further updates coming up

In the series of regular software updates that Nokia offers to consumers, Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1 continues the Symbian software story. With new personalisation possibilities, improved entertainment experiences and enhanced performance, Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1 has started to be available for Nokia 603, Nokia 700 and Nokia 701 devices only. The roll out will take place per variant and per country; stay tuned for your software update notifications and update your device over the air to Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1.