Nokia might have jumped the Windows Phone bandwagon, but they still sell millions of Symbian based smartphones. Their latest one, 808, packs in a 41MP camera. While Windows Phone is Nokia’s future, the platform has failed to gather any traction anywhere other than a few selected countries. This has made Nokia hang on a little longer to their old OS, Symbian. That and the fact that Nokia is still making expensive high end Symbian phones means that they will be bringing software updates to them for the time being. This latest update, Feature Pack 2 for Belle, brings in some visual as well as some functionality enhancements to the platform.
The update is not yet available. The video is a leaked built of Feature Pack 2 running on an emulator hence the lag and stutters. Some of the updates include:
- New swipe-unlock.
- -New transition effects between menus and windows
- -New camera UI.
- -New navbar.
- -New widgets.
- -New qwerty keyboard (predictive).
- -New image editor.
- -New web browser.
- -New galery.
- -New music player (pause/resume button on notification bar).
Most of these are visual enhancements that aim to bring Symbian close to what Android and iOS offers. There’s currently no known release date for this. We know 808 PureView will get it but apart from that the eligible list of phones is not known at this point.
Feature Pack 2 is kind of a last hurrah from Nokia who have shifted all their energies and focus on Windows Phone platform. Symbian is effectively dead, with no amount of feature packs that will ever bring it to the same level as Android and iOS. That being said, it does bring out the best in Symbian, which isn’t saying a lot, but should be able to please those looking for a lower end smartphone.
